Last, but not least...

Sanya! I'm sure that doesn't excite too many (ok, any) of you, but it was a welcome relief to the cold of the mainland. If you're looking at a map of China, Sanya is on the very Southern tip of China's largest Southern Island, Hainan. That is all to say, it was warm! Well, at least warmer.

Sanya was our first visit to a true Chinese beach town. Qingdao is also a beach town, but currently it's almost May and we're lucky to have a day in the 70's without cold winds. Anyway, we were surprised to find that it didn't have as much Chinese influence as it did Russian! Every language took a backseat to Russian in Sanya. Our only guess is that it is one of the closest beach resort areas to Russia, so many Russians come and start businesses aimed toward their compatriot vacationers. There's also a good chance that there's some Russian mob operations going on down there.

There are lots of big name resorts in Sanya (Hilton, Marriot, Crowne Plaza, etc.), but unfortunately all of them are in a more remote area of the island, so we decided to stay in the more active part, dadonghai, or big east sea. There were plenty of resorts here, though most of them are Chinese franchises. We were glad to see that there was plenty going on in the city at night. There were a few very good restaurants in town, and we frequented them daily. We even got to enjoy pancakes for the first time in China, yummy! We could buy literally any type of firework along the coast, even the huge ones that aren't legal in the US. Below, Darbie's displaying some of her sparkler skillz.

But the preferred Chinese firecracker is the M-80. They buy huge threads of them and set them all of at once, destroying anyone's hearing within range. The greatest part is that they just leave the remnants wherever. Check out the ground on the picture below. That's a lot of firecrackers. And those wrappers were everywhere, especially since it was the last night of the Lunar New Year Celebration - Lantern Festival.



There isn't too much to report about Sanya, because we mostly just sat on the beach. It was a gorgeous beach, though I'm not sure you'd want to travel around the world for it.
Above is a picture from the hotel deck. You can see just how green the coastline is. Lots of hills and palm trees dot the coast. The hotel was in a great location. The beach is horseshoe-shaped, and we were right in the center of of it. Below is a picture at night looking in the opposite direction. Of course, a lot of neon is present. A good deal of our entertainment came from just observing the people around us, or sometimes trying not to. For instance, Russian women are determined to wear skimpy bathing suits, no matter their size. I guess the same can be sad for Russian men (speedos, banana hammocks, you get the idea). But, as always, the true entertainment was left to the Chinese. Beach appropriate wedding attire for photos. The couple changed into 3 or 4 different matching outfits. The photographer made them do some hilarious poses.Naked baby alert! Naked Chinese babies at the beach are only outnumbered by grains of sand. Even those babies fortunate enough to start with bathing suits usually strip down by the end of the day.

And our personal favorite, matching family beach outfits! This is supposedly a Chinese tradition, and just about every shop had multiple patterns to choose from. But, in reality, I guess it's just as dorky as the picture below.I don't advise drinking coconut milk, especially when warm. It tastes a lot like sweat, AND it's a natural laxative. We didn't discover that until later. The rest of our time was spent just walking around, listening to large Russians sing karaoke on the shore, or Chinese cover bands perform the latest Gwen Stefani song. All that fun, and we didn't even catch malaria (or at least we haven't so far)!

Well, that completes our trip. We flew back to Qingdao and were once again greeted by bitter cold and strong winds. It's gradually getting warmer, and perhaps in a few weeks, we'll be able to wear flip-flops again!

Miles from Hong Kong to Sanya: 450 miles

Miles from Sanya to Qingdao: 1,983 miles

Total Miles Traveled: 9, 845 miles

Stay tuned, we recently got back from a hellish trip to He(ll)nan province. And soon, we'll be getting you more familiar with our home city, Qingdao.

DB & KM