Hainan Island @ China (4) – Sanya Snorkeling
Sanya (三亚） is the tourist center of the Hainan Island. There are many tourists and tourist groups. You can easily kill a week or two. From Five Finger Mountain to Sanya, there are many buses daily. It takes over 2 hours and costs less than 10 dollars. You can just directly go to the bus station at the city center of five finger mountain and buy the tickets.
The famous beaches in Sanya include Da Dong Hai (大东海）, Ya Long Wan（亚龙湾）， look like this:
No wonder whenever my parents went to the national parks or beaches in US, they feel something wrong and scream “where are all the people?” These beach areas are like the strip in Las Vegas. There are many hotels, restaurants, shops, night life, and of course people from different countries.
There are many water activities on these “beach strips”. But all the tourist groups offer things like “half an hour diving (50+$)” “10 minutes jetski with a driver (30+$)”. Yet, there is a very long waiting line. Aha, I remember when I interned, my boss owns 7 or 8 jetskis himself. We basically go out to ride the jetski the whole afternoon ourselves on the lake Washington, lol
So i did some research and finally found a very remote island called Jia jing Island (加井岛). Some people said it is the only serious snorkeling site in Sanya. This island is not very big and no residents or any facilities like showers or bathrooms. The only way you can board on the island is to go with some tourist groups. These groups have tiny boats that can take you from the land to this island. There are no docks on the island, so only under the proper weather, we can board the tiny boats on the beaches. The trip costs about 300-500 RMB (dependent on where you book it), you have to book it on the Chinese websites like XieCheng (携程) and TaoBao (淘宝).
In Sanya, the tourist groups work with the client very closely as if your friends are organizing the trips. They called me 10 pm the day before the trip and tell me what to bring and where to wait for their bus. They also add me on wechat and sent me the trip pictures afterwards. The bus picks us up where we lived, and takes us to a dirty house located in a small town, and asks us to change swimming clothes right there 🙂 10+ women started taking off their beautiful dresses in this shared shower room, luckily I have all dressed up with my swimming suit, hoho. In the second stop, the bus takes us to a street food station to eat some local breakfast — special kind of sour noodle (陵水酸粉). It was sooooooooooo yummy.
This island has beautiful beaches, and surprisingly a lot of beautiful corals near the shore. But these corals are almost too shallow so you will need to be careful to not hit them with your fins or feet. There are many fishes and you don’t need to swim very far. I also see some crabs. Unfortunately, the water was very cloudy maybe because it was a raining day or maybe the water there is always cloudy?!
The tourist group brings some loud speakers and hosts a party on the beach. We also went out for some Chinese style jetski and banana boat ride in the rain. The banana boat is some inflation boat shaped like a banana. Then there is some jet boat towing the banana boat to make some waves. Many people fallen off the boats and scream…
In the afternoon, we were eating our bbq lunch on the beach. Some water police got onboard “who is in charge?” Silence. “it belongs to the government, and it is illegal to play here. where are your tour guides? …” Our tour guides all disappeared. After half an hour also, the water police left, our tour guides showed up from nowhere and continued their business cheerfully as nothing had happened. I sometimes love such chaotic scenes in China. Life is short, why waste so much time and energy to make up or follow whatsoever a group of people’s correctness? Sometimes, what is correct and what is wrong after all?!