Day 3
On Monday,
we just wanted to spend a day at the beach. We decided to go to Haitang Bay, because we read that it
wasn’t very crowded. The beach is over 45 kilometers long and it took as an
hour taxi ride to get there. We went somewhere close to the new Duty Free Mall,
because we thought that there must be some places to eat around as well. But
no. The mall was surrounded by construction sites and hardly anything else. It
seemed that they were building two huge resorts to attract more people to the
mall in which you can find Western luxury and premium brands.
We still
went to the beach and it was beautiful. There was literally no one. We went
swimming and enjoyed the great weather. After a while we left to go to the more
popular place which wasn’t completely deserted.
For dinner
we went to a nearby street food restaurant that offered seafood, because Hainan
is known for its seafood. On the side of the restaurant they had different
aquariums with fish, crabs, shells and other seafood stuff. Most of them were
still alive. We told the waitress that we wanted some mussels, oysters and a
fish. We chose the fish we wanted and she took it out of the aquarium with a
net. Before I realized what she was doing, she smashed the net with the fish
inside on the ground, so the fish died.
We sat down
on one of the tables and chose the rest of the food to share. There was a sticky
coconut rice dish that I wanted to order, because it is also a specialty of
Hainan. Soon, one after the other dish arrived and we started eating. We
ordered so much that we were hardly able to finish it all but it was delicious.
My favorite were the orange mussels and the spicy bean dish. After dinner, we
walked around for a bit and bought two scarfs that we could use for the beach.
Day 4
On our last
day, we got up a little earlier and visited a pearl museum. In Hainan or in the
South Sea they cultivate and breed many seawater pearls, white and black ones,
because the temperature of the sea is ideal.
It was
interesting to learn something about pearls. I didn’t know anything about them
expect that Chanel loved them and that they are quite expensive. After the
museum they had a big shop where they sold any kind of pearl jewelry and skin care
products with pearl powder. Pearl powder is used by Chinese women to maintain
beauty and youth. It’s supposed to whiten your skin – a reason why I did not
buy any. J
Later, we
took a taxi to Yalong Bay which is a 7 kilometer beach, where all the expensive
resorts are located. We had coffee and a snack at the Starbucks and looked at
the few shops they had in that area. Then we headed down to the beach and sat
under some trees that didn’t belong to any hotels. It was too hot for being in
the sun. The waves were a bit high but we could still swim in designated areas.
The water was almost crystal clear. No wonder this is the most popular beach in
Sanya. It was the perfect place to spend our last day in Hainan. I got an
ice-cream and a coconut from one of the street vendors. Unfortunately, the milk
of the coconut had gone off, so I wanted to exchange it. When my Chinese friend
asked him to do so, he answered (without tasting it) that the coconut is good
and she probably never had a coconut before. Well, the street vendors are
obviously not part of the 5-star resorts.
Before we
left to go back to the apartment, we had some dinner in the restaurant/shopping
area. The restaurant we chose, offered steaks and other western dishes. The
images of the menu looked delicious. What they served, though, was a little
disappointing. The steaks tasted more like burger meet. I definitely would not
recommend this restaurant. We got some soft ice which made us happy again. Then
we went back to the apartment, jumped in the pool to get rid of all the sand
and tried to get a taxi to the airport (3 taxi drivers refused to take us,
because the airport was close, so they didn’t want to use the taxi meter). The
flight back to Zhuhai was less pleasant but this couldn’t change that we spent
a great weekend in one of China’s most beautiful places.
Overall,
the landscape and scenery in Hainan are beautiful. However, the region is
definitely still being developed. There are many construction sites although it
seems like there are already plenty of resorts and hotels, and a lot of them were
half empty. Although it is just one city, it is really big and for a tourism
destination the infrastructure is not sufficient. Only Yalong Bay has a
shopping area with restaurants. But, directly at that beach there are no cafés
which is too bad, so picnic is the solution. ;) And there is much else to do
than going to the beach, for example we could have visited the rainforest or one
of the small islands if we had spent some more days there.
No comments:
Post a Comment