January 10th We had a restful day, plans made for tomorrow.
January 11th Packed up and drove to Sanya, our tenant was handing back the apartment so she could move back home to the mainland. Our neighbours have changed, before we had a fast food hamburger place and an express delivery company. They have been replaced by a Lawson’s store and a Russian Pizza place. We had never heard of Lawson’s before but over the next three days we saw many of them.
Parking was even worse than before, in fact it gets worse every time we come down here now. I bundled Huan out with all our belongings and left her to it. By the time I got back our tenant had long gone! For a change there was not a lot of work for me to do, I can’t tell you how happy that made me feel.
Having had lunch in Wuzhishan before leaving, our first job in Sanya was to put up the ads for our apartment to be rented. Here’s Huan putting a couple of them up.
No afternoon naps today, despite being in more tropical climes, we had too much to do. Once Huan was happy with her ads we went off for a walk before dinner. I took that opportunity to show her where poor lonely Donald was, miles away from where our apartment is. PS Please don’t look at his green stripes!
And this is one side of our road, now completely taken up with electric bike parking and charging. The other side had no vacant spaces for cars either.
Dinner was a nearby restaurant, tasty enough and filling too.
My earlier happiness was very short lived, the laptop decided to play up, in fact it slowed down to an absolute crawl before giving up the ghost completely. After dinner I tried many things, removed all the additional software, tried updating Windows etc. Nothing really worked. I left it updating at a snail’s pace and went off to bed. I almost bought a packet of fags and some iced coffee. The local store no longer stocks the right coffee and my fags were not available. I suppose I should be glad about that!
January 12th Something must have happened while I was asleep. Mind you the updates had not finished. I switched everything off while we went out for breakfast and a visit to the bank. Here is our breakfast place, looks like we forgot to take photos of the food.
We walked to the bank, a good four kilometres, only to be told when we got there, at around eleven, that no one would be free to see us until two in the afternoon. All this just so that they can have a copy of my latest visa. We’ll try again another time… We had elevenses from a Xinjiang restaurant near the bank, half a flatbread each, and then set off back towards our apartment. Here’s a lovely view of the river on the way there.
I’m sure you recognise these two characters, even though Huan almost forgot. For some reason she doesn’t like cartoons at all, the only reason she eventually remembered this was because her son used to watch it. I told her I quite enjoyed them both trying to beat each other to death with frying pans and various other objects too. I this instance though, Tom is ‘doing the right thing’ testing Jerry who has his green health card in his hand.
All the way to the bank and back I was searching for a computer repair shop, with no success. From the photos you can see that the weather looks just the same as Wuzhishan this week but it’s misleading, it is much warmer here. I should have brought my shorts and sandals with me. Lunch was bought from the hamburger replacement store, Lawson’s, can’t complain it filled a hole. Huan had sweet corn and I had a chicken sandwich and an egg one.
Back in the apartment the laptop switched on so I thought I would start putting everything back in. Last night, I had succeeded in removing all the info from the laptop just in case it had to go for repair today. Unfortunately, and I have no idea how, I also removed all the same information from my portable external HDD which is what I use to manage data while we travel. That means I have no VPN files, no Chrome files, no bookmarks, in fact almost nothing at all. Luckily, MSOffice had not been removed and was working so I was able to type this up.
On the way to dinner we found another mouse (?) This one was advertising a bar.
Dinner was a disappointment, the place was good, the service too but the food was not up to much. I didn’t try the beer, they didn’t sell it by small glasses!
On our way home we noticed that all our adverts had been removed, along with many others. It seems we had not followed the rules about sizing!
January 13th Both of us slept late, Huan was up more than once in the night, she is still not 100%. Our first job was to print some new ads and get them put up. The print shop would not print our photo but instead typed it all again. They did fit it into an A4 size. Here is the boss replacing the one on the first board. Next was lunch, just a snack and eaten in the park.
The park was “
Always on the look out for birds we found some that were not egrets.
Of course there were also snowbirds and their grandchildren.
Here are a couple more of those signs, one we could get near, the other was ‘occupied’.
This is the lake mentioned on the first sign, beautiful, I think you’d agree.
We managed to spot a lizard, very different to the tree ones we usually see. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good shot that included its head.
Not only is the lake beautiful but the walks are too. They have done a good job here; visitors will definitely come more than once.
Huan also took far too many photos; this one is me standing in a tree photographing other similar trees in the vicinity.
Next up was a squirrel although he was a fast mover!
One mustn’t forget the man made additions, we do all need them. Here is one of the local weather monitoring stations.
Tucked away in the middle of the park is ‘moon viewing bridge’; at least I think Huan said something like that.
I don’t know about views of the moon but the views of the lake are good enough for me.
Here’s a view looking up the other side at the wood nymph frolicking up above.
Huan also spotted another bird; this one looks like a baby egret.
Not to be outdone, I spotted two more, one baby egret and one not.
“Where were the parents?” I hear you ask. Well they were always just that little bit too far away. You can see four of them in this photo.
After a wonderful morning and part of the afternoon, naps were needed when we got home. After waking we headed off for dinner to a place we had passed yesterday. On the way we passed a rather large rabbit, this year will be the “Year of the Rabbit”.
Dinner ended being taken in a cheap restaurant; the place we had seen yesterday seemed to be a tourist trap for seafood. After that we walked all round the ‘new’ duty free area, if you ask me it’s a waste of space and money. Then we went to the dockside where we had previously gone on a tourist boat trip and were amazed at the improvements. The road side bars look just as bad and as rundown as before, but entering into the dockside, everything looks new and good. Another visit may well be required, all I need is the boss’s approval and some loot.
January 14th Well at least Huan slept well last night, she kept me awake with her snoring and then when she wasn’t snoring I was trying to make sure she was still breathing! Breakfast was a snack by the river again; we were a bit too late for restaurants. We both had fried bread sticks, not very healthy I know, Huan’s was with Soya milk and mine with bottled coffee.
After that we went exploring further up along the riverbank where haven’t walked before. We found a few more nice parks and took far too many photos.
Our route had one or two detours along wooden walkways, no birds were sighted there though. We also passed an empty croquet court with no snowbirds. It was a lot bigger and better fitted out than the small one we have in Wuzhishan.
We saw quite a few of these signs and I would have to agree, they have done an absolutely marvellous job down here. There is greenery everywhere!
This park had no name, or none that we could find anyway. I decided to have a go on the exercise cycle; Huan as usual took too many pictures of me.
With no birds good enough to snap for you I decided to show you the moon, not the whole of it though so you can’t sang that you saw it.
After a long walk we came to another park, I’ll leave you to read the name. We saw only the half on our side of the road, we were too lazy to backtrack and visit the other side.
What we did see was beautiful enough; our only problem was that we could not get near enough to the pineapple buildings to walk along the river there.
We had to be like normal people and follow the road back towards home. That road led us to another park that we didn’t know about.
Luck was on our side in this park, we spotted the biggest squirrel we’ve seen yet. He was also a fast mover but we managed one or two shots.
I dare say that if we had spent a few more hours in this little woodland we would have spotted quite a few more creatures that live there.
After a bit more promenading we found a tree that I liked.
Soon we were round the other side of the beautiful buildings you saw earlier; they look a bit run down when you get close. I’m not sure who the creatures from the ‘fables’ are, they could be European or could even be Chinese.
Here’s a view from the front showing the complex name. The white building at the front no longer has any details on it and is completely empty. Ditto for the shopping centre off to the right.
Sanya seems to have the same problem as Wuzhishan; pedestrians take second place to New Year decorations. We climbed over this to avoid walking in the road; the young people behind us followed our lead.
More animals were discovered back in town, not real ones unfortunately.
How about this for a hotel name? Do you think they have a letter or two missing? If we were in an English speaking country it could be a way to be first in the directory.
For all you potential botanists out there
That sign brought us almost to our apartment. We had walked a long way again today so yet more naps were needed. Oh to be young and sprightly again…
When we roused ourselves we headed off on yet another route to find dinner. We crossed the road by going under the bridge where Huan found not only an altar but also someone’s bedroom.
She then took a photo of me drooling! One of these two is the one we had a tourist trip on back in the distant past. That trip was far too short and I was dreaming about how I’d love to own something like one of these and have enough money to run it!
We then headed down another coastline, not used by normal people at the moment as it’s all under construction. Perhaps we are not normal.
Where we were walking will look like this when it is finished.
When we thought we had walked enough we set off back towards home and looked for dinner. Huan spotted a Xinjiang restaurant, always good food there, so in we went.
Browse the menu if you like, you will see that as well as lots of good grub the prices are fairly reasonable too. Down in Sanya you sometimes have to be careful, just like any tourist places worldwide, but this restaurant was just fine. However, even with all those choices, we had already made our minds up before we went in, we wanted大盘鸡Dàpán jī (translates as big pan chicken). Just to be awkward, because there were only two of us, we also wanted a ‘small’ big pan chicken. Here it is:-
We can both recommend this dish, we have had it in many places now and it never fails. I prefer a small cold veg dish with it, we didn’t get one today, the boss ordered flatbread instead. It can be spicy, if it is just ask for a cup of yoghurt and tip it in there.
Here’s another photo of me taking a photo. This is a family that were very happy when I asked if they would like me to take the picture so they could all be in it. In fact I did that three times today with different people, all surprised and all happy.
We then walked past the dockside we had been to yesterday,
and headed towards the Sanya Cruise Tourist Centre, the next river along.
We wanted to take a closer look at the old style ship, I had wondered if it was a restaurant or at least a short cruise that included food. I think I was wrong, it was just another short distance cruiser, at least people were still getting on as we watched and they had no luggage.
Is Huan韩国人Hánguó rén,
South Korean? Someone was giving her a hard time and told her he hated her
before she told him she was actually Chinese, from
How about a couple of photos of us before it’s too late, I even managed to get Huan to pose.
And finally, the tunnel of love, well it could be used for wedding photos. It was not here the last time we visited this area but this is another place with a lot of work going on.
And that finishes our trip to Sanya. Our plan had been to stay until the apartment was rented but I told Huan that I needed to go home to Wuzhishan. My phone was filling up with photographs and I really needed the PC. If somebody calls we’ll go back down, otherwise we will wait until after the New Year when I’m sure Huan will find me some work to do there.
January 15th An easy day packing, breakfasting and then driving, that was the plan anyway. The last part was the difficult part, the highway was very congested from Sanya to Haitangwan, once past there we were fine. Lunch was at home, half a bap each with cheese, cucumber and tomato, and a little Branston Pickle, nice and simple. I thought Huan would then have a nap but she held out until bedtime. I had no time for napping, there were over three hundred photos to sort, file or delete, and then use some of them in this post. Hopefully I haven’t chosen too badly.
All that was left for me to do at the end of the day, twenty past ten, was my Chinese homework. I forgot the day before yesterday (I can do quizzes on my phone) and that has reset my streak. After yesterday’s quiz I am now back to one day!
January 16th Normality
resumed, we both slept late, we both started taking the cold meds again as our
noses were all stuffy this morning. I told Huan that this time she must finish
the course! Being a Monday we did the weekly shopping, it was crowded. We had
to wait to get into the car park and most of the cars there had Mainland and
not
After lunch I spent a lot of time on the laptop, making sure all updates were downloaded and installed. I then did some performance tests; the laptop results were not much different to those of the desktop. The same was true for internet speed tests. So I found nothing wrong, reinstalled all the stuff I had removed, hopefully all will be fine on our next foray to Sanya. That’s it for this week; we’ll see you next week, after the New Year.
PS You’re a rabbit if you were born in one of these years Rabbit – 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011.
From us two “Tiggers”, hope you have a good one!
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