Blogs from Hainan, China, Asia - page 20

Boarding the battered old ferry at Beihai we were torn between relief and trepidation: happy to be leaving that frozen, barren town but distinctly hesitant about the impending 12-hour sea-bucket journey. We had managed at the last minute to upgrade ourselves from the 30-to-a-room cattle-class about which we had heard so many colourful, zoological analogies and which, we now saw, offered little more than a bamboo mat and a selection of shrieking, smoking roommates. Putting Steerage a good deck below us, we settled into our cosier 2-bunk cabin to contemplate our trip. Behind us: Beihai, chilly wasteland with a very Chinese approach to ferry ticket sales. Ahead: the tropical island of Hainan and almost two weeks of warmed-up relaxation. Outside: a rusty corridor reminiscent of the 'follow the rats' scene from Titanic. So doing nothing was ... read more

The family is together for the first time since last summer. It all feels so right. Longing for the relaxing days of Pensacola in the spring, we decide a beach retreat might be just the thing to satisfy our desire to rekindle some of our memories of family fun on the beach while exploring a new area. Sanya bay on the southern tip of Hainan island is the southern most point of China with coastlines adorned by the warm, lovely South China Sea. Our 4 days are spent mostly soaking up the sun on the nearly deserted beach. We walked for hours, played a bit of coconut "P-I-G", body surfed the waves, and explored a couple fun restaurants. Our 4 BR apartment was graced with tropical island breezes, the sound of waves crashing the beach at ... read more

Alot has happend since I last wrote here. So try to keep it extremely short. Am really hungry at the moment as well so another reason to keep it short. Last days in Beijing was most about shopping. Nothing fro me almost though. Last night was a weird night. Had decided to stay up til 4 am to watch the england-croatia game. Had been out shopping non stop for 7 hours during the day and was very tired. But somehow manged to stay awake. Wnet to many bars and then ended up in a pub for the game. Me and three Englishs. Sorry guys. Took a taxi back to the hostel afterwards but the taxi driver had no idea where our hostel were (happens very often here, the taxi driver say they know the address but ... read more

Hi everyone, it’s been a while. We are currently in the Vietnamese beach resort of Nha Trang and we thought now would be a good time to update you on our travels! As some of you may have seen, the blog website crashed a few days ago which meant that all of our blogs were lost! However, using some computer wizardry we were able to restore most of the entries. I know a lot of you like to re-read these entries every day so I’m sure you are glad that they are back… I think we last spoke to you several weeks ago in Yangshou? Keep up at the back. We left there on a Chinese sleeper bus, the first one we had the pleasure of, on the way to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is on the very ... read more

Geo: 18.6176, 109.683Tropical Paradise... read more