Haikou
Left Qiongzhong for a dull 3 hour bus trip to here,Haikou. Luckily the reindeer stayed off the road but are massing here, along with the Christmas trees and staff in the shops wearing their Santa hats. Christmas must be nearly here. I noticed, I think it was on the UK Yahoo website, one article titled something like “how to have an ethnically correct Christmas”, I didn’t read the article but it made me laugh thinking here in communist China how they seem more than happy to celebrate it and I am sure if it brought more tourist dollars in we would get the artifical snow as well. All good fun.
Quite like Haikou, a fair size city but friendly and easy going. Feels more like an SE Asian city or how I would expect a Chinese city to be, a bit rougher, dirtier with lots of street life. Most of the cities I have been to have been a bit sterile, sometimes I get the impression China wants to be a very large version of Singapore, everything organised, clean, efficient and controlled, here just seems a bit disorganised !. The old part of the city lively with lots of character and street life. Further out there is quite a pleasant undeveloped long sandy beach (but with the usual hyper development going on) even if yesterday bit wind swept and sea too rough for swimming. Not a lot going on but did get attacked by a loads of students ( in a nice way), which their teacher explained they have never seen a foreigner before. Seemed a bit strange given that Haikou and Hainan a long established tourist destination but then I’ve yet to see another foreigner here, no idea why.
Had hoped to take a boat from here and wake up to a sunrise in Halong Bay, Vietnam. As it is no boat so have to go the long way round, first an
overnight boat to Beihai, on the mainland, and then a bus to the border.
Tags: Travel
petefurlepa