The last morning in Hong Kong, October 8, was relatively leisurely. Leaving the hotel at 7:45 am for an 11:20 am flight gave us plenty of time to get stuck in traffic, to figure out where the “K” check-in desk was, to go through security, to find our way to the right concourse, and to have a Japanese breakfast of vegetable ramen (me), toast, and cold, runny scrambled eggs. We flew into Sanya’s Phoenix Airport on Hainan Island, suffered through China’s cumbersome immigration process, and ran across the street to catch the bullet train to the northern city of Haikou. I added the bullet train to our itinerary because I thought it would give us an opportunity to see the landscape on the island, but it added significant stress and confusion to our travel day.
Hainan is China’s largest island and ranks #42 in size among
all islands in the world. It has a tropical climate and is a popular vacation
destination for Chinese and Russian nationals as well as renowned agricultural breeding
location. From both the air and the train we passed field upon field of rice,
tea, squash, and other crops we couldn’t distinguish. Since Hainan hosts so
many Russian tourists, signage is more likely to be in Russian than English,
and I was using Google Lens constantly to translate signs and information
boards into English. It must have looked like I was using my phone as a divining
rod – holding it in front of me and being drawn from sign to sign. Having roaming
internet was crucial, both for Google Lens but also for Google Translate. To
ask anything, including, “Where is the manual check-in line”, “Where do we get a
taxi,” and “Why was that man angry,” I would type or speak English into my
phone and then hold it out for the respondent to read and then either nod yes
or no, point, or type a response into their own Google Translate program. The question
about the angry man was a real question that I asked to a couple on the train
platform in Sanya. A couple in the waiting area had been shouting at staff,
almost coming to blows, and I was rubbernecking. Apparently, the altercation
had something to do with a luggage check and the couple was ultimately allowed
on the train.
So much had gone our way during early part of the day, that
it was inevitable that something would go a little off the rails in the latter
part. Getting to Haikou, we showed our taxi driver the address of the hotel
from Booking.com and what we though was the location on the map, but it took
pulling over twice and three phone calls to the Green Collection Care Hotel to
find get there. Mom and I laughed thinking about the reaction my father would
have to the situation. The hotel was not a hotel, per se, but instead a few
rooms in a residential development adjacent to a mall. It was fine for our
purposes with hot water, air conditioning, and two beds. The Wi-Fi at the
hotel, and basically anywhere else in China, is useless unless you have a
virtual private network (VPN). Facebook, many major new sites, and anything
related to Google is blocked. Once again, Verizon’s international data roaming
package to the rescue.
For dinner, we walked over to the “BEING FUN MALL”. We passed
many toppled palm trees and sawdust remnants of down trees during our short walk,
and later learned that Typhoon Yagi had made a direct hit on Haikou on
September 7. It was the largest storm in the region for 2024 and left 800,000
people without electricity in Haikou. The mall felt deserted, and we definitely
stuck out as strangers. We went from restaurant to restaurant, led by the
Google Lens translate feature, trying to find a place with anything vegetarian
on the menu. We ended up in a fantastic little chain called “18 Bowls”. A throng
of six women came running to see the question that I had typed into Google Translate…”Do
you have any dishes with tofu? I do not eat any meat.” After lots of nods and
thumbs up, we were given a table, had another round of communication through
Google, and a 15-minute red egg timer was placed on the table to ensure that we
got out food expediently. Mom was not impressed with either my spicy soft tofu
or her bony chestnut chicken, but we got such a kick out of the experience that
she gathered the staff for a group photo as we were leaving. As soon as the
photos was taken, our server literally pushed me out the door. The restaurant
was starting to get very busy, and she clearly was ready to move on.
We stopped at the first-floor grocery store on the way out
of the mall to buy water, and then I attempted to wash clothes when we got back
to the room. There was a small washing machine on the porch, but halfway
through the cycle we realized the drain wasn’t working. I ended up rinsing my
clothes in the shower, wringing them out in the sink, and hanging them up
throughout the studio to dry.
This was a very memorable first visit to China, and not one
that I care to repeat. When and if I return, it will be with a group and with VPN.
PHOTOS
Leaving Hong Kong
Taking the Bullet Train from Sanya to Haikou
Green Collective Care Hotel and Being Fun Mall
I love the picture with the restaurant staff. So real :)
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