Of all the countries I’ve been, China somehow continues to disappoint again and again (exception of Chengdu). This was how I felt in Lijiang and Shangri-La, and especially this time in Haikou.
Coined “China’s Hawaii”, Haikou has semi resemblances with the beautiful island of US, except we don’t use the word beautiful in this case. Haikou does have beaches and sunny weather that reminds you of other islands or beachy places like Kenting, except it’s so polluted and quite dirty and rather boring. Haikou is definitely one of those cities where going once is enough, in fact more than enough.
By the way, not only did I get ripped off from a cab ride from the airport to my hotel, but also along the way I was quite afraid. Why? Within 5-10 minutes of my ride, Haikou greets me with a flipped over car on the road with two other cars in an accident that caused me to be quite worried for the rest of the trip. A really good way to leave an impression for me there.
Anyway I was only there for a weekend, but through my pictures you can get the ‘feel’ of this place. Since I don’t have many pictures for this trip, I won’t segment them by accommodations, things to do etc. like my recent posts but just describe each picture if need be.
Ritz Carlton Haikou (website)
When people come to Haikou and stay in Ritz Carlton, usually they are here to play golf.
Outside of Flair, the bar in Ritz Carlton Haikou
View outside Ritz Carlton… golf course?
Walking distance from Ritz Carlton is the Mission Hills area where there are lots of shops, restaurants, and attractions. Nothing extraordinarily fancy or special.
Had a panini as my first meal
Shopping
We stopped by Evergreen Park, or also known as Wanlvyuan
You can rent these trolley cars to drive around the park.
Cross this bridge and there’s a store to rent the trolley cars
We also passed by the Xixiu Beach Park
You can see from this picture that the water does not look clean at all. This is because it’s really close to Mainland China. From my research, Sanya, which is three hours drive away, has much better beaches.
Xixiu beach is not as popular as Holiday Beach, where all the tourists and locals go. That means it’s way more quiet right here.
Some mysterious object that looks like an anteater
Out of all the things to do, I would say Qilou Old Street was the most interesting simply because some of its architecture were of European design.
Architectures like these. You don’t see these types of designs generally in China (OK fine Shanghai has some architecture with some European resemblances too). In fact, Wikipedia says these are European fusion designs with Indian and Arabic influences.
A lot of these figures placed around the area
Poor doggies.
Very poor dog and mistreated
This is the marketplace and wet market street. Very stinky when you get to the meat section.
So as you can see, Haikou doesn’t look like a very attractive place to go to. It’s relatively uninteresting, it’s quite polluted, and there isn’t any good food there. Save your money and go somewhere else instead. Short post as it doesn’t deserve many words, except don’t go.
