last day in sanya

Sanya is famous for its beaches. Our goal today: go to the beach. We actually planned on just having a chill day at some beautiful beach but it didn’t work out how we expected but it was still all good. We had to go to downtown to buy our bus tickets to Haikou (high-koh), where we’ll flying out of to get to Guilin (our next destination). That little excursion took a little longer than planned, involving banks and what nots. By the time we got them and everybody met back up it was a little later than we wanted but we were fine. One of the teachers in our group has this guide book to China and in there it lists a bunch of good beaches in Sanya to go to, we picked Tian-Ya-Hai-Jiao Beach. Took a cab and got there to this little tourist place. We had to pay to get in but it was worth it to get a good clean beach. And actually it was pretty neat inside. They had some really cool statues and some awesome landscaping and a beautiful beach. This place was famous for these two stone a little out in the ocean that cross and somebody important went out and carved characters on them, sun and moon. So they are the sun and moon stones and people pay for boats to take them out to it to get pictures. Chantelle and me enjoyed the view from the beach and actually had an awesome time seashell hunting. The sand was a really big grain (and kind of hurt to walk on) but it was neat and we found some good little shells. The weather could’ve been more kind to us but it wasn’t cold so we were fine.

Oh man. Okay so for dinner we went to this flipping awesome place. The night before we were just in downtown Sanya and some Chinese guy stops us and tells us about his restaurant. We’re just okay, okay, sure. But he actually spoke really good English and he just kept telling us what his restaurant had, it was a buffet with “no limit” ha-ha (he made that point clear). He was just very entertaining. Somehow he started going on about how language is “peripheral technology” and we laughed and he just kept telling us about marketing skills? I don’t know it was just funny and a little unexpected. One of the funniest things he said was as we were walked away he yells “We are confident, we are the best” fist in the air and everything. We told him we’d go to his restaurant and we had all intentions to. So Chantelle and me and two other teachers (the rest wimped out on us) went. This. Place. Was. Awesome. It was on the fourth floor so we’re taking escalators up to it and on the last one to the fourth we see him and at first he didn’t recognize us and then he goes “OH! What a coincidence!!” and we said that we were going to come to his restaurant. So he actually walks us in and goes around to all of the dishes and explains to us what each one was and they actually had this really good Brazilian BBQ (?) it was different meats on these huge skewers and he told us all the different stuff (pork, chicken, Peking duck, ox tongue (?!), squid, shrimp). So he lets us go and we’re just like this place is legit. And the food was awesome. Two boys would come over every now and then with a huge skewer of some meat and they’d slide off a chunk of meat and give it to you and might I say it was quite delectable. So we stuff our mouths, as we Americans do best and on the way out we see him again and get a picture with him and he showed us on the way in that he has his guests sign the walls of the restaurant. So they gave us markers and we made our mark. We were really proud of our choice.

For our night’s finish it was one of the experiences that just makes me stand back and say “I love china.” So its new year’s right. And we’re pretty much on the ocean front and every night there’s been people shooting off fireworks. So tonite we decide we have a night out on the beach and shoot off some firework. So it’s the same four of us that went to the restaurant (the others wimped out, yet again) and we walk out of our hotel with some small fireworks the other girls bought the previous day and right next door is this little store of snacks and what nots (I’d say convenience store but its more of a hole in the wall…). This cool old lady owns it and we’ve bought drinks from here before and we needed a lighter. We buy one and she sees that we have fireworks and she’s motioning to us exploding. And we’re just like “yea… fireworks” but she shows us to the back and she has more. So we’re like heck, why not. So she shows us this one that looked like it’d just shoot like roman candle type ones in the air and we’re not too thrilled. And I think she noticed our expressions because she brings us to the back room and busts out a box of mortars. All I hear Lorenda say “are those mortars?” and we’re OH YEA! Jackpot. We get a box of 10 of them for 30 Yuan (that’s about 5 dollars folks). So we head out to the beach. And I don’t know how it happened but we had a father and his son (probably like 8 years old) shooting them off with us. We had 2 firework salespeople trying to sell us more, no matter how much we say no and we’re eating sugar cane (?!) (it’s a chute that you bite off a chunk, suck out the sugary water and then spit it out, its was like chewing on some bark, but of course full of sugary goodness). We’re just like, “only in china”. So we shot them all off had a couple of good-looking foreigners that the other girls met the night before stop and say hello. oh and we think some guy trying to sell us this floating lantern thing that we wouldnt buy stole lorenda's flip flops. haha. we seriously couldnt find them. But pretty much our last day in Sanya: two thumbs WAY up.