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Published: January 22nd 2010
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海南。Hainan
The trip started by us waking up at 5 in the morning because it would take 2 hours to get to the airport. But still there was time for McDonalds breakfast. At the airport everything was made super simple by the tour guides who took care of everything.
When we arrived in Hainan it was raining but still plenty hot. There we met our tour leader, he later became known as “the touch man”, such a touchy man, whenever he talked to us he always had to be touching someone, turned into quite a fun game.
On the bus we had the first of many many games of Uno and at our first stop I was finally able to buy a swim suit which had been such a mission for the last week. Unfortunately swimsuits are a little different in china, for guys trunks leaving a lot less to the imagination. And though I tried to find some normal shorts it just wasn’t an option.
Though the tour leader was always talking we had no idea what was going even though he would sometimes attempt to talk in English.
The whole trip, which was really just
a big tour of the Hainan island only cost 1500 RMB which is only $300 NZ, and included flights, accommodation, most meals and some attractions. Definitely the cheapest way to travel. We are no professional Chinese tour bus tourists. And though it took a while to understand we have now mastered the tour system that is waiting, leaving, arriving and following. Though we had Kate with us our very helpful interpreter with us we still had very little idea of where were supposed to be and when, somehow managing to be late every time we were going somewhere. I think the touch man would have been happy to leave us behind, but he was always very kind.
The first day’s attraction was a beach island, and was a bit of a shock. We had to get on little boats (this scared Kate plenty) and speed over to an island fully loaded with thousands of other Chinese tourists. It was here that we had our first sighting of the matching Hawaiian costume tourists; this definitely fits into my top ten most confusing things about china. The people looked so ridicules and it wasn’t just a few people wearing them so
Sanya Hotel
(some swimming lessons going on there) so many people had them on, all of them matching their friends or girlfriends.
From there we went to some kind of garden where they grew coffee and cocoa, not hugely exciting as we had to follow someone around talking in Chinese about the various plants for a few hours. From there we went to the first hotel, which was great because it had a swimming pool and spa and at this point the weather had gotten a heap better. We are in 海口- Haikou at this point here we just explored a little and tried the local street snacks, which were all seafood based and a lot more expensive than in Guangzhou (广州), but still tasty.
Day two the weather started fairly average again, but got better. Which was good as we were heading to another beach where Kate planned to learn to swim. So we were up at 7 am for the start of the tour (of course late but not the last ones thankfully) the beach was great, on another smaller island and swimming was plenty fun. Though a bit difficult to teach Kate to swim because of the waves and coral. From this island
we continued onto the next hotel in Sanya (I don’t know the Chinese for this one), here would spend the next two days so did some good exploring. Here the swimming pool was rather cold and no spa so again Kate was unable to learn to swim. Here we went on our first moto-taxi with a side cart, which is just a motorbike with a couple of tiny seats on the side, makes for a very scary ride even though they travel so slow, the drivers are very erratic and like to drive up the wrong side of the road.
Day three started again at 7 in the morning with the team going up a mountain where something apparently special happened with a deer turning in a girl and marrying a fisherman a long time ago. The highlight was definitely seeing my first wild monkeys. After this we went to yet another beach where Paris did some scuba diving and I decided I would go for some normal swimming. It was here that Kate finally managed to do some swimming, which was very impressive. Except thoroughly embarrassing for me as during the time the Kate was practising being underwater I
was the one that had to hold her floaties and had everyone looking at me thinking I was the whitey that could not swim. Here we found some normal Guangzhou street snacks, though they were heavily over priced, still a nice treat after six fish meals.
Next we were told we were going to a military museum, which I thought was brilliant as it all started with looking at tanks and bombs next we were told to go into a room where we would watch a show, sounds brilliant. Except instead it was just a big hour-long sales show, selling knives, special peeling gadgets and razors. This made us quite confused. But we got used to it after we were tricked a few more times on the tour. The exit for each attraction was always a pathway through heaps of shops we would have to follow before we could leave. I think it was these things that made the tour so cheap.
On day four we were allowed to sleep in as we didn’t have to leave until 12 so we decided to go and find a nice beach, while waiting for the taxi we got the usual
calling out from all the moto-taxi drivers, and Kate told us one driver would take us for 3 RMB (60 cents NZ) so we decided to go for it, the trip to the beach took half an hour which seemed like a very bad deal for the driver but he turned out to be a very nice man. At the beach he got terribly stuck but refused to let us help him and even said he would wait for us while we swam, so then on another 3 Yuan trip back he asked if we would like to come and meet his family and have lunch with him, but unfortunately we didn’t have time. We were back on the bus and off to another beach at the bottom most point of China.
Then back to big city Guangzhou, though it was sad leaving such a tropical place (even if the weather was mostly overcast) it’s nice to be home in the city, where though it’s such a crazy its really starting to feel normal.
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