Hainan - Haikou

Monday - Day 7 (9/2/2015)

I only had about 24 hours in Haikou by the time I had arrived from Sanya and then had to leave from the airport. Haikou, despite being the capital, was slightly disappointing after the sunshine, hot weather and smiling faces of the Sanya, as I arrived to cooler temperatures and drizzle. I didn't realise there was such a difference between the north and the south of the island.

My whistle stop tourist adventure of Haikou started with a visit to the 5 Officials Temple, a place dedicated to some exiled government officials, from various dynasties, who have made a difference to the education system in Haikou. It was quite a large compound but definitely on the verge of becoming run down and unloved.

One of the courtyards in the 5 Officials Temple

My next stop was to find the old streets and market streets near the river. I'm not sure if I found the right street but I found plenty of busy stalls, a lot of people and even more people on scooters obnoxiously weaving their way through the pedestrians on the narrow streets. The streets were predominantly full of stalls selling nuts, seeds and dried fruit and animals in cages - all the puppies, rabbits, guinea pigs and birds that I saw were very cute so I think they were destined to be pets rather than dinner.

I came across a street with beautiful architecture that, to me, seemed very out of place on a tropical Chinese island but it was definitely a street with history.

I next alley I walked down I loved and loathed in equal measure. It was the fresh food market. It was amazing to see the variety of things available. Naturally as Haikou is an island there was lots of fish available: large, small, dead, living, dried, eels and just about everything thing on offer imaginable. I was face to face with one very large, and very dead, fish at one stall. There were lots of other animals of offer to pacify any culinary craving: snakes, tortoises and other shelled creatures, pigs in cages, things that looked like badgers in cages, meat markets and just about everything imaginable - I even saw a man skinning a cat, it's still a mystery to me how you kill a cat though! Towards the end of the street you could by all your cooking equipment to prepare your fresh produce as well as all the vegetables to accompany it. As much this street was interesting from a foreigners point of view I didn't take any pictures, for the simple reason that trying to navigate this narrow alley street was hellish. There were large ominous looking puddles everywhere, people angrily barging past each other, scooters constantly blocking the way and incessantly tooting their horns and well as trying to avoiding tripping over the various items littered around the stalls. I decided not to throw a camera into the mix.

By the time I'd navigated my way through the warren of streets I decided to head back to the hostel where I, surprisingly, met up with a German girl who I had first met in Sanya. This was good because it met I had a dinner buddy to go and dine on street food with.

Tuesday - Day 8 (10/2/2015)

So after sleeping in much later than I planned - the eye mask I bought clearly works well - I managed a quick trip to Baishaman park to see how the beach in Haikou compared to that of Sanya. It looked nice but didn't quite have the scenery of Sanya.

After some streetfood for lunch it was time for a very busy bus to the airport for my flight to Taipei, Taiwan.

G x