Tropical Paradise...

After a few days spent in Guangzhou it was time for the second part of our Christmas holiday - a trip to a genuine tropical island.

We flew from Guangzhou to Sanya at the southern point of Hainan Island, off the coast of China, on Boxing Day. A few hours delay in the airport was forgotten as soon as we were flying over those wide beaches and blue seas.

This is the first time I've been anywhere tropical, and I was not disappointed...

It was warm, between 20 and 25 degrees,
sunny, with palm trees everywhere, soft sandy beaches and a warm, clear blue sea. Perfect.

We didn't do a great deal. After living it up in Guangzhou, we tried to be a bit more budget and stopped in a youth hostel in Dadonghai where we got 4 nights for less than the cost of 1 night in the 5 star hotel! Best move we ever made though. The place was packed with travellers from all round the world. Mostly Americans, Germans and Russians but there was a complete international cross-section. What was funny about Dadonghai was that instead of having signs written up in Chinese and English, everything was written in Chinese and Russian. I only knew which places were restaurants cos I knew the Russian word! Must have been the Mallorca of the old Soviet Union, or maybe it's just closer than anywhere else... Who knows.

So we had plenty of people to hang out with. We met an Austrian, Min, from Vienna incidentally, whose parents are Chinese and who just finished a semester in Beijing as well as three guys from London - Paul, Andrew and Tim. We went out to the beach, lay about, ate, lay about some more, ate a bit, then went out to a bar til the early morning. This was much the pattern for a few days.

On our last day though, we decided to do something different. We'd heard of another beach at Yalong Bay where all the 5 star resorts are located and the beach is said to be much better. It didn't seem to be far from what we'd heard so we thought it might be nice to ride there.

Here follows an essay in how we should have known better...

We needed to rent 6 bikes but it was pretty late in the day and couldn't find any for a decent price. The youth hostel said they had a few, so we decided to take a look. Turned out they had three mountain bikes, one fold-up bike and a tandem.

Riding these poor unfortunate excuses for bikes seemed just too hilarious an opportunity to pass up on, and I think we were too bowled over by the prospect to pay much attention to the man who needed 30 mins to fix them up before they could be handed over. Should have taken that hint...

So we set off and it started out great. We took photos, laughed at each other's stupid bikes and generally attracted much attention wherever we went. We reckoned it might take 45 mins to get to the beach, however, 30 minutes in, one of the fold-up bike's pedals fell off. And so it began...

Well, there wasn't much we could do at that point, and the beach shouldn't be far away, so we flagged down a motorbike and sidecar, loaded Paul and the fold-up onto it and Min told the driver to take him to Yalong Bay.

Off he went, and on we went. We rode, and rode,
and rode, and...rode...and...rode...and really weren't getting anywhere. If anything it looked as though we were heading inland. We were going in the right direction though. We were following the signs, it just always seemed that every time we turned a corner and expected to see the beach, the road just kept on going.

I was on the tandem at this point, and seriously knackered. The bikes were crap and it took effort just to get them going on the flat. When a huge hill came along I thought 'screw this'.

It was hot, I was tired, I'd forgotten I'm allergic
to some sun-creams and my face was burning up so I told Anthony I'd get a sidecar and told him to carry on by himself. He must have looked such a sight. There's possibly nothing more pathetic than a man riding a tandem by himself...

Anyway, after a bit I managed to flag down a sidecar and set off after the others. It wasn't long before I saw some of them sat by the side of the road ahead. It turned out that Min's bike's back wheel had come loose on it's axle and was useless to ride. Well, brainwave. I took the bike on the sidecar with me and Min had the empty seat on the tandem. Perfect. Again, onwards...until I
came across Paul, walking back towards Dadonghai with the broken fold-up bike and looking thoroughly lost. Turns out that after we sent him off he'd just been dumped in the middle of nowhere by his sidecar driver, and speaking not one word of Chinese had decided to just try and walk back home. Well, I suggested he hitch a ride with me. So, with two bikes now on my lap in the sidecar and Paul sat behind the driver, we set off again for Yalong Bay. We were so laden down that the bike nearly tipped over backwards when we started!

We were making good progress until for no
apparent reason we stopped. The driver gestured that for some reason he could go no further, so we got out and started walking. I'd last seen the rest of the guys about half an hour ago so was pretty happy when I got a phone call saying they were there. Was less happy when they told me I was still miles away, but no problem, we just had to flag down a taxi. That was a little bit more of a problem than we'd anticipated, seeing as every one that passed was obviously en-route somewhere and had passengers. Eventually we managed to find an empty one and finally reached our destination. It had taken over 2 hours and about 25km to get there, but it was worth it, as the pictures show.

We spent the whole afternoon just chilling there, playing volleyball, swimming in the sea, drinking from Coconuts and admiring the scenery. When it was time to go back to Dadonghai, we took the bus!

Bike-riding in China. Never again.

Back in Dadonghai, we went to an Italian restaurant. None of us had eaten since breakfast and we were ravenous. As soon as the food came we just dived straight in. They forgot to bring us cutlery, but no problem, as they brought instead three unordered salads. We didn't raise the issue with the waiter and polished them off in minutes, only noticing later that a nearby table of three Russians left without eating anything...

Now, I really enjoyed this part of the holiday because we got to meet and talk to other foreigners. For me, it was especially cool as I got to speak to other Brits. It was good to talk 'real' English and in no time at all, I realised I'd picked up an accent again, and this time it was pure London. Later on in the evening after we'd all left the bar we were getting some streetside barbecued food I was just chatting to my mates when suddenly a bloke overheard what I was saying, came up to me and said in broad cockney,

'Now don't try and tell me you're not from London!'

'Erm. Well, actually...I, er...'

'Come on up to my rooftop, we're having a little afterparty, bring yer mates and a few beers.'

'Oh. Alright, er...mate.'

So we found ourselves down the road up on this apartment block roof drinking and swapping stories til at least 4am with about 20 other random foreigners. It was a good night. The hangover the next day was in direct proportion to the enjoyment the night before, and made the plane ride to Guangzhou a little less enjoyable than the ride out. We spent a further 2 days in Guangzhou, back in the same hotel before heading back to Lanshan on New Year's Day.