Friday, February 22, 2013
Baoa, Hainan Island, China
We left
Baoting and caught the fast train to Boao, our next destination. The town is on
the shores of the South China Sea and is yet one more place in Hainan where
development is at a rapid rate. It is the permanent site of a huge Asian forum
every year and obviously a lot of money comes into the city from that.
We
negotiated our way to the hostel we were booked into. This turned out to be in
a very old quaint building full of old photos, memorabilia and furniture and is
attached to a little coffee shop which they also run.
We found a
KFC look-a-like place and gratefully ate dinner there which enabled us to avoid
the dining experience. Breakfast was at a local restaurant where the options
were a doughy bun or noodles swimming in broth. We subsequently found yoghurt
sold at the nearby grocery store and had that with fruit—a much better option.
We rented bicycles
for the day as finally we felt we could compete with the traffic. As we left
the city we saw a parking lot filled with tourist buses and after investigating
found that they were dressing busloads of people into life jackets and putting
them on plastic chairs on rafts which were connected together and pulled into
the river for a circle ride. We continue to be astonished at what local
tourists find fun!!!
We, on the
other hand continued to bike through the small lanes which wind their way
through the countryside with almost no traffic so it was lovely to bike through
little villages.
People were
tending the amazing crops of almost all kinds of vegetables which grow in
abundance and the inevitable rice paddies. As we passed people they smiled and
responded to our greeting of Nihau—our language skills are really limited!!
One stop
was at a heritage house of one of the original setters and the warren of houses
and buildings amazed us. In true Asian fashion families just build onto
existing buildings as they expand.
At one
village it was obvious that several families were helping build a house and we
stopped to watch for a while. As they saw us they beckoned us to join them and
have tea and cookies. Of course they spoke no English but it was one of those
special moments in foreign travel where a connection is made and everyone
enjoys the experience. The old ladies insisted we sat with them out of the sun
and were happy for us to take photos. As we departed we gave balloons which we
carry for such occasions to the children nearby—international relations could
be improved with more of these meetings with just regular people having no
hidden agendas.
We hired Mr
Cai for the following day to take us to Le Cheng Island to an important Buddhist
Temple in his motorized tuk tuk and enjoyed driving more of the rural lanes.
Our last day we visited the huge temple close to the town and compared the happy fat Buddha's to the slender Myanmar Buddha's--not sure of the significance.
Our last day we visited the huge temple close to the town and compared the happy fat Buddha's to the slender Myanmar Buddha's--not sure of the significance.
The
Australian Open tennis tournament was on and we had watched the first few games
in Baoting and after asking at the hostel they took us into their coffee shop
where they set up the TV and we watched the rest of the games with Chinese
commentary—it was pretty cool.
We had
intended travelling by night train to make our way back to Hong Kong but upon
enquiry found that everything was booking up fast and prices were escalating. It
was the start of the 40 day celebration of Chinese New Year and we feared being
stranded somewhere. We cut our time short in China and booked a flight from
Sanya to Hong Kong where we would spend 10 days before our flight to Auckland,
New Zealand. We caught the fast train back to Sanya which travels quietly and smoothly at almost 200km an hour--painless!!
Although we
had not enjoyed the first part of our travels in the busy cities of Hainan the
last part in the smaller centres were more enjoyable despite the language
issues and in retrospect we were happy to have experienced China.
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