Dreamy Sanya

Taking an 18 hours bus ride to the famous Chinese vacation site was bearable only because I had the picture in my head of the beautiful sandy beaches and clear blue ocean. Luckily, the bus was a sleeping one, the first one I ever saw. The laying beds were tiny, so a tall person would have to crouch their legs, but I think that is better than sitting for 18 hours. The most interesting were the people and we to them as well, it is amazing how many friends one can make and as well how much one can learn from simply taking the local bus or train, instead of "high security" tourist buses and transportations. I wrote about the experience of the bus drive and its sustainable manner on thefairtraveller.org, if you want to read more about it. 

The Island of Hainan, which was our I final destination had two cities which we were planning on visiting: Haikou in the north and Sanya in the south. Haikou being the more eventful one, and Sanya as a tourist resort with beautiful beaches and a rainforest. Having only three days, we decided to take a long break in the sun and go for Sanya. The north offers a lot of beautiful biking sites, but after Gui Lin we needed a beach rest and the sun. If I had a couple more days on my own, I would bike through the rainforest close by, but the 35 degrees Celsius temperatures discouraged me and I spent most of the day's laying on the hot sand.

The history of this place is what intrigued me,with my latest found interest in the Far East cultures and the development. Although very much controlling, the government of China lets whole of the island of Hainan have a little bit more of the independency in decision making for the accomplishments in the WW2. Also, in language, there is a difference, while mandarin is standard and official as a language, most of people either don't know it or decide to communicate solely in their dialect. The people are very kind and responsive, but there is little possibility I conversations. We didn't stay in a to orient resort, where there is a possibility of people knowing how to speak English, but decided to go where the local life is, and experience their daily life.

 We arrived and the buses air conditioning gave us a false impression of a moderate temperature. It was 35 degrees with a sensation of 42 because the humidity. But the sun was so nice on my skin. In Hong Kong and Guilin it was raining all of the time and we hardly ever saw the sun, but here it was so nice and warm, it was amazing. We used the Airbnb service for the first time and struggle to find the apartment. The coordinates were wrong, we couldnt explain the directions to the taxi driver as he didn't speak any English. Roaming around in the heat, I was wondering whether this was a good idea, but suddenly, the host called us and he found us in the city. Word of advice: whenever in China, print out everything in Mandarin, so you can show it to the bus or the taxi driver.

I wonder how long it will take me to learn it, well, at least I have the pictures and stories of my class. It was in Sanya that I communicated the most my three and a half sentences of basic survival mandarin, and I realized I don't know how to say: " I would like it spicy, please.", such a shame. 

Sanya has the best sunsets, all three evening we spent walking along the beach and admiring the colors sun threw at its last moments. Take a look by yourselves:

Saying goodbye to this beautiful, relaxing place that gave us good food, relaxation and an escape from the Internet we very much needed. The very warm ocean gave us memorable swimming times and wonderful fish for our dinner. The people here gave us all of the smiles in the world, and understanding for our lack of talking. I thought of it as an uninteresting tourist resort, but in fact it is so much more.

Packing our bags, we are going to Tokyo next. Not with bus, nor train this time we are not going to be nature friendly, we are flying.

From Gui Lin to Yang Shuo

Late in the evening, we arrived to Gui Lin. The train station was a bit far from the town, so taking a cab was the best solution. But how to communicate the message? One semester of mandarin and I never got prepared for that, aaaand I had no wifi. Luckily for us, there was a Canadian trying to get to a business meeting in another city, so he asked if we would share a cab. We were happy to say yes. His Chinese was impeccable, but he had no luck, as he learned the dialect of Beijing. So, a nice Chinese student helped us set a deal and off we were. It was an excellent trip as the Canadian told us how he decided to live in China, for two years now, and some very amuseing stories. It felt like an instant friendship between al of us. Of course, we got invited to his girlfriend and his apartment in Beijing, counting second invite. The first one was to Shanghai, from the lovely girl that got my room for a month. Yeey, meeting people is so exciting.

We got off at the bus station and went to our hostel, which was just 500 meters away. We booked it two months ago, as for the visa to China, you need confirmed accommodation and the time duration of your stay, and it sounded nice, with its name Riverside Hostel. The pictures were nice and revues mentioned friendly staff.

Even though it was late, and it was my first time in China, the hunger beat the fear of unknown foods. It lured us out on the streets in search for some food. Hong Kong must have spoiled us as I didn't have to think of the words to say to either order or express myself, somebody would always understand English. The Cantonese dialect, spoken in Hong Kong, is pretty different than the mandarin one, which I started to learn six months ago, so Hong Kong never gave me the oportunity to shine. 

Yet, there we were, in Mainland China, where nobody spoke nothing but their local dialect of Mandarin, and I had to pull out my symbol cards. I remembered that couple of sentences, but couldn't speak them out in an understandable way (started revising my mandarin tomorrow), so we just pointed to the pictures and got CRABS. I was hoping for the big ones, but these were tiny ones still with shells, with almost no meat in them. So, ignorantly, I started to open them, eating that tiny amount of meet, and after a couple of them, I finally asked the waitress how to eat them. With a wondering expression she basically told me to put it in my mouth and chew. ALL OF IT? Hmm, tried it and it was super. Like chips, and with it, their local beer Liq, it was excellent. 

As we were munching on the crabs, I was looking down the street with all those tiny restaurants and buckets of living fish, vegetables and fruit, the terraces where everybody was smiling and inviting, young parents going out with their newborns in their hands and enjoying their late dinner. It was so natural, pleasant and full of life it just amazed me. Surely it can be a little too much at first, but I felt there is more to discover and I was looking forward to following days.

Later I had a hipohondriach thoughts about how I might be allergic to shell fish, and thoughts that I was going to die, but that just belongs to my craziness, not the surroundings. It is easy to get scared in a new bed, late at night.

The following day, we decided to take the boat on the river Li. We did not ask anybody for any info, just went to the reception. They told us it's a bit late, and we just missed the bunch that left a minute ago. We figured that the boat must go in the opposite direction as well, so we took a bus to Yang Shuo and for an hour and a half of heart attacks (the traffic rules are quite different in China, people over passing right, left, driving in opposite directions and then honking upsetingly when somebody goes towards them, demanding them to move, etc). We came to Yang Shou and sat in the first restaurant to get some info. We found out that no boat takes the passengers back up to Gui Lin, because the current is strong.

I started imagining factories that produce boats on a daily base just to send them to Yang Shou with tourists, and never returning again, so there must have been a graveyard where those boats go to, after serving their divine purpose and then piling them up, or just letting them find their way to the ocean, to serve to the poor fisherman... Aaaaah, that's why they do it. Anyways, back to reality, tHat seemed hardly likely, so we thought that they are trying to scam us, because conveniently, three of them had boats. We went to the docks and indeed, they are sending empty boats back to Gui Lin. Lesson number one: people are generally honest, we should believe them. 

For comfort, I went souvenir shopping on the street market. I asked for the prise of the cone hats, and it was too much. I said my thank yous and carried my own way, thinking the hats are too big to carry them all around the bus stations and airports as we had thousands of places to visit still. Not being good at negotiating (check out the Wild, wild Fez post on this blog), but still the lady wounded up running after me, pushing the prise down to an affordable one (for the Croatian standard), and I went to the bus carrying one large bag of cone hats. Lesson number two: the people are honest while bargaining, too. Anyway, I am glad I didn't get ripped of like in Morocco.

The city of Yang Shou is beautiful and one should definitely take that touristic boat and than stay over in the city for three days or so. As we already payed for the hostel, we had to stay in Gui Lin, but we took that boat the next day:

The river Li is amazing with those pointy heals surrounding it and bamboo rafts quietly roaming on it.

The city of Yang Shou is an interesting one, with lots of bike rental shops, the nature being very close. That made me feel very sorry because you define toy have to sleep here to explore the country side on a bike, or just go hiking alongside the river.

Just a couple more days in Gui Lin and off we go on a volcanic island of Hainan to soak in some sun. The plants here gave me an allergy, so I was sneezing all of the time, but the scenery really made up for it.