Beaches etc

Hainan isn't just the place where I'm gonna make my first million. It's beautiful. Can you believe that other than the three pages in the Lonely Planet and a few meagre web sites, there is no tourist information in English for this place?

Check out the beaches:



The cute chick is my friend Addie who came to visit from the states. We took four days and drove around the island to check it out.

We hired a guy to take us to this island in his fishing boat. It turned out to have a military installation on it so we decided not to set foot on land... but the guy taught me my first sentence ever in Hainanese .... "I don't know how to fish!"

Better place to live than Buckingham Palace


Check out that emerald green forest..

Soaring mountain peaks...

Tranquil lakes

Lush green rice paddies

This waterfall we found by wandering at random down a mountain track for four hours. We ran into some folk gathering pine oil and got invited in for a cup of green tea. We were the first tourists they'd seen that year (it was already late February, at the end of the high season) and the first ever non-chinese. The water was kind of chilly but I'll be back here in summer for a dip, gorgeous! The locals told us it according to fable three "fairies" (dunno how to translate this, maybe "female immortal", "Siren"?) lived there and anyone who swims in the pool gets more and more beautiful by the day. I feel pretty, O so pretty!!

And I ain't even started on the night-life yet....

Pictures of Food

I was talking earlier about chinese food and how everything, everything has to be fresh. Feast your eyes!

You can get your fruit and veg in the supermarket too these days, but I still buy all of mine from these little stalls on the street. I enjoy haggling with the old ladies and have them try to convince me to meet their unmarried daughters.


I'll buy the first person to tell me the english names of all of the above fruit a pint. I only know the bananas and mangoes.


The above is not an aquarium, but a restaurant believe it or not! They don't bother printing menus, you just point at the sea cucumber or blow-fish and tell them whether you wanted it fried, work.


The famous chinese spicy BBQ.


You name it, they have it. The baby squid still have their eyes and feel squishy when you bite into them. Mmmmm

The fresh policy extends to poultry too.

"How much are the fat juicy ones?"

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

In response to requests for lots more photos...


I'm seeing red. It's chinese new year and if it's not red, it's dead.


Everyone's even wearing red socks. I feel out of place.


I'm just outside of Beijing and the temperature outside is ten below but the welcome here is warm enough to banish those cold nights away. I've been invited to a friend's house for six days to spend the new year and I feel spoilt rotten. A lot of foreigners show up in Beijing at the beginning of February and expect a party the likes of which the world has never seen before and then, scratching their heads as they wander down abandoned streets and past closed shop fronts wonder where everyone is.


Well, if you read any of my last posts, you know the answer already. Eating. Chinese new year isn't the booze-soaked legless orgy that those confused backpackers were expecting but more like Christmas traditionally is in the west. Chinese companies give extraordinarily few days off per year, many giving none at all outside of national holidays - and everyone gets a whole week off for the 'spring festival' as the chinese call it so it's a rare chance to spend time with family, to relax and have fun together.


Hmm, here's a problem. When you're the host at new years, everything you serve for 5 days has to be quite literally killed-five-minutes-ago fresh, but the shops shut for 5 days. What on earth can you do??


Yes, it's still alive and swimming around. And yes, I was very careful aiming.


This is the coolest grandad ever. He worked as a chinese medicine practitioner for the communist army in the war and teaches me some things about acupunture points. He obviously takes his own advice as he's nearly 80 but runs around like a man half his age.


The cutest little girl in the world. Spoilt as only an only child with an unending plethora of aunts uncles, grannies and grandpas can be spoilt, she is still adorable. She calls me 'Ge-ge' or big brother and I feel accepted as part of the family. She's the only chinese to date who has dared to try correct my english.


The cutest little dog in the world. 15 years old and still going.


The 'younger generation' take me out for a spin around town. Son and daughters of uncles number 1, uncle number 2 and uncle number 3 (I'm not kidding, chinese people really do number their uncles) they all went to great schools and speak the kind of chinese you hear on your language tapes - chatting is easy. Their parents speak with a broad north-eastern accent that though difficult to understand sounds warm and friendly to my ears. It eerily reminds me of uncles and aunts in Yorkshire, the way they talk and the happy times I spent there as a kid being spoilt rotten by them. If you want a perspective on chinese education, try (if you can) imagining Westminster passing a law initiating a program in Yorkshire to ensure every schoolchild learns 'correct' pronounciation according to queen's english....
They take me to McDonalds on the second day of this the most traditional of chinese holiday and it's full to bursting. None of my companions seem able to see the irony.


In the evening after stuffing ourselves to bursting point yet again we discuss names and I help my friend choose an English moniker. Everyone, please meet Olivia:




Just to prove I was in Beijing, here's me stopping by the new Olympic stadium on the way back to the airport. Sigh, back to Haikou. Well, at least it's gonna be warmer than here...