For the past month, the temperature in Taishan has been in the low 40s during nights and when lucky, up to the high 50s during the day time. Hence, we decided to take a trip to warm Hainan where it's 85 afternoon and 70 at night for a few days of beaches and swimming.
One night while taking a break from expensive tourist fare in a pulled noddle shop, the shopkeepers brought in a bunch of coconuts. In Hainan, almost every store has 10-15 coconuts sitting outside and for about 5rmb (cheaper for the green ones, more expensive for the orange ones), you can sip on refreshing coconut juice. Now this noodle shop is in the middle of a city just on the edge of a newly developed hotel resort district. There are no coconut tree farms nearby and I certainly didn't see a delivery truck drop anything off. So we asked the shopkeepers about it ... they gave a little laugh and said everybody just cuts fruits down from beaches/parks/resort areas when it gets dark. Nothing better than letting nature be your supply.
Hainan is a tropical destination in Asia -- especially for Russians and northern Chinese fleeing the cold winters. This means tourist traps are everywhere. At one restaurant, customers sign the order before it goes to the kitchen for cooking. The prices were twice as high as what we pay in Taishan but we held our noses and shrugged "oh well". But when the bill came, an extra line item appeared as "cooking service charge". What? This make sense at
Chunyuan where you first buy your seafood at the market and then bring it over to the restaurants for cooking. No way you should pay a cooking fee when the restaurant is already charging nosebleed prices for their inventory. It didn't take much arguing for the fee to be waived which meant it was just their standard practice to sock it to unsuspecting tourists.
Another trap we ran into was rigged scales. Hainan is famous for fruits so as we passed through the small town outside
Nanwan Monkey Island, our mouths were watering to buy the delicious fruits. Except when they filled up a bag of small mangos, it came up to 1.1lbs (the standard measure is "gun" or a half-KG). Our friend said "no way this is 1.5" and considering the shopkeeper didn't even try to argue about it, it seems likely their electronic scales were purposely set to over weigh. We did get a cheap glass of coffee for 3rmb though in this town (coffee also is grown locally in Hainan).
In any case, we finally hit Fruit Street in Hainan and loaded up on all sorts of exotic fruit. Hell, I don't even know the names of most of this stuff. There was spiny red fruit with insides like lychees. Purple skinned fruits with white insides that tasted like oranges. Greenish-grey pear-shapes with insides like kiwis (but sweeter and smoother). Small, round, green pears with an apple taste. And of course mangoes -- we bought a full case for 100rmb, brought them back and I'm now eating one a day. (Here's a link to some of
Hainan's fruits.)
Another good option to avoid tourist prices are street BBQs. Almost anywhere in Sanya, you can find a vendor grilling food on the sidewalk with simple tables and chairs. Now street BBQs are also common in Taishan but the variety of food is much narrower. In Hainan, they also grill 10+ different types of fish, cuttlefish, peppers, mushrooms, corn, seaweed, rice bread and beef. The last two were fantastic!
Did I mention beef? In the U.S., beef is the #1 meat but in mainland China, pork is #1 -- Hainan is the big exception though. There is a huge culture of raising cattle in Hainan and herds of cows walking along/crossing roads is a common sight in rural areas. In Haikou, I had a delicious tenderloin steak (plus soup and sides) for 58rmb ($8.85 USD). The western-style restaurants here in Taishan commonly charge 88rmb-128rmb for a steak neither as large nor as good.
So these would be my takeaways for keeping costs down on a Hainan vacation: (1) Fruit Street in Sanya, (2) street BBQs, (3) steaks at western-style restaurants. Only eat seafood if you have a local guiding you to local dives.
Oh yes, one final note. Hainanese chicken is not available in Hainan. Strange right? You can find Wenchang chicken though and Hainanese chicken is what it evolved into
after Hainan locals brought it to Malaysia and Singapore. Wenchang chicken has a similar cooking style but the bird is larger (hence not as tender) and the dipping sauce is sweet pepper instead of salt+oil+ginger.
(Filed in china, spending)
Hainan vacation notes
Posted by Mossy
January 26, 2011 9:57 AM
One night while taking a break from expensive tourist fare in a pulled noddle shop, the shopkeepers brought in a bunch of coconuts. In Hainan, almost every store has 10-15 coconuts sitting outside and for about 5rmb (cheaper for the green ones, more expensive for the orange ones), you can sip on refreshing coconut juice. Now this noodle shop is in the middle of a city just on the edge of a newly developed hotel resort district. There are no coconut tree farms nearby and I certainly didn't see a delivery truck drop anything off. So we asked the shopkeepers about it ... they gave a little laugh and said everybody just cuts fruits down from beaches/parks/resort areas when it gets dark. Nothing better than letting nature be your supply.
Hainan is a tropical destination in Asia -- especially for Russians and northern Chinese fleeing the cold winters. This means tourist traps are everywhere. At one restaurant, customers sign the order before it goes to the kitchen for cooking. The prices were twice as high as what we pay in Taishan but we held our noses and shrugged "oh well". But when the bill came, an extra line item appeared as "cooking service charge". What? This make sense at Chunyuan where you first buy your seafood at the market and then bring it over to the restaurants for cooking. No way you should pay a cooking fee when the restaurant is already charging nosebleed prices for their inventory. It didn't take much arguing for the fee to be waived which meant it was just their standard practice to sock it to unsuspecting tourists.
Another trap we ran into was rigged scales. Hainan is famous for fruits so as we passed through the small town outside Nanwan Monkey Island, our mouths were watering to buy the delicious fruits. Except when they filled up a bag of small mangos, it came up to 1.1lbs (the standard measure is "gun" or a half-KG). Our friend said "no way this is 1.5" and considering the shopkeeper didn't even try to argue about it, it seems likely their electronic scales were purposely set to over weigh. We did get a cheap glass of coffee for 3rmb though in this town (coffee also is grown locally in Hainan).
In any case, we finally hit Fruit Street in Hainan and loaded up on all sorts of exotic fruit. Hell, I don't even know the names of most of this stuff. There was spiny red fruit with insides like lychees. Purple skinned fruits with white insides that tasted like oranges. Greenish-grey pear-shapes with insides like kiwis (but sweeter and smoother). Small, round, green pears with an apple taste. And of course mangoes -- we bought a full case for 100rmb, brought them back and I'm now eating one a day. (Here's a link to some of Hainan's fruits.)
Another good option to avoid tourist prices are street BBQs. Almost anywhere in Sanya, you can find a vendor grilling food on the sidewalk with simple tables and chairs. Now street BBQs are also common in Taishan but the variety of food is much narrower. In Hainan, they also grill 10+ different types of fish, cuttlefish, peppers, mushrooms, corn, seaweed, rice bread and beef. The last two were fantastic!
Did I mention beef? In the U.S., beef is the #1 meat but in mainland China, pork is #1 -- Hainan is the big exception though. There is a huge culture of raising cattle in Hainan and herds of cows walking along/crossing roads is a common sight in rural areas. In Haikou, I had a delicious tenderloin steak (plus soup and sides) for 58rmb ($8.85 USD). The western-style restaurants here in Taishan commonly charge 88rmb-128rmb for a steak neither as large nor as good.
So these would be my takeaways for keeping costs down on a Hainan vacation: (1) Fruit Street in Sanya, (2) street BBQs, (3) steaks at western-style restaurants. Only eat seafood if you have a local guiding you to local dives.
Oh yes, one final note. Hainanese chicken is not available in Hainan. Strange right? You can find Wenchang chicken though and Hainanese chicken is what it evolved into after Hainan locals brought it to Malaysia and Singapore. Wenchang chicken has a similar cooking style but the bird is larger (hence not as tender) and the dipping sauce is sweet pepper instead of salt+oil+ginger.
(Filed in china, spending)
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