Haikou – Day 3

A better day today with the weather which was nice.  From the forecast, it looks like most of SE Asia is going through the same overcast kind of days we are so we’re giving some thought to maybe heading to Hong Kong a couple days early.  The hotel here is nice and we have a great room, but without the sun being at the beach just isn’t the same.

Still no people to speak of here which remains very puzzling to us.  With the sun out, we did see a few other guests, but even around the pool there were no more than 5 or 10 people.  With hundreds of chairs spread out around the 4 pools here and the beach, it is surreal to see them all empty.  Seeing the kids pool with the waterslide and waterfalls we couldn’t help but think of how much fun the boys would have.

We went for a walk on the beach in the afternoon, past the three or four other hotels that are set up next to this one.  There is a nice path that connects them all together so that if you were inclined you could move between them to try different restaurants or whatever.  Of course, like this hotel, all of those ones seem empty as well. It’s kind of like being Will Smith in I Am Legend.
All we need is a dog to complete the picture.

On the beach itself, the sad part is that no one seems to take care of it.  In front of our hotel it looks like they make some effort to remove the garbage that washes up during the night, but even the places next to us seem to have given up.  Walking along the tide line it is pretty common to see old toothbrushes, lighters, juice boxes, fruit rinds and other interesting pieces of trash.  There are also a fair amount of dead fish, which seemed odd until we realized that there weren’t any birds to speak off (our assumption being that anywhere else, the birds would eat the fish).  Finally coming across a dead bird, we wondered if maybe that was the only one dumb enough to eat the fish.

It is sad to see what they do have here as a natural resource (a sandy beach that is several miles long, warm weather) and what could be a very nice place to visit is in such poor condition.  Everything we read talks about how they want to position this island as a tourist destination, but there is so much work for them to do here to make it anywhere close to resorts that are only an hour or two away that it will be many, many years of effort if it is even possible to pull off.