Haikou 2

This monkey, Spanky, lived in a cage in the hostel courtyard. According to the label, he was orphaned when his mother was eaten at a restaurant. He was raised for the same fate, but fortunately a kind person rescued him. He has to be kept in captivity because he wouldn't survive in the wild. He looked morose, but he's alive and that's something. Humans can be horrid.

I decided to visit the old town where the markets and old shops are. I walked across the channel separating Haidian (海甸),  the island which is part of Haikou, from mainland and reached the old city markets. This was an empty shopping street due to exclusion barriers but it was a rare treat not to have to be on the alert against electric scooters.

I walked around the block, taking pictures, but had to look to find the entrances to the market lanes.

There were the usual dry and wet goods. Hainanese was spoken everywhere.

I found a food court where meals were paid with stored value card. There I had Wenchang Chicken. It was more or less what I expected. There was too much skin. I had a sticky rice dumpling with the chicken since it wasn't accompanied with broth flavoured rice as Hainanese Chicken from South East Asia would.

I had a look at the Haikou electronics centre. Electronics means in this case, mobile phones in the front of the ground floor and computers, mostly laptops, inside and on other floors. Interestingly prices were actually not that good compared with Australia.


Then another long walk to Carrefour where I did some shopping, then had a Chocolate "Cindy" at Maccas. Probaby due to 新地 (new earth) coming from Cantonese where it sounds like sundae.

In the evening I walked around the block looking for restaurant, found that a recommended one was actually inside a hotel with a long driveway. I would look out of place in that kind of place. Instead I went to the hawker strip and had lotus leaf rice, then an ice concoction which I couldn't finish so took remainder back to hostel. I talked to a German couple who had studied Classical Chinese before coming to China and told them about the food court in case they wanted to try Wenchang Chicken.