Hainan Island @ China (1) – General Tips
1/13/19 Sunny
Hainan island is a tropical island in China. It has tropical rain forest, interesting mountains and islands, oceans (with corals), national parks, Chinese minority cultures … Importantly, from here, you can take 4-day cruise trip to this very interesting Paracel Islands. Unlike other tropical islands, people in Hainan have invented many “ridiculous activities” (details later), which I was totally enjoying. Although I was there only 10 days, I can totally kill a few weeks there. It is funny that I not only have an advantage of speaking Chinese, but also have an advantage of having an Asian face, as at some places, white people are not allowed to enter :).
The best way to tour Hainan to my taste is self-driving. You can fly to HaiKou, the capital of the Hainan province located on the northern tip of the island, rent a car, and then drive down to SanYa, another important tourist destination (btw, flying to HaiKou is much cheaper than flying to SanYa). That way, you get a chance to visit many interesting little towns and villages on the island.
Hainan is a driving friendly province. There is no toll on highways, unlike other provinces in China. The road conditions are good. However, the rental companies only rent cars to people who has a Chinese driver license. If you have a license in other countries, you can take it to some “driving administrator office” in China to apply a Chinese license. You will need a copy of translated drive license (can be done in some official translation service in China), you will need to take a physical exam, and then pass a theory test. The Chinese license you get is “temporary”, effective for 6 years. Renting a car in China nowadays is convenient, using an app called “yi hai zu che”, costing about 15 dollars a day for any basic economy car. If you do not have a license, there is also this interesting service called “bao che”, which will send you a driver along with a car. It is expensive though, I have paid “1200rmb” for a 3 hour door-to-door service riding in an old van. You just use a Chinese search engine called baidu (google does not work in China) to find the phone numbers for such service. The greatness of China is that many people are hungry for money and work hard for that, so you can pretty much find any service in China by paying people, 24/7 availability. In addition, China has a couple of apps to call taxi. Didi is the famous one, but not doing very well nowadays. I use “cao cao chu xing” to order taxi to go to/back from the airports. In addition to taxi, these companies also offer services such as driving your cars home, e.g., when you are drunk.
Another important tip of traveling/living in China nowadays is to first get a Chinese cell phone number, as everything ties back to your phone number. All the useful apps you install in China need your phone number to verify you. I used tourist guides a couple of times when in Hainan. They call you up for what to bring and where to meet, and they use the last four digits of your phone number to identify you instead of your names. Importantly, you will need a phone number to open a bank account (note that if you do not have a job in China, the Chinese bank rejects you immediately to open any credit card in China but you can open a bank account). Using a bank account, you can deposit some Chinese yuan in Alipay and/or wechat (similar to Paypal). Everybody around me in China uses wechat and Alipay. Supermarket has express lanes if you use Alipay and wechat. Subway has a direct scanner at the entries to accept Alipay (yes, no tickets needed). When you walk into a restaurant, you cannot find a menu but just the barcode on the corner of the table. You scan the barcode in your wechat or Alipay. Then you can see menus/coupons, order your meals and checkout. Even the beggar on the street asks you to send them money by scanning their barcode. My mom talks to me like this nowadays “send me some money on wechat, so I can buy some stuff your father does’t not know” 😀
a giant market just for night life 
Russian is everywhere on the tourist site