holiday

After leaving aiesec and sorting out my job i had a few days to relax somewhat and then my dad arrived (1 day late thanks to air france). For anyone doing a few days in Beijing this was our itinerary:
day 1: Beijing urban planning museum-Tiananmen square-Forbidden City-Beihai-Hou Hai-Bell/Drum towers and then to centro bar for a drink in British chamber networking.
Day 2: Summer Palace-Zhongguancun (cheap IT stuff)-Qingnianhu park (near andingmen station, which has a water park in it)-Peking Duck just off Wangfujing (nice and not too expensive)
Day 3: Cycle to great wall at HuangHua with tent-camp overnight on wall
Day 4: Cycle back to Beijing by mid-afternoon.
we were staying in jade dragon youth hostel which is convenient with good private twin rooms. though the cycle is not that exciting for the journey outside of beijing, once getting into the country its great, and if your knee has issues (or you get bored of cycling back in rush hour) you can just grab a minivan and rent it for the rest of the journey!

On day 4 (Sunday) we flew off to Sanya in Hainan island.. a biggish island (size of Ireland or bigger probably) known as the Hawai of the east. weather is great all year and though its well-known in china -chiense only mostly go when the rest of china is cold in the winter. so going in the summer is cheaper and not so crowded. A great decision. 1/3rd prcie 5 star hotels and discount flights led us to spending teh first 2 days on beaches and strolling around the local area, including going Scuba Diving (still love it). Dad is still taken aback with how cheap stuff is -I am quite used to it!

Today was 3rd day on Island and we went to the JianFengLing Rainforest. Wow. 2 hour bus journey around a bit of the island (its about a 16 hour round trip all around!) and we got dropped off at the edge of a motorway, grabbed a taxi-motorbike and went through a 100% typical chinese town in the countryside: food-markets, shops selling the same stuff, everyone hanging around doing nothing, bulls and pigs roaming around bossing the road etc. Then 20 kms into the rainforest and 1,00 m up we got to Heaven lake: stunning. photos will be uploaded soon. A nice 'peasent-style' lunch later and we carried on into the rainforest to a health resort which sits near a waterfall. us 2, plus our motorbike guide went up the river, spent a while swimming under the waterfall (not the biggest in the world but refreshing and great to have it alone) and then went back to the lake for a walk. We encountered ancient trees, buterflies and other birds that sounded like chainsaws (but were not!) -no leopards unfortunately, but the whole trip was topped off once we missed the last bus and had to hitch-hike in a chinese blue truck transporting lots of rocks!

What's great about this trip is there are so few tourists; mostly russians at our resort, though replaced by chinese on the beach once the sun goes down. some locals try to sell fruit (yummy) and other stuff but are not too bad, and the beaches are great. The hotel's service is fantastic. The local city, sanya, is buzzing with young people and opld alike.. everyone is out walking past the empty shops, drinking and eating on the streets, playing chess on teh street and giving the place a nice atmosphere. The rainforest was totally empty, the path is a track, but they had a brochure with some english in, some signs in english and all the buildings were tastefully done, nothing was rip-off expensive. i could go on and on, but most toursit sights in china are SO badly done and this was just..perfect. even down to the fact that its hard to get to and no-one there speaks any english -so it will keep out most other tourists in the future!

Haian is an isalnd with huge tourism potential, that it only seems to have started exploiting in the last 5 years... so it has learned from other parts of china, and is doing a better job than most. Its got a fair few fancy hotels, but mostly its an agricultural economy with most people using bulls and cows as transport in the fields (though motorbikes on the roads). As parts of China goes, its got great beaches, great countryside and by exploring its very easy to see the real China.. the crappy towns that are full-of-life, the old people working the fields and the young babies everywhere. its hard to see so much of 'typical china' and enjoy yourself whilst relaxing in china in 1 place -hainan is highly recommended, and not just for the beaches.