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.
