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Published: January 11th 2011
And so our adventure begins, leaving the familiarity of Hong Kong and venturing into the unknown.
All the parents of friends here are very worried for us, so there is a lot of reassuring to be done that we will be ok!!
Hong Kong to Shenzhen by train and we were out into the hustle and bustle. The taxi driver offering a rather expensive ride to the airport was tempting, but Pete assured me we would be able to metro+bus it with the help of lonely planet and his android google maps function. Which worked a treat! He was far more onto it than me - I just followed like a sheep! But we made it fine :-)
At the airport we had time to kill - so our first taste of china KFC! they have lots of different options, I had a burger and corn on the cob, Pete a burger combo which included a corn/cucumber/carrot mayo salad rather than coleslaw- surprisingly good!!
After a flight with pristine polite red robed air hostesses, and a rude and impatient man next to me, we were in Haikou, Hainan, and with James and Macey and Macey's family.
Macey's
dad picked us up from the airport, and James quickly explained to us that his driving style, although crazy to us, was totally normal for Hainan! Here it seems that no rules apply- weaving in and out of lanes, driving on the line separating lanes, no need to give way when entering a lane of traffic, no indication, no lights on scooters at night, no helmets, no need to stop at traffic lights, no intersection control at even big intersections, driving along separate bike lanes, with the odd tree here and there is sometimes used to get past traffic jams, driving the wrong way is even ok!... so basically just toot and flash your lights when going through and intersection to make yourself as visible as possible!!
The number of scooters here is extreme, everyone seems to have one and they all
Dinner is another interesting activity!
We were surprised to discover that dinner here consists of going to the restaurant, where a range of live seafood, meat and vegetables are displayed for your selection. So we arrived and were taken straight to a streetside restaurant and Macey was keen to know what we wanted to eat and how
we wanted it done. Which is rather tricky, its pretty hard to decide when faced with endless possibilities!
Since that first night we have had two more nights at fancy restaurants which do the same thing, you go around and select what you think looks good and fresh, for different dishes. the staff follow you around with a little notepad and record what you want and how you want it!
Crab, shellfish, eel, fish, prawn, squid, snake, seaworm things, beef, pork, chicken, duck, goose, turtle, you name it they have it!
the food is very good though, we have enjoyed 3 out of 4 of the local delicacies - hainan chicken, delicious crab, and ... ummm... forgotten! i think the 3rd was a soup that had a kind of sea chicken (it looked like a seagull, its head was included in the soup, kept on looking at me!). the 4th which we will have later, is hainan lamb, which is black apparently... baba black sheep.
markets are always fun! we found some great little streets that went on forever. they were zoned into themes - meat, seafood, vegetables, dried goods, fruit, "meat candy", livestock, etc. see photos!
the man
grinding and delivering ice on his scooter was particularly cool!
over and out
-Hannah and Pete
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Sandy
non-member comment
More, more, more!
More blogging please! Sounds like a good start. Have fun and take care!!