Weekend Trip to Hainan – Day 1 & 2

Over May 1^st holiday, I went to Hainan with 3 friends for a long weekend. Hainan is the smallest Chinese province and an island in the South Chinese Sea. It is also called the Hawaii of China because of its beautiful landscapes and beaches. For a long time, Hainan used to be an exile place for criminals and disgraced officials, whereas now it is a popular tourism destination, most of the tourists are Chinese or Russian. We went to Sanya which is the tourist city of the island. It is located at the Southern end of the big island.

Sanya City

We left Zhuhai on Saturday, April 30^th and remained in Sanya until the evening of May 3^rd. The airport in Zhuhai is really far from the city. It took us a while to get there but then everything went smoothly. Already after exiting the plane, we felt the tropical climate. The temperatures were always between 25 and 33 degrees and it was very humid but sunny! J

We stayed at the Palmena Apartments which were very close to the Sanya Bay. From our balcony we were able to see the blue ocean. The residence had a pool which was one of the reasons why we chose this place. The area was quiet but a little far from the city center. The apartment was clean and had 2 rooms and a kitchen.

Shortly after our arrival, we packed our towels and walked down to the beach. It wasn’t the cleanest beach and I got bitten by small mosquitos, so I didn’t want to stay there. After walking along the beach for bit, we soon realized that there was nothing – no restaurant, no café. So, we took a taxi to the downtown to find a place for lunch. We had sushi and enjoyed an ice-cream at the Sanya beach which was the most crowded beach we encountered during our time there.

Sanya Bay

On Saturday night, we headed downtown again but to the Dadonghai area to check out the Dolphin Sports Bar & Grill which was rated very high on TripAdvisor. We arrived there quite late for dinner, and because they had a special night, and it was already crowded, we decided to eat somewhere else first, and then go back for a couple of drinks. 

We came across a square where they set up different food stands with a sitting area in the middle, and a stage with live music. We got a noodle soup and a beer from one of the stands, and sat down close to the stage. After dinner we walked down to Dadonghai Bay Coastal Bar Street and enjoyed a Pina Colada at one of the bars there. It was already a little late but the place must be really nice in the evening.

Then, we went back to the Dolphin Sports Bar & Grill and enjoyed ourselves there for a few hours before taking a taxi back to our apartment.

Entrance of the Nanshan Park

Day 2

On our second day in Sanya, we took a taxi to see the main attraction which we saw already from the plane: the 108 meter tall Buddha statue which was situated in the Nanshan Culture Tourism Zone. It was a 45 minutes taxi ride, the bus ride would have taken us much longer.

Statue of Guan Yin Buddha

Apart from the statue and the Buddhist temple, the park – in the middle of the Nashan forest – has little to offer. Its purpose seems to be to attract tourists and to make money (entrance fee of 120RMB). But this is just my opinion…The statue on a man-made island has been added to the area recently and it reminds me of the statue of liberty.

Still, we spent a couple of hours in the park, because the park had a lot of green areas to relax and enjoy the great weather. Also, the sites were far from each other and we discovered the park by walking, so it took us a while to go to the temple which lay at the end of the park. There was a bus but for that they charged an additional 30 RMB.

Picture with other tourists...

We decided not to go to the second biggest attraction on the island, the Tianya Haijiao, because they charged again 100 RMB for two big rocks on the beach with some inscriptions. It is said that this is the “edge of the world” and hence, very popular among Chinese tourists. We did not really want to go to another crowded place and thought that this area was not worth the entrance fee. Instead, we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed the pool for a bit.

At night, we went to Casamia – an Italian place on Sanya Bay and enjoyed a pizza and a glass of wine on their terrace. Although we were full, we still went to the city center to have ice-cream at a coconut themed place and took pictures of the city lights. The city comes to live at night. You can see many locals on their motorbikes, sometimes an entire family on one bike. It seems to me that Asian people do not like the sun, so they stay inside during the day and go out as soon as the sun is down.