Days 7+8 Hainan finally!!!

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So finally after a week of freezing we get to the island of Hainan just south of China, known as the Hawaii of China. Haikou is more a of a port town than a tourist town and it definitely wasn't as warm as we would've liked it. We met a nice Chinese girl named Sunny who encouraged us to travel down to Sanya with her the night before, but she was ready to go at 8 am. I was extremely annoyed when she poked me around 7 am after five hours of sleep to inform me that it was time to go, but instead we ignored her and slept in till about 10 or 11. The other lady we stayed in the room with was an older lady who was traveling through Australia and China on business. She was from London, and looking for fake designer dresses to sell at discounted costs. The rest of the morning was spent checking our email and making sure that we had the rest of our tickets taken care of for the trip. We set out to find an ATM and breakfast. We ate at a little fast food place that was surprisingly good, and after deciding there was absolutely nothing to do in this city, we decided to head to Sanya as soon as possible. We got back to the hostel where we booked bus tickets and we managed to find a hostel in Sanya for that night. Becaues of the vacation season, all we could find was a 9-bed room that was more expensive than the nice rooms we stayed at but at least it was a place to stay.

We hopped on a public bus to get to the bus station, and we had some issues transfering bus stops because unlike shanghai, there was nothing in English, but we managed to get on the right bus, and I definitely passed out on this ride too. We waited about an hour for our bus, so we killed the time by trying different Chinese snacks that they sold there (all of which sucked). We were the first ones on the bus so we ran to the back to get three seats together, until an attendant informed us that we had assigned seats (whoops). The ride to Sanya was about three hours and surprisingly rainy. Meanwhile, we had a Jackie Chan marathon played at full volume for our enjoyment the entire ride there. We got into Sanya that evening where we were dropped off somewhere random by our bus. By this time, we were clever enough to ask our hostel to send us the directions in Chinese characters so we would actually get to the right place, so we hailed a taxi and headed to the part of town called DaDonghai, where our Blue Sky International Youth hostel was located. Even with the directions, we had a hard time finding it, so the owner had to come out to the main road to meet us. He was Chinese but his English was awesome, so he kept cracking jokes the entire time. We got the paper work taken care of and I signed the we-will-not-destroy-property agreement and he said "This means that you are my slave." haha put our valuables in lockers downstairs and then hiked up five floors to our room. When we got there, most of our roommates were there. There was one Asian man in particular that stood out. He was completely naked except for a speedo and he was lying there with his legs spread scratching himself!!!!! His eyes were squinty so it was hard to tell if he was looking at us but it sure looked like he was!! There was another group of Chinese who appeared to be ignoring him. They were gabbering in Chinese but I managed to catch that they were talking about what nationality they thought I was. Finally some guy asked in English and I told him I was American, not British like they thought I was haha.

Fito, Elle and I changed into some lighter clothes (Sanya was warm!) and headed out to the beach. We bought some fireworks that turned out to be duds and got scared to death by people lighting them right next to us. After exploring the area for a while, it started to rain so we decided to participate in an indoor activity. We asked our hostel owner where people go on the weekends and he recommended Bar 88. We took a taxi and ended up on a road full of bars and ended up going to one called M7. It was like something from a movie! Literally as we walked through the crowd, every head turned to stare at us. Elle and I went to the bathroom and as soon as we came out, a guy grabbed us and brought us up to VIP (free fruit plates!!) We met the owners and managers of the club and one of them offered me a job as an usher. Eventually Fito found us and joined us ( the owners were giving him free drinks which he seemed to enjoy). I told one of the owners that I wanted the club to play Lady Gaga (popstar in the states) but instead he ran off and got me a pina colada (sooo fresh!) After maybe an hour we headed back to the hostel where Fito ran into Sunny in the lobby. She ended up teaching him some Chinese, all of which he forgot the next morning.

The next day Elinor and I wake up early to go get train tickets back to Guanzhou on Sunday so we could catch our flight back to Shanghai on Monday. Definitely easier said than done. We caught a ride on an open-coach bike that seats about three to the ticket station in the city. After more communication issues, they managed to tell us that we were in the wrong place. We called our hostel who told us to hop on bus 4, take it all the way to the end which was the train station. We did as we were told for a good 40 mins (fell asleep on this bus too) and waited in line for an hour to get our train tickets. Awesome news! They didn't have any left for sunday or monday, and we couldn't leave later because we had already purchased our plane tix to fly out Monday night. So we hopped back on the bus to go back to the city. Back at our hostel, we ran into Fito who had spent the morning enjoying the beach. We got directions to the bus station and grabbed another open cab to take us there. Finally, after waiting in line for half an hour, we got our ridiculously expensive (400 kuai!) bus tix. We grabbed another open cab and in my negotiation skills I worked her down to 15 kuai when we had previously payed twenty. She dropped us off at our hostel, we payed her the 15 and left, because the other group had just arrived at our hostel and we ran into Meaghan and Amanda heading off to catch a cab to the bus station to buy their tix. Apparently, the open cab lady wanted 20 not 15, although I clearly said 15 (although in all honesty my Chinese isn't that great) She flipped her little wagon around and immediately started yelling at us in Chinese. I had no idea what she was yelling, but i said "15 kuai, not 20!" to which she just got more upset. I had made the mistake of showing her that I had more money in my pocket and I think she got a little greedy. It turned into an all-out yelling match, and I just ended up yelling at her in English, as did Amanda. Finally, after giving up on me, she ran ahead to Elinor who handed her a 1. The lady didn't like this either so she took the one and just kept yelling. Finally Elinor told me that she didn't have any money but would pay me back if I payed the lady. I was extremely annoyed at this point because i had clearly said 15. So finally I took 2 kuai out of my wallet and asked her if it would be ok. She still was being a raging annoying Chinese lady but she took the money. As I turned to leave I guess she made a move to hit me or do some sort of weird Chinese curse on me or something so Elinor started yelling at her and we told her she was "bu hao" (not good ) haha.

We met up with the boys from the other group and let them put their stuff in our hostel room (they were camping on the beach that night and had nowhere to put their stuff. Then we headed out to the beach to soak up the sun. It was around 4 and starting to get a little cool by this point, but it was still pretty nice so we hung out on the beach (you find weird stuff floating around in Chinese water, including dead fish) and we played football with a coconut. Eventually, we ended up playing volleyball for a few hours with some random Chinese and some Indians. At first the Chinese kids wouldn't pass to us, we were like the fat kids in gym class, but eventually we got used to the weird Chinese version of volleyball and had a lot of fun (I was very sandy from diving all over the place) Some of the other girls were getting hungry to they went to go find a restaurant while Alex and I went to go grab some clothes cuz ours were all wet from football. We met everyone at dinner outside the hostel and we decided to take the new group to M7. We stopped at "sky" bar, where Alex took a flaming shot!! We hung out there for a while, where we saw a very young Chinese girl in the bar, then headed to bar street. Same as the night before, all the Chinese people in the club wanted to meet us and they were shaking the boys hands and handing them drinks. They brought us all up to VIP, and the random Chinese owners were absolutely hysterical. Apparently one guy was trying to sell the boys prostitutes!! When they said no, the guy asked if they would like a male prostitute!! Scary at first but pretty hysterical looking back at it. We went back to the hostel and we went to bed while the other group got their stuf, I can only imagine how fun it was to set up their tent in the middle of the night!!

Sorry for lack of pics, we were having too much fun to take many, but I know some people have some I can snag soon!

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