Sanya Royal Garden Resort

This is one of the ports that we bypassed on the last cruise because of a typhoon. It was the very first time the Holland America cruise line had docked there. As a result, I don't think the town was ready for the 1600 people that hit shore. From the ship briefings, there wasn’t a lot there that interested us or that Cub was physically able to do. (I must add a note here: We received a comment on our blog from a reader we ...

... 8217; but not a lot of ‘sorta have’. There were lots of luxury building and holes in the walls that people live in, but we did not see any middle class. We drove by several open air markets in the slummy area that had tables of fruit and slabs of meat sitting out in the open sun on these dirty dusty tables. Sure makes you appreciate ship food!! The traffic lights have timers on them. Depending on your intersection the lights are green (or red ...

... theme, I chose the town of Sanya, which is the southernmost town on Hainan Island. Sanya provided everything that I had hoped for in a tropical island: clear blue sky, clear blue water, fine white sand, and an abundance of stands selling tropical fruit and local street food. Sanya offers the full gamut of accommodations from five star resorts to penny-pincher youth hostels. I chose the youth hostel option, not so much for ...

... to Sanya for 80 rmb per person, but when we realized that it would take four hours and would take more time and money to get to the bus station, we decided that a taxi would be worth it. After a brief and unsatisfying lunch at the Welcome Cafe, we negotiated with the driver to take us down to Sanya for 300 kuai, which would shave an hour off of our trip (worth it). The interior of Hainan was beautiful, but very boring because the coastal towns are where most people ...

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.

... I tried to explain to everyone that I just had two lunches and really was not that hungry. 4-25-09 Nice day We were going to make arrangements to get a driver to take us back to Sanya. We were going to go further north to Hiako but the people we were going to meet there were busy. I did not really want to go there anyway. So we were going to arrange for a driver to take us back to Sanya and the family decided that the uncle could take ...

'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.

... The car parks of these places were packed. With a big smile our driver indicated we had arrived. Another giant car park full of buses and taxis. He wrote his registration number down so we could identify his cab and also the time we should be back - 4. Fingers crossed he's here when we get back. Was RMB60 each. I paid 2x100 and got my 80 back. Ron handed exactly 120 and was asked fr another 10. The "pick me' sign Al and I had both been wearing must have been ...

... buildings but most of them constructed tastefully. The beach itself is clean and the water warm. The weird thing about Sanya is the quantity of Russians; they outnumber Chinese tourists by 10 to 1. Shop signs are in Russian and there are Russian bars/restaurants. As is the norm for Russians the pretty women tend to have their long legs out 24 hours a day while the men favor walking around in Speedos. One thing that they did have right in the ...

... be the cheapest place available, and we find it very comfortable. As we know from earlier travels in China, the cost of a room bears little or no relationship to the standard of comfort. This morning we took a minibus to some of the tourist sights, none of which we intended to actually go into as we have heard they are all expensive tourist traps. We just wanted to do the bus ride. First stop was a town just past the popular "End of the Earth" site, where ...