Day 218 - Heading to the sunny south!!

Our train pulled in at Haikou station around 10.45am and within 15 minutes we were on a public bus bound for Xin Gang - the ferry port where we were aiming to buy ferry tickets either to Haiphong in Vietnam or Beihai (still in China) if the ferry to Vietnam wasn't running (we had heard rumors of this but had been unable to verify!). After an hour on the bus Liv finally said out loud what both of us were thinking: "I think we've missed our stop". We spent a few minutes trying to pinpoint our current location on our tincy map and then the bus suddenly stopped and turned around. After asking the driver if the bus would be returning to the port (and getting an answer in the negative) we stood on the bus not entirely knowing what to do! Luckily a very friendly local approached and offered his help, and after a very long time conversing in Liv's limited Chinese and his limited English we finally managed to convey that we wanted to go to the travel agent to check about tickets! Being the typical friendly local he walked us to the door and bid us farewell! Here we managed to get the information that the ferry to Vietnam was no longer running and they sent us on our way to the port where we needed to buy tickets to Beihai for in a few days.

The usually easy task of buying tickets was extremely difficult here, for no particular real reason, but after about an hour we walked out with tickets in our hand. It wasn't an hour spent in lines either - rather an hour trying to figure out why we couldn't buy Monday tickets from here!! Turns out that on Monday the 14th of January the boat leaves from a different dock, but they could still sell us the tickets. This seriously took us one whole hour to sort out!

By 1.40pm we were on our way to sunny Sanya - a beach resort town on the southern tip of the island (and of course, China in general). On the bus we met a couple of other travellers, and they joined us in the typical mission to locate the hostel we were after (quite a mission considering the small alleyway it is down) - which was worth the effort: it is about a 5 minute walk to the miles of sandy beach and turquoise water from here!!

At this point, we had realised that we had been wearing the same clothes and hadn't showered in 3 days - oh the traveller's life! So after cleaning ourselves up in order to fit in with the western crowd that has immerged out of nowhere, we hit the beach for an evening stroll before dinner nearby, where Adam began his seafood extravaganza and Liv dined on her usuals. Adlibing it to the beach.