Sanya, the Hawaii of the Orient.
China has been developing Sanya, a city on the island of Hainan, about an hour south of Hong Kong by air. It is being touted as the Hawaii of China, and developed and advertised as such. The problem is the rhetoric and the reality are poles apart.
Hawaii is full of Americans, with American accents, and American food. Sanya is full of Chinese and Russians. Many of the shop staff speak Russian. There are Russian shops everywhere, in the 30 degree winter heat selling the most beautiful full winter fur coats. The shop fronts, advertising and signage is all bilingual, Chinese and Russian. And unlike Hawaii, very little English spoken, American or otherwise.
Sanya is renown in China for its fabulous, ‘Hawaii like’ beaches. They certainly have some nice beaches, but the waves are small, the water is not as clean as Hawaii, there is no rolling surf, there are no surfers and the beach is divided up into bits owned by the big named hotels, and some swimming bits roped off, with, I must say, a life guard on duty, who seems to spend most of his time blowing a whistle and telling people what to do.
We went to two beaches and didn’t bother with any others, figuring they were all much the same.
Dadonghai is the beach here. Da means big, dong means East, hai means sea. So this is the big east sea beach. This is well developed, beach umbrellas and wooden slatted beach chairs, ( hard as rocks to lie on) for hire for 50 rmb each for the day plus 20 rmb for a soft cushion thing to put on top. The 50 rmb applies whether you hire it at 9am or at 4.30 pm. Ah, the rip off system is in good working order here. There were plenty of Chinese out in the sun and in the water.
There is also a nice board walk all along, plenty of toilets (the low type) and shower rooms, and a large area of restaurants overlooking the beach. It’s nice along there in the evening when the sun has gone down and the cooler breeze sets in.
In Hawaii, when we went there a long long time ago, the price of food was pretty cheap in comparison to our home prices for eating out. In Sanya, the whole economy relies on tourism so the prices are a bit steeper. Even so, I had a really good western meal, more than I could eat at The Dolphin Restaurant, just along from the hotel. Again the menus were in Russian and Chinese, but we had a Pilipino waitress with reasonable English. I also met a guy from Westport there, and some of his mates from all over the world. They have a well-established Sanya Cricket Club.
Also check out this video clip….the guy who is talking is the David Taylor I met at The Dolphin Restaurant.
There is quite a bit to do in this city, but a few days is enough. On day one I went to the city centre. It’s just like any Chinese city centre, with a walking street mostly full of somewhat tacky trinkets, pearls, and stuff made from coconut shells. On day two I went to a place called, rather exotically, The rainforest cultural tourism zone. We ended up way up the top of some mountain, going by a sort of open bus that stopped at places for us to get off and see the sights. The two things that were most appealing were closed…haha, isn’t it the way? A huge swing bridge and a long flying fox.
It was nice to be in a forest area instead of concrete high rises though. In the afternoon we went to Yalong Bay, the most famous. Ah yes, more rip off. It cost 50 rmb each to go onto the beach, and 50 rmb a day to hire a seat each, and 20 rmb to hire a cushion for the day. Oh, and 3 rmb each for some tax or other.
It is certainly a nice area, the water is cleaner than Dadonghai, and heaps of people were swimming, including a few big ladies.
(pics to be added later)
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