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Published: February 24th 2008
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SORRY FOR SUCH A LONG TIME BETWEEN BLOGS.
We travelled without the laptop for a while and pretty much just slept for the last week in Oz. Plenty more soon though I swear. We still have to write about Shanghai and Thailand. Hope you enjoy this one, loads of sun and pics..
(this one is for Paul and Elaine- our partners in crime :-) SANYA, HAINAN ISLAND, SOUTHERN CHINA
On the 9th January we flew to Sanya with Shanghai Air, it was a good airline and a very comfortable flight, better than we had been expected. So we arrived into Sanya in the late evening and jumped onto a bus to the centre. Got to the Sanya Eagle Hostel, and were met with disappointment. The place wasn't that clean, the bathroom wasn't the nicest and it was on the 12th floor of 20 story very run down building and it cost us 22 euro (expensive for what it was in China). There were two lifts, shared by all the buildings tenants, who spat and discarded their rubbish in a perfect irregular mess . Next morning bright and early we checked out, left our bags
Chillin' on the beach Sanya
awwww....they are just so cute!! :) xxx and went to discover Sanya and to find a place to live. We eventually found a great little place(the very last place we looked) right across the lane way, 'The Good Elephant '. Turned out that they hadn't any rooms for that night, her friend came to get us to show us her place across the lane. (As we walked in the direction of the dreaded lifts, we both prayed that it wasn't there- and it was!!!- on the 9th floor. We went to see it anyway, it was nicer and a lot cheaper, we told the lady we would have to think about it, and as she led us out of the building, the mother and daughter (of the other guesthouse) gestured us over to their place. The two guys that had been in the room that we had viewed were standing in the reception with all their luggage, one exchanging deposits and money with the owner the other with a very confused look upon his face, a smile for us. Turns out they had kicked the two guys out across the road to the 9th floor, the sheets were changed, the room cleaned and it was now ours.
We (actually, I) felt so guilty for days later! 😊
Sanya is a pretty place, not much to do, so we relaxed by the beach, sat for ages over meals and with horns beeping and a constant buzz that is truly China, we watched the world go by. Hainan, especially the south (sanya and surrounding areas) are very famous for pearls. The tribal ladies go around selling them from little baskets for a few euro. The range in price from little to large and obviously quality. I know nothing about pearls only the fact that I now have many!! 😊
It seemed to be a very Russian holiday resort, for the first day we walked around in a confused daze staring at the signs. When we asked in many restaurants to see the english menu, we were met with blank smiles. Initially there was a coldness to some people and again, most of the time a smile was exchanged and the coldness disappeared. It wasn't at all what we had been expecting, just a massive resort area, very expensive restaurants lacking any quality or charm. The beaches were crowded with Chinese and Russian families alike, we met a
Chillin
Well hello there! canadian couple in the sea and we were all delighted to hear the other speaking english. Unfortunately, the beaches were just like the street and people just discarded their rubbish willy nilly on the soft white sand, we had to keep a watchful eye for bottle tops and broken glass.
All in all though, Sanya is a really beautiful place, it has been host to the Miss World competition for the past 3 years (our own Rosanna Davis (we think) won here a few years ago), and that has put Hainan on the map. We took a bus to the fancy resort area( Yulong Bay) of Sanya one of the days, and it was just a maze of resort hotels and restaurants. A little village amongst itself. Very expensive hotels and clean private beaches. We read in the guide book that some locals try to charge you 5 euro just to enter onto the beach so we walked down to the Crowne Plaza private beach and tried to look like we were guests, it worked too and we saved ourselves a tenner! 😊
We realized a couple of days before we left that 'The Good Elephant' also was
Sanya
Sharing a coconut....awwww! a Chinese restaurant catering for guests. With the little mandarin chinese that we picked up along the journey we asked for a menu (they had none) and then managed to order a couple of plates of dumplings and some chinese tea (2 euro for it all), we then told them it was delicious and they all had a giggle at our attempt of Mandarin. Each province speaks in different dialect so the words and sentences we have picked up are a mix of everything, Im sure it's very funny to hear us speaking.
We had planned to go surfing in Hainan and went to Sanya for that reason, but the surfing beach was at least 2-3 hours by bus away form where we stayed, there were no surf shops or schools and only one surf tour, costing about 80 euro for us both, for a couple of hours surfing. Thats a quarter of the price for a board and the same as back in Ireland, so we said " ish don't think so! ".
As I said above we just chilled out, read, swam in the ocean and generally relaxed and in the end we both got colds
due to the fact that our bodies were able to completing come to a halt for those seven days.
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Paul
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Hello from Argentina
Hey guys, just missed yee on skype the other day, arrived in Argentina yesterday were only 2 hours time difference from Ireland, tis feeling very close now!! Hows Sydney going? We found loads of Russians in Vietnam too, loads of the menus were in Vietnamese and Russian .. no english .. yee workin yet?