Time to get a move on. Dadonghai was starting to look tacky and I suspected not representative of Hainan. I found a great deal on a hotel room in Boao through an Internet discounter as it was the slow season.
Late last year, Hainan's high speed train came into operation. It links Sanya with Haikou at speeds of up to 250km/h making the trip in 1-½ hours. Fares are ridiculously cheap, for me at least, about 88RMB or about 13AUD for the journey. Today I would only be going as far as Qionghai (琼海) where I would catch local transport to the seaside town of Boao (博鳌).
I had a breakfast of fried rice at the same restaurant as yesterday. I wanted fried noodles but they misheard me. Then a fried dough stick and soy milk at the other stall. I also got some money from the ATM to pay the hotel.
Chris had told that bus 4 terminated at the rail station but would take nearly an hour. This proved to be so, I got a city tour of Sanya for the cost of 5RMB.
Following a tip, I didn't go to the ticket counters but bought my ticket from a vending machine, which had English instructions, though I could have coped with the Chinese ones. Some brave locals were also dipping their toes into automation.
Here you see the aerodynamic shape of the nose.
The train went past lush green rice fields and small landholdings.
Only the speedometer gave any hint that we were travelling that fast. Everything was smooth and I almost fell asleep. (If you are picky, this was actually taken on the next leg, as I didn't get a good shot on the first leg.)
On arrival at Qionghai, I hopped onto the shuttle to the town, as explained on the web. The driver told me when we reached the bus station. No Boao on the signboards so I asked a ticket clerk and she told me to catch it on the street outside. The bus was packed with people returing to Boao and thereabouts. It was raining by the time the trip ended. I had lunch in a noodle shop. At 5RMB, the wonton noodle was passable. The lady told me that the Yudaiwan (玉带湾) Hotel was just up the road. And so it was; lucky I didn't hail a taxi even if I did get a bit wet.
In the evening I went down to use the hotel pool but the main pool was too cold. Howerver there was a hot spring pool.
Afterwards a walk on the beach. It was a rough sea with big waves roiling the water. Sea swimming was not recommended anyway. Lots more resort hotels were being constructed nearby.
After a nap I walked to the town for dinner, lucky the hotel is near the town centre. It was raining and cold so I wore a jacket and pulled the hood over my head. Lights were dimmer than in a large city. You can judge the affluence of an area by how willing they are to use light.
I had a dinner of Hakka Tofu and Four Corner Beans. It was a bit too salty and oily, which seemed to be the norm for China, as that also happened in Sichuan in a previous trip. I bought some bananas from a hawker and snacks from a provision store and retreated to my room.
I had to get out of Dadonghai and see more of Sanya. David, a Hungarian in the same dorm, suggested renting a couple of bicycles. Chris, the hostel owner, said he had no working bikes but could tell us where to rent them. It seems you can also rent electric bicycles, useful for uphill stretches. However when day broke, David was still asleep and I was hungry so I went looking for breakfast.
Early morning is the best time in Chinese cities. There was a cool light breeze. The streets were clean because the sweepers had just been. The crowds had not started and people on the street were mostly workers starting their day.
I found a small family restaurant in a side lane and had a steamer of jiaozhi, like lunch yesterday. This was accompanied by a cup of fresh soy milk from another stall.
On return to the hostel David was up. I said I would be taking the bus to Yalong Bay since the day was windy and overcast and it might rain. I found the service easily and 40 minutes later we reached the end of the route.
Yalong Bay (亚龙湾) is occupied by large resorts who have staked out various sections of the beach front. There is a public section where water sports and excursions to view the reef are offered. The crowds were thick here but the only people swimming was a Caucasian and an Asian couple, all the other people just posed at the water's edge. I walked all the way to the end of the beach until a military no trespass sign.
Lunch was a cob of corn, a stick of grilled squid, some boiled groundnuts and a handful of fresh jackfruit from the hawker stalls in the car park.
The hawker women wore scarfs, maybe they belonged to a minority, non-Han ethnic group in Hainan. They seemed curt and grumpy, maybe they still were sore about the Hans encroaching on their island all those centuries ago. Or they were tired of tourists asking the same questions all day.
Then I rode the bus back to Dadonghai and looked at a department store selling luxury goods. Customers were very thin on the ground; it was the off-season. I got a bottle of Coke Zero and a doughnut. I couldn't find a good coffee in Dadonghai. Imported foods like chocolate and foreign biscuits are expensive.
Back at the hostel I napped until evening then took a walk up the hill towards Luhuitou (Deer Looking Back) Hill. I never got there, it was further than I thought, but I got part way up the hill. Unfortunately views of the bay were obscured by the hotels.
David and I went for dinner in the same lane where I had breakfast and we had some meat BBQ sticks, and roasted eggplants. They were tasty but sauce was too liberally applied for my taste. In general I found salt overused in cooking here. David taught English in Shanghai and was taking a break. We talked about the futures of Russia and China.
What I knew about Hainan Island before this trip were only a handful of facts: Hainan is the southernmost you can go in China. Hainanese people speak a strange dialect which is so different from Cantonese and Mandarin that I cannot understand it. Hainanese Chicken is a famous dish in South East Asia.
Its far-flung location made it a place of exile for out of favour officials in ancient days. You might think what a great place to have a holiday but in those days, it was rough being away from the comforts of Chinese civilisation. Communication was slow, so you were out of touch with any family you had to part with. As late as mid last century it was still a place of exile. This poignant story tells of a woman exiled for being the wife of an official on the wrong side when the communists won, who then made a new life at the End of the Earth (天涯海角). Her only regret was that she had not the chance to learn to waltz.
Hainan was also where many Chinese emmigrated to South East Asia early last century. The town they embarked from gives its name to the dish Wenchang Chicken, the forerunner of Hainanese Chicken which came into its present form in South East Asia.
The weather in Hainan never gets too cold. China is trying to promote it as the Chinese Hawaii. Hence the flurry of construction and promotion of property sales and timesharing. However it is subject to humid weather, heavy rains and typhoons so you have to come in the right season. I figured late March and early April would be still cool and pleasant.
I wondered if there was any significance to Dragonair playing a version of 500 Miles on the Chinese Qin as we landed. I was certainly further away that that from home. Sanya's (三亚) airport looked modern but the plane did not taxi to a skybridge but delivered us to a bus which drove to an older building. This turned out to be the international terminal and the newer, bigger one was the domestic terminal. Said something about the relative volumes of traffic.
Here I encountered the first delay, a group of Russian tourists waiting to get their visas. Hainan (海南) is one of a few places in China that can issue a visa on arrival. There was no discipline; everybody crowded around the counter. It's a wonder the clerks worked through all the applications as fast as they did, as they also had to take digital portraits in addition to the passport photo attached to the form. Surprisingly they were put out when I paid the fee in 160RMB instead of 20USD, because they had to make change for me. It took an hour to get a visa. I suppose it saved me time sending my passport to the Sydney consulate and a bit of money.
Next hurdle was to find bus 8 to Dadonghai (大东海). There was no sign of any public transport outside the terminal. I asked and people pointed me in the direction of the domestic terminal, saying you can't miss it. At the domestic terminal I saw a commercial shuttle service counter and hopped onto the minibus. After a while, one of the girls on the bus, who was probably a worker getting a lift home, said this bus might not leave for a while, maybe you might want to try the public bus. Ah, so that's what the sign Public Bus 100m was about. Road traffic was very quiet but buses were frequent. Unfortunately they wanted exact change, 5RMB, so I had to first buy a drink from a hawker to get change. Change seemed hard to come by here.
The bus picked up passengers going through the city and got rather crowded. Fortunately I had no problems spotting my stop and the backpacker hostel.
Municipal facilities and roads were in good condition, though dusty due to construction, more on that later. Coconut palms were everywhere as you would expect of a subtropical island. The biggest surprise is that Cyrillic is on signs everywhere in Sanya and almost any Cacausian you see is probably Russian. This is because Sanya has been a stomping ground for Russians for many years. The businesses here are the usual ones: restaurants (I smiled when I saw the Cyrillic PECTOPAH signs), bars, gift shops (pearls, fabrics, tourist bric-a-brac), fruit stalls, and of course agencies selling timeshare accommodation. Everybody seemed to be selling something. Women balancing twin baskets of mangos prowl the streets. That evening I saw two smartly dressed kids, a boy and possibly his sister carrying a guitar selling roses in a restaurant.
After freshening up, I went to the beach. It is very long but the water is a murky though ok to swim in. But the Chinese were just dipping their feet. Chinese in general are not very fond of sea swimming. It was an overcast day, but plesantly cool at 20C with breezes.
Fruits found here include all the usual tropical ones, e.g.: jackfruit, coconut, mango, pineapple, watermelon, rambutan, dragon fruit, guava, carambola and of course banana. Some are imported, for example the durians come from Thailand. I didn't want get messy with fresh jackfruit, fragrant though it was, so I bought a bag of jackfruit chips which were adequate.
In the evening I showered then looked for a dinner place. The problems were that I first had to decode the menus and even a familiar dish might not be cooked the way I was used to. Sichuan style cooking seemed popular, but not with me. Eventually I let myself be talked into a dish of stir-fried pippies with a dish of lettuce in oyster sauce. It was ok, though the pippies had a bit of grit. It came up to 64RMB, less than $10, but I felt I could have found a better or cheaper dinner if I had tried harder. I also suspect I got charged for extras e.g. the greeter, the use of the shrink wrapped utensils. I wished my sister were here, she would interrogate the waiters and know what to order and we would have a slap up feed, even if it might cost more.
I was worried that I had come too late in the spring and it would be too warm on Hainan, but the night air was cool as I wandered the waterfront, looking at the tourist establishments. The room had an aircon but it was never needed.
Was my home not wanting to see me again, I wondered as I made my preparations. It was uncanny, I had come to exactly the end of a tube of toothpaste, various perishable foods and so forth. I hoped it was just good planning.
Fortunately the rain eased so I didn't have to take an unloved umbrella with broken ribs to discard as soon as I reached the cover of the train station. Airports are lugubrious places. I think it is all the sad emotional energy from people parting. That's why the shops are extra cheerful, to distract people with bling.
The departure gate was too small and the queue overflowed into the corridor. I had a seat behind a bulkhead which gave me extra leg room. Air travel is a necessary evil. A music player, a good book, eye shades and the ability to sleep sitting ameliorate the discomfort.
We arrived in HK 10 minutes ahead of schedule at 0450, but fortunately by my body clock this was 0750. I had a pretty decent breakfast of congee on the Cathay Pacific flight. I would have to wait for the airport restaurants to open before I could eat again. Hopefully there would be enough time before my connecting flight at 0935. I found a power point and got onto the free airport WiFi.
Late last year, Hainan's high speed train came into operation. It links Sanya with Haikou at speeds of up to 250km/h making the trip in 1-½ hours. Fares are ridiculously cheap, for me at least, about 88RMB or about 13AUD for the journey. Today I would only be going as far as Qionghai (琼海) where I would catch local transport to the seaside town of Boao (博鳌).
I had a breakfast of fried rice at the same restaurant as yesterday. I wanted fried noodles but they misheard me. Then a fried dough stick and soy milk at the other stall. I also got some money from the ATM to pay the hotel.
Following a tip, I didn't go to the ticket counters but bought my ticket from a vending machine, which had English instructions, though I could have coped with the Chinese ones. Some brave locals were also dipping their toes into automation.
Here you see the aerodynamic shape of the nose.
The train went past lush green rice fields and small landholdings.
Only the speedometer gave any hint that we were travelling that fast. Everything was smooth and I almost fell asleep. (If you are picky, this was actually taken on the next leg, as I didn't get a good shot on the first leg.)
On arrival at Qionghai, I hopped onto the shuttle to the town, as explained on the web. The driver told me when we reached the bus station. No Boao on the signboards so I asked a ticket clerk and she told me to catch it on the street outside. The bus was packed with people returing to Boao and thereabouts. It was raining by the time the trip ended. I had lunch in a noodle shop. At 5RMB, the wonton noodle was passable. The lady told me that the Yudaiwan (玉带湾) Hotel was just up the road. And so it was; lucky I didn't hail a taxi even if I did get a bit wet.
In the evening I went down to use the hotel pool but the main pool was too cold. Howerver there was a hot spring pool.
Afterwards a walk on the beach. It was a rough sea with big waves roiling the water. Sea swimming was not recommended anyway. Lots more resort hotels were being constructed nearby.
After a nap I walked to the town for dinner, lucky the hotel is near the town centre. It was raining and cold so I wore a jacket and pulled the hood over my head. Lights were dimmer than in a large city. You can judge the affluence of an area by how willing they are to use light.
