One Saturday night, my friends and I were standing around contemplating what we should do for the five day weekend (we originally planned on skiing, but that already happened a few weeks prior). I remember saying something like “Lets just hop on a train to China and see where it takes us!“, and so that’s exactly what we did (Well by we I meant Rob and I, since everyone else flaked out on us; either thinking that this was headed straight for failure, or they had something else they’d rather be doing. But hey, I don’t judge).

Ultimately, we ended up in Haikou (海口), capital of the Chinese province of Hainan.

How did you end up in Haikou?

We had evening tickets up to Guangzhou out of Hong Kong so getting into China was pretty straightforward. A 2 hour train ride later, we were at Guangzhou Eastern Rail Station and at this point we had our sights set on Sanya (三亞) located at the southern tip of Haikou. After a brief subway ride to Guangzhou Central Rail station and we discovered that we had made a huge mistake; You would think a station with 15 ticket counters and hundreds of people lined up would have some tickets for sale, but sadly, that was not the case. Since virtually all tickets out of Guangzhou were sold out for the night as well as the next day, dejected, we decided to have dinner instead (it was already 9pm) and re-think our plan.
At this point we were still set on going to Sanya, and so, we decided to try our luck over at the bus station. Luckily for us, we ended up on the 10:40pm overnight bus to Haikou, which was at least part-way to where we wanted to be. The overnight bus ride was as comfortable as any 10 hour bus ride could get (read: not comfortable at all) and we were dropped off at some port at 9am and took a 1.5 hour ferry ride over to Haikou. After arriving, we had lunch and decided we should try to cath a train to Sanya, but it left a little too late so we decided to stay in Haikou for the remainder of the trip (we did not want to take a bus back to Guangzhou so we also bought train tickets since we were already there)

we travelled by train, bus, boat, tuk-tuk (above), taxi, and a train that goes on a boat

Oh we stayed at this lovely hostel, across the street from Hainan University and down the street from some amazing street food. Oh, and they make a great (Western) breakfast!! I even had grilled cheese for the first time in four years (I know, I know, it’s not difficult to make, but I’m lazy) :

Haikou? There’s nothing there.

Wrong. There was plenty to do for the adventurous.

Haikou was a very relaxed and tropical city- there were many times when I completely forgot I was in China. The fruits were very tropical, and amazingly fresh; mangoes, pineapples, coconuts, watermelons and longans! Our hostel was actually across from Hainan University, which was a humungous campus. Actually, in therms of area, Haikou was huge.

Fruit shopping after a very late lunch

That’s it?

Well. Yes and no. To be honest, I didn’t see alot of Haikou. I didn’t get a chance to visit the volcanoes , nor the beaches (I did pass by them, if that counts for anything), but boy oh boy, do I have stories to tell. We met a whole bunch of people from all corners of the world at the hostel, one guy was even nice enough to take us out and treat us to dinner our first night there (seeing how we couldnt speak the local dialect there). Then there was the random binge drinking – we were just finishing breakfast at the hostel when this guy walks by with two huge jugs and goes “Who wants rum?”. I later found out that he made the rum himself and we just sat around in the middle of the day drinking and talking to complete strangers for about 4 hours.

Later some of these “strangers” (at this point, they were not complete strangers) decided to get some food, I had some great noodles at the sketchiest shop ever, and we topped it off with some watermelon served in a plastic bag. We also wandered around the campus of Haikou University and topped off our trip with some street food. There was this one street near our hostel that had about 50-60 vendors selling everything from noodles in soup to fried condensed milk. I also had some very interesting coconut ice cream – first the lady put grass jelly, pineapple, watermelon, tapioca, some chewy noodles, corn, and a quail egg topped off with two gigantic scoops of coconut ice cream, coconut shavings and peanuts. I Know, it sounds absolutely disgusting right? But take my word for it, it was AMAZING (ok except for the egg in my ice cream, that was totally wierd).

Watermelon in a bag!!

Having fun on campus at Hainan University

Sure, my leg totally go eaten alive by mosquitoes (I have no idea how it happened, we went out for dinner and I came back like that!  Also, I don’t know why its only my right leg), and I couldn’t understand one word that was said to me, but I’d definitely go back to Haikou (and probably try to get to Sanya) again in the near  future. Perhaps next time, I’ll fly (but I actually enjoyed the train ride between Guangzhou and Haikou, I mean, the train goes on a boat!!!).

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