Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Week One - Part 2

Hot and beautiful
It is very hot on Hainan Island. We are staying in the resort town of Sanya, on the southern tip of the island, and all I can say is - we are having great time! We flew here from Canton, as I remember its name from before, called now Guangzhou (at first all of these chinese names does not make much sense, but as time goes by, I am more accustomed to it).
Ada decided that I would enter China mainland on my feet, not by plane or by the boat - initally we wanted to fly directly from Macao to Sanya, but she changed our plan.
So, my first chinese experience comes from Macao-China border. Well, Macao is in China, but still has autonomy - you really get the taste of mainland once you cross the border.
Hong Kong and Macao got 50 years to get integrated to China, with special arrangements with chinese central government.

We took a taxi from our Macao hotel that took us to the border - and yes, it is a real border, international one - it is similar to one in Hong Kong, when you are crossing border to go to Shenzen - this means that you need your passport and chinese visa.
We basically walked to ZhuHai, China - that is the city adjacent to Macao - even though it was a Labour Day (in communist/socialist countries, May the 1st is called a labour day), and that means that people were not working, and there were many of them- we crossed the border quickly, without any obstacles. I was happy to get chinese customs border stamp in my passport, after Hong Kong and Macao. Before entering no-man's land, chinese police checked my passport - well, I looked different than everyone else on the border crossing!

There was a big square we entered after the border control, it was really huge, and I started realizing that in this world everything is huge and big. Sweet Sugar asked some policemen where is a bus station where we would catch a bus to Canton airport, and all of them were pointing in the wrong direction - we found it by ourselves, not far from the square, 300 m to the right.

I was in China now
This meant that there was no english (and portuguese) signs on street and in stores, so I was dependant on Sweet Sugar - well, she did get lost too, because there was so much mix between cantonese and mandarin, and I guess it is not easy to decipher them when they are mixed together. I was happy to see though that the major highway and services signs were still written in english. I could survive it somehow!!

It was funny how people were watching me, with some curiosity, as we were not part of any tourist group, and there were no foriegners here. I certainly did not mind it.

I liked the bus
Yes, there was so much leg room that I could almost lay down - so our 2.5 hrs drive to Canton airport was very pleasant. The highway was better than Alberta highways (and that is not hard to accopmplish if you think about Alberta extreme weather), and all infrastructure on it was very decent.
Sweet Sugar was concerned that I would complain about humidity, too many people, crowd, washrooms without toilet bowl (if I can say that), some of not that clean aspects of the bus station, but I was ok with that - I was used to it much before I came to Canada - in Bosnia and Croatia we have similar bus stations. And for having many people around, to the point it becomes very crowded, I was all ok with it. It actually resembles Europe, shows me that there is an intense life happening here. It was certainly such a contrast to a sterile lifeless Alberta (excluding Banff).
Well, I was better prepared for all of this than Sweet Sugar, as she was saying how it would've been better if we were flying from Hong Kong or Macao, instead taking the bus to Canton. I liked it though, to see how average people travel here, and how all of it functions.

As I am writing this, it is + 31 C, we just had lunch, tummy is full, there are no cluds above us, life cannot be better . I learned that the sun here is a real killer - last couple of days I stayed in shade, except when going snorkelling - I learned my lessons, no more sunburns!

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