Hainan; or, would it be worth flying to China just for a few days at the South China Sea? YES!

Hainan is an island south of China. We originally decided to come here because my beloved roommate Haley had showed me pictures of amazing tree houses in Hainan, and I had to go. Sadly, Matt called and the tree houses were under renovation...but we still loved it!

To get to Hainan the entire train was put on a ferry or something and went across water! It was a very long and hot process as they turned off the power. It was MUCH worse on the way back because it happened around 1 a.m. and I woke up because I thought I was suffocating and that is when I looked around me and just saw seemingly naked Chinese men on all the beds around me. Yikes!

Here is Matt looking from our train onto the water. Weird.

We arrived at our hostel in Hainan and the clerks were very friendly. They even offered us candy! They said the candy was very popular in Taiwan. Bethany and I said thanks and then they started saying that after about 10 minutes you started to get really relaxed...Bethany thought they said after 10 minutes you can spit the candy out. So, she popped it in her mouth. By the time we were out the door Matt was yelling at her to spit it out because it was actually DRUGS--similar to LSD.

After the drug fiasco we made it to the beach! It was unbelievably gorgeous. The first day we went to the beach near our hostel. The second day we ventured to where the fancy resorts were and utilized the private beaches. We got caught at the first place but then moved down a bit...and man it was HOT. I was wearing my shirt most of the day and kept reapplying sunscreen and wasn't even in the sun that long and still got burned.

Luckily Matt discovered this and it saved us. After realizing that if we spent the whole day in the sun we'd be fried, we spent one of the best days of my life lounging on hammocks in a tropical paradise, reading Twilight (I'd already read all of the other books I brought--lots of times on trains--and Bethany lent me her copy).

Here we are in our hostel, still laughing about Princess Cat.

This is Bethany and me reluctantly getting on our sleeper train out of Hainan. We loved the place. it was perfect.