Haikou – Day 1

With daylight we get a full sense for the resort here in Haikou and our initial assessment is that it is more than just a little weird.  The hotel itself is very impressive, encompassing about 400 rooms surrounding a series of well maintained grounds and pools right on the water.  The funny thing is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone here, to the extreme case that it feels almost like being in a Twilight Zone episode. We were mostly surprised because back in Guilin, we though about trying to come here a day earlier but when we checked the hotel website it reported that the hotel was full.  Given that, we expected to see people all over the place, but walking around in the morning there was nobody on the beach, nobody at the pool, not even towels laid out by people who get up early and reserve the best locations before going back to bed that we have come to expect in other places we have traveled.

In many of the things we read before coming here, Hainan Island (where Haikou is located) is referred to as the Hawaii of the East. From what we have seen so far, that may be a bit of a stretch.  Like everywhere else, the smog is heavy enough that visibility is probably no more than a few miles (the good news is that we have found air pollution to be an effective blocker of UV rays, so our sunscreen bill remains quite low). It seems that the idea of beach resorts isn’t exactly part of the culture either as there are miles of beach running in both directions from our hotel, but very little of it is developed.  Instead, away from the hotels where the beaches are maintained, it looks like no one ever uses what would be considered prime oceanfront property in most other places.  Go back 100 yards from the water though and there is a huge amount of construction, with new multi-story buildings going up everywhere.

All that said, it is very nice here, and had we not spent time is Thailand and Malaysia before coming here, we would likely have only great things to say.  South of here there is also a much bigger resort area called Sanya that probably is a bit more resort-esque, so we gave up on some of that voluntarily when we chose Haikou over Sanya, in large part because we  wanted to be closer to a real city to experience more of the local culture.  We are debating whether we might spend a few days yet in Sanya before heading for Hong Kong, but intertia being what it is, I’m not sure the odds of packing up to move 100 miles south are good.

We did make a quick trip into town this afternoon to stock up on a few groceries (most notably, the always important Diet Cokes).  The store we ended up in was more or less the Chinese version of Fred
Meyer, with the full compliment off  food, clothes, electronics and so on.  They also had a big hot food counter where we bought a few dishes to eat for lunch. It was probably the cheapest meal we have eaten so far (about 10 yuan for the two of us), and ironically, it stacked up very well with meals we have had costing far more.  Loaded down with few bags of groceries, we weren’t really able to walk around town and see much else, so that will have to wait for another day. 

The hotel staff says the weather is supposed to get even better over the coming days whereas the computer says it is supposed to get worse. I suppose we’ll find out who is right tomorrow.