ivman's blague

This past weekend our hosts here at the university took us to the southern end of the island to see some of the beauty there. After a three-hour ride in a university van, we made our first stop, which was to visit a Li village. The Li people are one of the minority groups originally inhabiting this island. This Li village is totally a tourist trap, but it does give the opportunity to see some of the traditional dress and customs. Below is one of the buildings that are supposed to be typical of the Li people. (I must apologize that some of the pictures for today’s entry are a little blurry.)

One of the fun things we saw there was a wedding hall. They asked Becka and me to sit down and pretend to be a couple getting married.

There was a Li man who climbs a coconut tree to retrieve coconuts for tourists.

Below is a picture of some tourists enjoying what he retrieved.

In the area through which we had to pass in order to get out (read: stall after stall of trinket sellers hawking their wares) there was a place where we could sit in the shade and enjoy a show. One of the highlights of the show was the dancers’ doing the traditional bamboo dance. It is much harder than it looks. We tried to do it with only two *slow-moving* pieces of bamboo when we first entered the village, and we couldn’t do it. These kids were skipping across the many pieces of bamboo that were sometimes moving in all directions as if it were nothing! Below is a picture….

After lunch in Sanya, we went to Yalong Bay to see where the rich and famous vacation. The 5-star hotels were incredible! We walked down to the beach behind the Sheraton to wade, not swim, in the South China Sea. The surf was so high that there was a red “Do Not Swim” flag flying. Below are our hosts - left to right, Lulu, Jason (Judy’s 17 year old son), and Judy.

After our brief visit to Yalong Bay, we went next to the Nanshan Buddhist Cultural Center where we would spend the night in their 5-star hotel. It did not begin to reach the level of the 5-star hotels at Yalong, though. We had to climb 82 outdoor steps in the hot humid weather to get to our rooms; the AC in Becka’s and my room never did cool the stuffy room; and Jean and Yvonne’s room was BYOTP (bring your own TP, which, thanks to our advice, they had fortunately done).

After dinner, we caught the end of the evening show on the terrace. Below is a picture of some of the performance.

The next day we woke to a steamy, but beautiful morning. After breakfast we strolled around between tour bus rides to see some of the beauty of the place. Below is a picture of our group with someone looking over our shoulder. We were happy that Someone else watches over us all the time.

Since we were not really interested in some of the activities going on there, we instead enjoyed the beautiful scenery and flowers.

If you have to endure tropical weather, at least enjoy the flowers that that weather makes possible.

Ah, such rare tropical beauties!

Before leaving to return to Haikou, we stopped for lunch at a seafood restaurant in Sanya. I should say at this point that during our weekend adventure, we had all kinds of restaurant experiences and tried all sorts of interesting foods. We were reminded that we “weren’t in Kansas any more” when we tried to order “hens’ teeth” in restaurants - or at least you would have *thought* that that’s what we were doing. Just try getting even just a glass of room-temperature water in a restaurant here, and you’ll see what I mean! Among the more unusual items we ate this weekend were cooked pumpkin flowers, squid, rabbit, pig hand soup with cooked peanuts, white sweet potatoes, coconut rice, sweet potato greens, and much, much more. Lulu was very pleased that no one else wanted the head of the fish we’d enjoyed for lunch. Below is a picture of Lulu slurping out the contents of that fish head.

On that happy note, I end today’s blog entry. Till next time!

Tags: China, travel

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