Hainan: island paradise

We spent last week on Hainan China's version of America's Hawaii.  Hainan is an island and China's southernmost province.   Loads of tourists visit Hainan since it is a tropical paradise built up as a tourist resort destination.  It is apparently popular with Chinese as well as Russian tourists.  In fact, the signs where we were on Yanlong Bay (above) were in Chinese, then Russian, then English.

Last summer when we traveled around China with our group of four I had wanted to come to Hainan at the end of the trip.  But we weren't able to manage it and see everything else we had wanted to see.  We had heard too that summer is monsoon season and the rain could ruin the vacation vacation.  Indeed, last week our visit was sandwiched between several typhoons and we were lucky to have lovely weather during our week, with a bit of cloudiness and rain toward the end of the week.

We visited Nanwan Monkey island off Hainan, an island habitat for some 2000 monkeys accessible by chair lift.  Some monkeys were made to perform but most seemed free to roam.

Mostly we lazed on the beach, built sand castles, swam in the warm sea or in the many swimming pools of the resorts.  The air was clean and the fish was fresh.  I daydreamed about spending a month there next summer depending upon...well, depending upon where we are living by then.