Holiday on a crowded bus

It's beautiful, but not natural. It's laid back, but not relaxing. The Chinese love it, but it's an Australians bad dream. It's 海南岛 : Hai Nan Island of the southwest Chinese coast.

The waters are clear and blue, but you are not allowed to go in it. The breeze is light and sea fresh, but carries the noise of traffic and loud conversations on it. The beaches are long and not crowded, but sellers of all things cheap and not beautiful will come and harass you every 10 minutes and ensure no rest for the leisurely. they hawk such things as fruit, snacks, hammocks, sunglasses, and junk jewellery. they are relentless and unscrupulous.

The food was unbelievably good. the freshest and tastiest seafood and fruit i have had in a very long time. also ridiculously cheap. 10 fold the quality of back in the city and only a quarter of the cost.

but you have to know to shop in the street markets and go to the BYOFood restaurants. These shabby but friendly restaurants will escort you to the fish markets, help you make the freshest buys and then take it all back and cook it up for you. Our most extravagant meal of king prawns, crab and lobster, with lashings of rice wine and beer cost around ¥200, which is $35 aussie. for three people! most of our dinners cost ¥140; breakfast and lunch only ¥30. Including all our food, taxis, boat trips, and our seafront 4 star hotel room we only paid ¥1340 ($225) each for the five days. The airfares were an extra ¥1560 ($260) each.

Most locals use motorbikes, which greatly adds to the general noise pollution. in fact noise was the biggest problem of all. it was inescapable, and the wide open places available are so badly managed that everyone is crowded together to create more noise. Chinese love to talk loudly in a quiet room, and when you group them en masse they just get louder and more frenzied.

even on the famously cute little tourist island of 蜈支洲岛 swimming is only allowed on one 100metre stretch of the entire coast, thus ensuring all 500 tourists are jammed in close together and can frolic together in their collective piss and never-ending noisy spitting.