Bike trip

On my last day in my fancy hotel I rented a bike and ventured out into the countryside. I didn't make it all the way to Nanshan temple, but considering that I was riding a squeaky mono-gear bike I was rather proud of myself that I made it about 2/3 of the way, i.e. 10km over hills. Once I stopped to drink some water and some soldiers chatted me up, asking where I was going. They offered to take my bike on their car and drive me to Nanshan and I was hard-pressed explaining to them that the road was the goal :) Anyways, I'm glad I did it, but it was slightly disappointing.

sanya_biketrip

Hainan is much more densely populated than google-maps makes you believe. I had to go for about 7km before there were no more people at the road side shouting their "hello, hello" to me. And I have to tell you - Chinese country side is not exactly romantic. I mean, ok, I saw my first rice paddies close up and there were chicken, cows, goats and dogs running around, but when you see that the rice paddies are between two pretty heavily frequented (mostly by stinky motorbikes and busses) roads and the roadside is full of garbage, it kills the idyll a bit. And when the garbage starts to pile up too high, someone starts a little fire. I also passed this place with loud disco music and 可爱女孩 "ke ai nu hai" (lovely girls) written on the wall. Mh, don't think that was a chicken farm. But well, I did catch some nice glimpses of Hainan mountains...

That rural China is extremely poor is a well-publicized fact, but at least in Hainan it's only half true. I saw a mixture of houses from basically sheds (looking like a garage with one side open), over simple one-storey homes (add another room to the garage with some windows) to almost fancy 2-storey homes. In many cases it looked like people had started out with the simple sheds and had just recently finished building their new homes (it's also possible that the construction workers lived in the sheds, but that was not the impression I got). I don't know where this newfound wealth is coming from (probably tourism), it seemed to be a pretty recent development and the houses all had the same design. I got back just in time for sunset (this is the beach out at my hotel)

sanya_beach

And as promised - some pictures of my nice hotel that I have already left for the hostel closer to downtown... quite a downgrade, but at least it won't be so hard now to leave this tropical island for cold and wet Nanjing.

sanya_myhotel