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Published: October 11th 2009
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Kittens
The cute kittens who lived at the hostel, sunning themselves in the outdoor garden. Due to various internet difficulties, there were a number of blog posts that got written and were not published, so I thought that it would be easiest if I just gave you the summary of my vacation (with pictures!) broken down into however many parts I feel like.
The first day of my vacation was National Day, which honestly wasn't very different than any other day except that there were people selling Chinese flags on the street and when I went to the supermarket, there were people watching the festivities in Beijing on the televisions in the electronics department (they were still on 7 hours later when we went out to dinner, but at that point, we were the only people who seemed at all interested, at least at the restaurant where we were). The most exciting part of the day was when we went to go visit a model apartment at the luxury apartment building across the street (I promise one day soon I will write about my apartment, and then I will tell you why it was so appealing)--we had to wear little blue plastic baggies on our feet!
The next day, Friday, I took a very
short flight to Haikou, Hainan (it was one of those flights where you basically go up and then down, though they did manage to have time to pass out little boxes of food, containing: an orange, a plain role, a bag of plain peanuts, and a bag of boiled peanuts with some slices of ham... a well balanced meal indeed). I was pretty drowsy when I arrived, though I did manage to have my first real conversation in Chinese (me, pointing at the bus "where does it go?"; bus lady "to Haikou, where are you going?"; me: "Haikou"; bus lady: "15 yuan"). The options given by my hostel for getting there from the airport bus were public bus with limited directions given or taxi, so I decided to trust my map and walk. It took a solid half-hour or so, in the mid-day heat (and tropical sun--Hainan is the furthest South I've ever been!), but I got somewhat oriented in the city. The verdict: not very interesting, more or less like my neighborhood in Shenzhen (again, I promise I'll write an entry about it soon!), but with more tourists and more people staring at me. So I got to my hostel and took a 3 hour nap.
After the nap, I went downstairs and asked what the best things to do in a few hours in the city were. The answers confirmed my hypothesis of "not much," though part of the problem was that at that point it was about 5pm, people in Haikou eat dinner early, and plus, it's started getting dark at 6:30 or so (it is confusing for my body, since it still feels like summer temperature-wise). I talked for a while with the hostel's owner, a youngish British expat, and his assistant, a youngish Midwestern expat teacher, and they suggested a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. It sounded intriguing, so I set out, only to wander around for 45 minutes looking for it, and ending up back at a place right next to the hostel. The meal, a "vegetable casserole" (mostly various mushrooms, vermicelli rice noodles, and bean sprouts), was honestly one of the most delicious things I've eaten since I've arrived in China! The only negative part of the meal was that I was the only foreigner in a HUGE bustling restaurant, and the waitstaff didn't really seem to know what to do with me (though the owner spoke a little English, and was quite helpful). That night, I hung out with the hostel's owner again, and a group of his American, Canadian, and Russian expat friends, who were all happy to tell me about how nice and relaxed life on Hainan is. (Though they emphasized that I shouldn't think about moving there--there are enough foreigners as is, and they don't want it to become "just like every other Chinese province".)
The next morning, after sleeping in, I ate some delicious banana pancakes, repacked my bags, and headed out to the bus station to catch the bus to my next destination, Bo'ao--my first real adventure in traveling in China, though most of it was conducted in signs and with a note that the hostel person had written the characters for "East Bus Station," "please tell me my stop," and "I would like to buy a bus ticket to Qionghai," which I just showed to the appropriate people. The biggest problem came when I somehow walked passed the bus station (despite some helpful person pointing it out to me) and wandered a few blocks further before turning around. In any case, I was able to get on a bus quickly, and the rest was easy enough--once in Qionghai, I had to transfer to a local bus (I had some taxi drivers harassing me each time a bus passed that wasn't the one I needed to take, but I held my ground), and then take a tuk tuk (little motorcycle attached to a large covered side-car/wagon is the best way to describe it) to the address, but somewhat enjoyable.
From when I left the hostel until I arrived at the inn, I was the only Westerner I saw--I guess most Western tourists stick to the fancy resorts or Sanya, my next destination--and people seemed curious, but neither overly friendly nor obnoxious... There's a high-speed train line going in one the island soon, though, and it will be interesting to see how that changes things. It seems like the
Lonely Planet certainly put a lot more coverage of the island into this edition--the first two places I stayed were newly featured (well, one was relatively new anyway; but I had a few conversations about it--it's reassuring to know that neither of them knew who the writer was until after the fact).
Okay, that's all for now, more tomorrow!
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anonymous
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Looking forward to the next installment!