Blogs from Haikou, Hainan, China, Asia - page 6

'TRAVEL THAT FEEDS THE SOUL'........this is what GLOBAL VOLUNTEERS is all about. A week ago, we completed our third year teaching with GLOBAL VOLUNTEERS, we were the 2nd team to teach in Haikou city, Hainan Island. We taught each morning to Chinese English teachers at Haikou Educational Research and Training Academy. Every other year English teachers in China must get re-certified. This is our 2nd time having HuDi as our team leader; last year her partner, Baoli, led our small team in Xi'an and HuDi participated. We feel as tho these leaders are a part of our family now. We stayed at the Golden Sea View Hotel, which overlooked Evergreen Park--was comfortable & modern. We had breakfast each day on the 31st floor, which was a revolving restaurant; we enjoyed many views of the city and ... read more

LUCHEN is an ancient, rural village 2 hours from the city of Haikou, Hainan Island. There is a stone marker, at the entrance to the village, from the 'Ming Dynasty', 1500 A.D. It lists 10 rules for the village --'don't steal;don't cut down trees', etc. The foilage is tropical & the soil very fertile. Fruit trees are very abundant --jackfruit, pineapples, leechie nuts, bananas, to name just a few. The houses were all built from volcano bricks......bricks cut into squares from volcano lava, no mortar is used. The bricks are porous & would leak in the rain.....however, it is a very dry climate, & rains infrequently. Electricity & water are brought in from Haikou -- there is a TV antena attached to one of the electric poles along with an electric meter! We did see a ... read more

We had nine days to spend in the Hong Kong area, so we went looking for day trips to China and found this 2 day cruize to Haikou. Haikou is the largest city on an Island in the Hainan region of China. It was a cheezy cruize but we did get to see this little city in China. There were some very modern buildings in Haikou but we were amazed at how many were vacant. From the ground they appeared to have condos that would sell for a million in the USA, but you could clearly see that although they were completely finished for possibly months, nobody appeared to be living in them. Also, we were there on a workday, during the day, and it was surprising how few people and cars were around. Tall buildings ... read more