San Men Dao Beach Trip

  Sanmen Dao, China
Saturday, June 21, 2008

After about 6 days of heavy rain the weather has finally broken and we decided to go the beach this weekend. We started our trip around noon on Saturday. Xiao Li was very anxious to get on the road and wanted to get KFC or McDonald's but we convinced her to go to a sit down restaurant. Here she is at lunch in her beach gear.

Xiao Li ready for the trip at lunch

After doing some running around in Qing Xi, we got on the road for a 1.5 hour trip to the shore. Once we got off the highway near Nan Ao we had to drive on this narrow road for about 20 minutes to get to the water. Luckily bus traffic wasn't too bad.

Driving to the beach

Xiao Li had called ahead to make sure the weather was OK at the island and to set up our boat ride from the mainland out to the island of Sanmen. As soon as we arrived we put on sunscreen beacuase the sun was extremely hot. Liz had to go to the bathroom and there was a lizard on the wall of the stall, she came running out screaming. After that we walked down to the shore and met up with the guy who would be taking us to the island.

Our boat to the island

Our captain to the island

Heading to the island

The island that we will be staying

When we got to the island we went to the hotel and had to wait for the police to come to the hotel to check our passports and have us sign a book stating that we were there. We quickly dropped our stuff off in the room and got changed to go snorkeling. Liz had a slight headache, so we went to the pharmacy/docotors office.

The local doctor

This guy was apparently the pharmacist/doctor, he didn't move from this spot for about the first five minutes of the conversation about Liz having a headache. He said he could mix up some different pills for $2 a dose and she would need three doses. Mike didn't quite understand what he said, so he said OK. Xiao Li jumped in and set the guy straight and we wound up getting 4 ibuprofren for 20 cents. Liz was only supposed to take one at a time, but there was another language misunderstanding and she took all four, her headache went away shortly there after and Xiao Li thought the misunderstanding was pretty amusing.

We walked down a path to get to the beach and we got ready to do some snorkeling. Mike had bought some pretty fancy snorkeling gear and the water was extremely clear. It was both mine and Liz's first time snorkeling and we really enjoyed it. We saw a decent amount of fish and a whole bunch of sea urchins.

Our first time snorkeling

Liz chcking out the ocean

Sea urchin with bright colors

Navy Seals

Neon green

There were quite a few people in the water catching these spiney sea urchins. It doesn't look like something that you could eat, but apparently they are pretty good. Mike started to catch some of them and he got some of those spines stuck in his hand. One of the guys gave him a glove and he caught a whole bunch of them. It turned out that he was getting ones that were too big and we didn't end up eating them. After we were done with the snorkeling, Liz and I went up and got some beers and sat at this group of tables and watched Mike and Xiao Li snorkel for a while.

Liz relaxing

Mike and Xiao Li snorkeling

When we got back to the hotel room the power was on. This might sound a bit strange, because you would expect that a hotel would always have power. But the way things work on the island is that around 6 o'clock at night the power is turned on, so that you can see what you are doing and so that there is AC in the rooms. Our AC wasn't working at first but after they recharged it with freon we had some cold air blowing out. We headed to dinner at a "restaurant" that was run by the guy who came and picked us up in the boat.

Waiting for dinner

Killing the chicken for dinner

The fine Great Wall Wine

This restaurant definitely has some of the freshest food you will ever have. Here is a picture of the chicken that we were about to eat being killed and if you want to eat a fish, our captain heads out in his boat to a net that they store fish at and gets a few fish and/or crabs. Our meal was very good and we wound up making some new friends with these guys who were there for a fishing trip. We gave them some of our food and they let us have some of their fish.

Our new friends who ate with us

After dinner we had tea with one of the guys that works at the restaurant and then Mike and Xiao Li went back to the room for the night. Liz and I walked back down to the water and came upon a group of Bejing college students sitting around in a circle and doing some karaoke/acting/dancing/drinking. One girl came over to us and told us "I have a friend that lives in Florida, that's by Washington, but I don't even care cause I'm in China!!!" Another girl came over and the only thing she said was "she's drunk". After watching these guys dance around for a while, making phone calls home and talking for a while we headed back up to the room to see if we had a cool room or not.

Our room

The bathroom in our hotel

The AC was doing its job and we went to sleep. Liz didn't sleep very well because she said I was talking in my sleep, both in english and chinese, and kicking my feet very violently. I woke up at 4:30, which happens to be the time that the power is turned back off in our hotel. It is still dark at 4:30 AM, so we had to use the cell phone to see if we were peeing the hole in the ground or on the floor. When the power goes off, the room gets hot pretty quickly and we were up and moving around 6:30. Mike called us and we went over to his room for a breakfast of snacks that we bought at the grocery store the previous day. Liz said that she was ready to get off of the island as soon as possible, but after we went outside it was much more comfortable. We went snorkeling for a couple of hours and then had lunch at the same restaurant as the night before. The reason for this is that it is only one of two restaurants that we could have chosen. We had some very good crab and fish and the best ramen noodles I've ever had. The daughter of one of the people working at the restaurant was shy around us at first, but eventually opened up and even posed for some pictures.

Sunglass model

She said she wanted to come back to Qing Xi with us, but we settled to take her for a walk back to our room while we packed up our stuff. We checked out of the hotel and took the same boat back to the mainland and started heading home. We stopped at a fish market on the way home and Mike and Xiao Li haggled with the guys to get some fish, crabs, shrimp and oysters for dinner at Xiao Li's uncles house that night.

It was great to get back to Qing Xi and we both fell asleep for while before we went to dinner at Xiao Li's uncles house. The seafood we got was awesome.