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Published: January 30th 2009
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Palm trees and white sand beaches combined with lots of noise and the fact that it’s a little dirty reminds you that you are still in China despite being in paradise. This sums up our beach destination at Sanya. In fact, the staff at the Blue Sky Youth Hostel greet you with, "Welcome to Paradise!" Sanya is also a popular destination for vacationing Russians and the city is geared towards this population of tourists. This was easily determined when most often we were approached by vendors and hawkers speaking Russian first and then realizing we didn't understand, if they could, they spoke in Engish. An interesting mix of culture nonetheless.
The colourful, and matching floral outfits worn by Chinese love birds created a vibrant scenery at the beach. The main beach Dadonghai is beautiful. The water is not TOO cold with nice soft sand. It is clear on Dadonghai that there is a separation of the Russian side and the Chinese tourist side. The Russian side is a little more relaxed with beach bars and Russian soft rock music while a stroll east along the beach takes you to where the Chinese tour groups arrive, where throngs of people gather
on the beach or line up for tasty BBQ seafood, or a crash course in scuba. Either way everyone is enjoying themselves.
Sanya has a very friendly atmosphere, our first day on the beach we were chatted up by a local who ended up inviting us to his home for dinner and an opportunity for his son to practice English, although it didn't work out in the end.
After a day or so at the beach enjoying the sun and plenty of fresh fruit we decided to check out the nearby hot-springs. Since our hostel was devoid of any westerners, our plan was to check out the other hostel nearby. We wanted to get together with some other travellers to get a discount on tour packages. It worked out perfectly as almost immediately after asking the front desk about packages we met three Germans: Myron, Till and Maike. Mazi and Myron quickly exchanged introductions and Myron graciously invited us to the hot-springs. It was a relaxing night at a resort with 40 different springs, from hot herbal pools to a fish therapy pool all in a paradise setting with palm trees, tropical flowers and a fish pond. The
Butt Pants Boy
Tried to get a closer shot fish pool was a hit as we all tried to control hilarious laughter caused by the fish pecking at our skin. We had a great time with our new friends so after we caught a cab to the infamous seafood square in town for dinner.
Food in Hainan is worth mentioning, seafood is relatively inexpensive and it's delicious. We went to a place called Seafood Square, it is set up with around 200 round tables with pink plastic lawn chairs. There is blaring Karaoke, a small fish and vegetable market for choosing your dinner and the chef's are set up around the periphery with propane tanks and flaming woks. Quite the scene as you can imagine. When we got to the seafood square our Taxi driver rushed us in to his favourite chef where he was going to get us a "super deal", I think we were tired from the hot-springs because we didn't refuse. Anyways, we picked up some beers and enjoyed the dishes as they came. It was great having our friends with us not only for there company but because Till and Myron both spoke Mandarin. Myron and Till had to do a little negotiating at
Nantian Hot Springs
Beautiful and romantic setting. the end as we realized the bill was a special price. Towards the end, a couple of girls, maybe 6 or 7, going around to tables singing songs and playing little guitars was sad to see but they found us guys' rough faces pretty amusing.
For the next several days we hung out with our German friends hitting the beach and searching for the elusive Rainbow 2 bar. We went out to the Sanya strip and found a bar with a bouncing floor (literally a metal floor that flexed when you jumped on it so that you could head bang to the blaring beat with ease). We also spent the night playing the Chinese dice game.
Our next night, we met a fellow Canadian from Red Deer, of all places. Brandt, who had been working in China, took us to the Rainbow bar that we had tried to find the night earlier.
After several nights of partying and hangin out at the beach, our friends were off so this meant our Mandarin translators went too. We will miss you our German-adian friends!!!
Traveller's Tax - For those who do not particularly understand what we mean by
this term, we will simply break it down for you. Foreigners to vendors = BLING BLING $$$. Charging us more than the locals is an expected and daily expense for us. After 5 months on the road we are less fazed by it. At first we would argue about the principles and the rule of keeping things fair but those are thrown out the window when we are tired of arguing over the extra few Canadian dollars or cents it really is. You just have to remember that you never accept the asking price and after (usually) a short negotiation an agreeable price can be worked out.
However it came as a surprise when we were at the beach hoping to rent a Kayak when were duped out of 100 RMB (about 20 bucks). A man sitting at the beach with kayaks and sail boats offered us 100 RMB for a Kayak for an hour. We negotiated an hour and a half for the same price with the help of our friend Jessie, from the Eagles Hostel we were staying at. Geoff handed him the 100 RBM and the man asked us to pay a locker fee of 10RMB.
We were short 2 RMB for the locker and the man said fine. He walked us to the ticket booth. Then the vendor asked us for the 100 RMB fee for the ticket. We clearly stated the man who walked us up to the booth has already taken our money. HAHAHA...very funny. Well we did not think so at the time. The man smiles and says "NO you didn't give me the money - see my pockets are empty!" As you can tell by now, the situation is not going very far or well, our word verses his word. With the language barrier the conversation was even harder so we called our friend Jessie again to sort out the situation. We did not get the money back and this time the vendors not only thought we were full of bling bling $$$, probably laughing about how stupid we were to fall for the trick. Lesson Learned! 😊
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Jeff
non-member comment
Be careful
Vendors play tricks,it's so common to confronted with this situation in China.As you say,they often take advantage of language barrier to trick foreigners.Maybe you should take this extra expense into your travel budget.Never forget to bargain,it's better to have some trusted native friends with you.Good luck!