Haikou is the capital of Haidian Island which is populated by ethnic minorities, mostly the Li People along with Miao (also called Hmong) People. Cruise ships have just started to stop there, no one speaks English, but acceptance of US dollars is universal. Chinese tourism is important source of revenue during the northern China’s cold season (we had ice on the ships exterior in Shanghai only days earlier.) The location on the coast and proximity to the equator yields a tropical climate year round. This island is similar to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau in that foreign commerce was significant and brought knowledge, religions, and trends from around the region. The architecture of buildings and temples was influenced by India and Arabia and very evident in pre-World War I construction. This port town is very interesting and unspoiled by non-Chinese tourism.
We turned in today’s excursion tickets to the Mangroves (seen plenty) and Volcanos (we live on lava in a volcanic formed region) and opted to take a shuttle to Old Town Haikou. It was a rain on, rain off kind of day and we had the best time walking the main streets and alleyways. We saw meat markets with caged chickens and pigeons and the hatchet at the ready. We saw a dental office with the door open and a person in the chair being worked on. We went down one of the home décor streets to see toilets/urinals, washing machines (no dryers), TV’s, ornate drape stores, big new 2 burner stoves, air conditioners (everybody has 2 or 3 hanging outside their apartment) and umpteen motorcycle sales and repair shops.
We’re pretty hungry so we chose a bakery as a safe food zone. They offered prepackaged sandwiches, rolls and cookies. We selected a sandwich to share and 2 each of 3 different kinds of rolls. We go to the cashier who proceeds to take out 2 of the rolls we selected and places them in a separate bag and puts them on a separate counter and first waves her hand to say, not these; then, she make a cat like hand gesture (kind of like a scratch). She would not let us buy those 2 rolls and we can only guess at what must have been inside???? We ate everything we bought and it was delicious…but will always be curious about those 2 rolls.
We continued on our journey to another part of the city which included all the grade schools and look out when the school day is over. 100’s and I mean 100’s of motorcycles descend on that area to pick up the kids. Each cycle had 1, 2 or 3 kids, all in uniforms. The streets are narrow; the cycles are electric so no noise and you better be watching where you are going. The only thing that saved us on a couple of occasions was the honking horns, which they use constantly. Crossing the street is quite a trick to pull off. We were told to wait for what looks like a space between cycles and step out and continue across at a steady pace. DO NOT STOP! The cycles seem to just glide around you if you keep walking; however, if you stop, chances are good you may get hit.
Our visit to Haikou proved to be a most awesome day.
