A Blast of Wind in your Ear

Last email we were just on our way to Hainan Island for Xmas and New Years…we had our fill of cold weather and just wanted to be somewhere that the sun would be shining…we travelled by train to Haikou, the capital city on the island..the train itself even went on the ferry which was kinda mad. It took 3 hours for the train to be separated into 4 sections and parked up on the train.. we arrived and it was not exactly warm..we were starving as well with the train taking 6 hours longer than scheduled to make the trip…but it was all good…sunshine was in front of us..

We staying in Haikou for a night and then left for SanYa in the south. How we got there was weird..we went to the bus station where this guy met us outside and asked if we wanted to go to SanYa..we did so we followed him…he led us to a bus, charged us half the price of a normal ticket..and we hopped on the bus…it left a couple of minutes later…the bus was packed with people sitting on stools down the middle of the bus..the 3.5 hour journey took almost 6 hours…I guess that’s what we get for going on the local rather than the proper bus..

SanYa rained for the first 8 days we were there…it was not the best but then the sun came out and it was magic..it was nice to be able to lie on the beach for a while during the day and go for a run in the mornings..unfortunately there were not as many other backpackers around..SanYa was more a holiday destination for Russian and because of that the area had a vaguely Russian feel to it.. It was actually really weird there as well…upon entering into a pub or a club the manager would be over in a few seconds to welcome you and would assign a member of staff to look after you and make sure that you are having a good night…one particular place had a rota of staff looking after us who spent the night giving us free beer, popcorn and fruit..we ended up having a monster game of rock, paper, scissors for about an hour and a half..we later found out that in Hainan Island it is seen as a mark of prestige depending on how many foreigners are in the place..therefore they do their best to look after you when you come it..

In terms of doing things we haven’t really done a lot in SanYa…after 3 and a half months on the road, the idea of stopping in one place for a short while appealed to allow batteries to recharge. We must have walked a 1000 miles around the city…it was strange in some places where the people chew betel nuts…they then spit out on the street which is blood red…disgusting…another place had a guy with 3 monkeys…the funniest part was when he got the monkey to smoke a cigarette, then a second monkey would go over, cuff the smoking monkey over the head, pull the cigarette out of the others mouth and threw it away.. One other thing we have learned in China is that they pride themselves on 100% employment..so this means that rather than using machines for jobs they use people. For example, the don’t use trucks to transport rubbish to the tip, they have people that cycle bikes with trailers with bins on it…they ring a bell as they cycle and people bring out whatever rubbish they have…they have people that go around washing away the betel nut stains..supermarkets are weird as anything…they have 5-6 people in each aisle, their job to help you find what you need and try and get you to buy other stuff.

We travelled from Hainan Island to Hanoi, probably the worst journey for John so far, we went by sleeper bus which was built for smurfs…with a howling cold breeze going through the bus..we left Haikou around 4 in the day, a 10 hour journey that took 12 hours so we arrived in Nanning around 4am, had to then get a taxi to the other station across the other side of the city, got bus tickets then from there to Hanoi..

Anyways we are now in Vietnam…its nuts, crazy, mental and has to be seen to be believed but more on that next week…

happy new year to all of ye as well…hope santy was good..