Get Me Out of Sanya

In planning my vacation I thought it would be easy to spend eight days in Sanya.  I could just chill on the beach, do some swimming, and all would be well.  Three days in and I’m wishing I could be home already.  Maybe the train ride just broke my brain, but I can’t get any joy out of this vacation at all.  The biggest problem is that outside of the beach there is nothing to do in Sanya.  My hostel offers all kinds of cool tours but they are way too expensive if I take them alone and I have to form my own groups.  Today I finally just told them if anyone is going on any of the tours that I want to join them.  Of course I doubt any groups will form that I can join; people don’t come to Sanya to see monkeys, they come here to sunbathe on the beach.  Sadly, the beach is just not that great.

When I first arrived in Sanya I went straight to the beach to see what I had in store for me.  The moment I walked onto the sand I said aloud, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

There were people on every inch of sand for as far as the eye could see.  The beach is similar in quality to many of the beaches I’ve been to in California, just with a crowd that puts Hanauma Bay to shame.  Which is too bad because Sanya is supposed to be the Hawaii of China, but it most certainly is not.  Maybe at one point Sanya could comfortably be compared to Hawaii, but now it’s not even close to the same league.  Tourism has pretty much driven all of the fish away, so there’s no good snorkeling.  The beaches are so crowded it’s not all that fun to just relax in the sand.  About the only thing that is good is the swimming.  But even that I’m not able to do much of because the weather took a sudden turn for the worse on only my second day here.  It’s now cloudy, windy, and too cold to get in the water.  The forecast for the rest of my time here doesn’t look too promising either.  Top that off with a rapidly developing cold (or allergies, not sure which) and I’m having the time of my life.

I didn’t realize just how troublesome traveling alone would be.  Or how lame it would be.  Seriously it’s not fun at all to travel alone.  Not to mention it’s a little scary and somewhat embarrassing to boot.  I just have to keep telling myself it was cheaper to come here than it was to change my return flight to an earlier date.  Then I go out for a 100 yuan dinner and think there’s no way this is going to end up being cheaper.