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Greetings, and apologies for taking so long to post our next blog! We stayed fairly low-key leading up to our latest vacation. We had May 1st-6th off from teaching for China’s May Day holiday, so we flew off to Sanya. Sanya is located on Hainan Island, which is China's southern most province. It is home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the country and it is known as China's Hawaii.
We started our journey late Monday night after Nick and I were both done teaching. We had a rough start to our vacation with a freak downpour making it impossible to catch a cab to the train station, but eventually made it just in time. Once we got to Shanghai, we had to wait overnight for our flight to leave early Tuesday morning. We flew out of Shanghai's smaller airport, which actually shuts down overnight. Nick and I both got a kick out of the fact that when they shut down the airport, the McDonald's down the street is the official staging area for passengers waiting to fly out the next morning.
We arrived in Sanya late Tuesday morning to stifling heat and humidity. Our bodies struggled
to get adjusted as we made our way to our hostel, but we were pleased to learn the beach was only a five-minute walk down the street. After a quick check in, we threw on our swim gear and made for the ocean. Being able to swim at a beach is somewhat of a foreign concept to me, and Nick was born to live in a tropical climate, so we were both pretty content just camping out on the beach.
The next few days were a blur of sun, warm water, eating and drinking (as any vacation should be, right?). We accidently walked onto a nudist beach, ate sea urchins and body surfed with the locals. The interesting thing about Sanya, is that for whatever reason, it is a HUGE Russian tourist destination. We were surprised when we arrived just how Russian the city is. Everywhere you look, there is Cyrillic writing and the Chinese vendors have perfect Russian. We definitely felt out of place being tourists but not Russian.
Another thing about Sanya is the abundance of fresh fruit and seafood. Our hostel had a big crate of free, fresh mangos every morning
for their guests. Everywhere you looked, there were street vendors selling the island’s fresh fruit for next to nothing. One of my favorites was the big mounds of coconuts piled on street corners. The vendors take a machete to the fruit, chop off the top, stick a straw in it and voila! Coconut water!
Our third night in Sanya, we ran into some American’s who were also teaching in China and spending their week off on Hainan. They were raving about an amazing seafood experience they had had, and invited us out for lunch the next day. That next afternoon, we followed their directions about 10 minutes from our hostel which led us to three big hangars located on the side of a street. In each of these hangars were scores of tanks with any kind of live sea animal you could imagine. We followed our new friend’s lead and picked out our feast. You walk along the tanks and point to what you want and tell them how many. After they tally up the cost, you pay for the food you have picked out. Your chef then carries the still-alive food to his “station” and while
you sit at your table chatting away, he is busy cooking up a treasure trove of seafood. The end result is nirvana. We watched as our chef delivered dish after dish: prawns, scallops, fish, crab…. We were convinced by our new friends to order the sea urchins. They promised they taste just like egg, and they do. All in all, to say it was an amazing experience doesn’t do it justice.
For our last full day, we took the two-hour bullet train to the island’s northern most city. Haikou is the capital and biggest city and was what we heard to be one of the cleanest cities in China. We are still trying to figure out where that fact came from… While still tropical, Haikou definitely had more of a port city feel to it. It is clear Haikou doesn’t have the tourist money that Sanya has as it was one of the more impoverished cities we have been to. It was heartbreaking to see some of the poverty we did, but a reminder that our province of Jiangsu where we teach is one of the wealthiest areas in China and definitely the exception. Despite the poverty,
the city still had a definite vibe to it and beautiful architecture.
We were sad to leave behind our tropical paradise, but the weather has definitely changed here in China. I think we are moving quickly into summer and this excursion has prepared us for what China’s humid summer will bring in the next few months. We are spending this weekend back home getting caught up with school and cleaning. Nick’s parents will be here in less than a month, and before we know it, the school year will be over!
Until next time,
Lauren
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ElyseandPete
Wanderlusting Winter
Hainan
Looks like a great vacation...love the mojito for breakfast! See you in a week.