Rocking China: September 2007

Haikou is the province capital of Hainan Island which is the biggest Chinese Island (overlooking Taiwan of course). I got there on the first eve of Chinese New Year also known as Spring Festival (春节). This is the most important event for Chinese people and they are celebrating it for about two weeks. Just imagine we western people would celebrate our New Year for two weeks and you get an idea what is going on during these days. Actually I wanted to head as soon as possible further south for surfing, but it turned out that the local surfers (actually all of them western people) would go there later during week. Since the hostel and the people living at the hostel have been really nice I stayed 3 days in Haikou with a lot fun and a lot of relaxing. Later during week I took the bus to Xinglong which is a small town at the east side of Hainan. I spend the first day at the beach and got sunburned. In the afternoon Markus and Danio came there as well and stayed one night before going to Sanya. On the next two days me, a Venezuelan, a US-American and a French guy went up and down the coastline in a small QQ car to find some surf able waves. The waves we found have not been too good, but better then nothing and I could get some rides. After these two days I went back to Haikou and took a ferry back to the mainland in order to catch a bus to Shenzhen and to enter Hong Kong.

On the way from the airport to the hostel I met an American Japanese couple and a Hong Kong - Indian couple. Before having the Spring Festival dinner together we first had to get "rid" of the drunken Canadian occupying the entrance area to the room of one of the couples