Banyan Tree Sanya Resort & Spa

... It was a good thing it wasn’t too far from town, because the air conditioning was not that effective either.

They dropped us off at a large shopping center-like building. It had five or six floors, none of which were air conditioned, but was full of merchandise—even automobiles. The good news is that I got my camera fixed there. The technician at the camera counter knew exactly what was wrong when I showed ...

... the bay from our ship. It was at the Pearl Museum with a gift store. We walked through the museum & through the gift store. Of course they want you to buy something here so we had 40 minutes to kill. Unfortunately we did not have any Chinese Yuan left and they don’t take USD so I couldn’t buy anything. If I had some Yuan left, I probably would have purchased one of their necklaces as they were not expensive at all. Jack was outside the ...

Having quite enjoyed Qingdao, but already half-way through my week off and still craving that beach time, I knew I had to pull some drastic measures. Despite my better (financial) judgment, I hopped a plane to Guangzhou and then to Hainan Island, otherwise known as the "Hawaii of China."

Hainan Island is the southernmost point of China ... south of Hong Kong, Macau, and even south of Hanoi, Vietnam. In keeping with this ...

... dismayed to find a whole room of squat toilets. I decided to try to use one, and so I pulled open an open door and a Chinese woman inside freaked out. I got so mad because that's the third time that's happened to me. I understand and don't mind if it's their culture to, for some reason, not lock bathroom doors that have locks on them, but why then do they yell if I open the door?? How would I have known they were inside!?

We had planned to take the bus ...

Was not overly impressed with Sanya. Sanya is 100% tourist. Mostly Chinese with a lot of Russians. The town is very pretty and the beaches are great. I enjoyed talking with some of the Russians. I guess I did not like the fact that it was one huge tourist trap, not my cup of tea.

... one seemed to know what it was. But lots of tours we out there fully dressed stomping around on the sand. After we had our full of stomping around we once again waited of a small tour group and got on board with them. I was a great day. Once back at the villa we had dinner and decided to walk to the commercial village. I guess the one we saw yesterday was for living. This one was about as far the other direction and it had several small shops ...

'I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not... I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic... I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.' -- Jackie Chan to an audience of business leaders on Hainan island.

Day 8 Sanya Able to sleep in today. Tidied the cabin up. Jackets still stink of smoke. I'm going to ask Chris and Ron if I can take it up to their cabin and hang then over the chairs on their verandah otherwise the smell will never go. Windjammer was packed. Did three circuits before I found a table for us. Couple sat down and we started chatting. Judith and Steve from Vancouver. They sullied my view of the worldiness of west coast Canadians (hello Patricia). When I ...

... balconies looking for Japanese snipers. Eventually we got quite a production line going and made about 4 metres before the balloons ran out. Day 4: The wedding day. As we had been blowing up balloons till after 2am I didn't feel the freshest when the old alarm went off at 8am...the cumulative effect of overnight trains and nights out had really started to catch up with me by now. The day didn't start off well at all when I went to tell reception in ...

... hot water. As with many hotels here, we do not have a key. We just have to find someone to open up for us when we come back to the room. It took us a while to find out what transport to take to Yalong Bay. My information was to take a bus 2 or 4 to Daidonghai, then a 102 minibus for the 20 km trip to Yalong. The most frequent bus along the main road near us is a 202 and, after some time being misdirected by local tourists, we realized ...