HAINAN, IN A TELEGRAPHIC WAY

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Wow, the plane tickets are so cheap. From Nanning to Haioku only 300 RMB. I'd love to take a boat from Beihai or Zhanjiang, but if you don't have time, this is OK. The flight lasts only one hour…

Haikou: main city. We only passed it, really. It's like Nanning, »the construction site«, traffic, fog, well, at least it was now. If you are looking for local snacks, you'd rather find them in Wenchan, which is the cradle of Hainan culture.

Lingshui: small town next to the sea. Li national minority. Swimming? Well, possible, but… not so much. This is where the patterns start to appear: Hainan means greenery, unused fields, bays with functioning or, well, not functioning tourist projects.

Interesting: original settlers came here from Guangxi and Guangdong thousands of years ago; they've belonged to Baiyue tribes, so the cultural is similar, but not the same. One exception is chewing the betel nut, which might make your teeth red. (They do it constantly, and is just one sign of really really laid back living style). And the second used to be a habit of tattooing the bodies – whole bodies, even faces, men and women.

In Lingshui there's a story about a »calling«, emerging from a temple with a long silver needle. The called ones might be older or younger people; when called, they go to the temple, take the needle, stab it into one cheek and push it out on the other side. The people we talked to did not know the reasons, they only knew there's supposedly no pain, no blood, and the people in trance later can't really tell what happened. I can't help but imagine the whole being connected with tattooing, but, can't tell for sure…

Five fingers mountain or Wuzhishan: is one of places where it is easier to catch the original buildings or weaving of Li people.(No, they are not the only original settlers - there's also Miao and Hui, and of course, northerners; Hainan is a multiplicity of languages.)



Sun and Moon bay or Reyuewan: this is surfers winter resort. The constant waves might be meter or two meters high (at least that's what we've seen). The heat – in the middle of winter there's summer, short sleeves, can swim, coconuts everywhere. Breeze, sand.







Important notices: the whole island is really nicely connected by bullet trains which are relatively cheap. Sanya is the famous place, but yeah, it is possible to avoid the crowd (Sun and Moon bay is perfect). God, I'd love to see the northern western part which seams a bit of a blind spot in maps, and the places east of Sanya, archipelagos, which again seam quite unspoiled.





Want more.

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Comments

[Dancing Dave]

Hainan
I have not visited Hainan and until now only knew of Sanya. Definitely want more Peter.

[XiuQiu]

Yes
We've seen a lot for this short 5 days, but yeah, it was just enough to make me yearn for real "research". And I love the sea, so of course I'm going crazy... this bay was a lucky stroke. Not really good for swimming, the waves are too high, but still love it. Anyway, I'll probably separate this trips each into it's own blog and write more details.