Hainan is an island off the south coast of China. I had to make this trip quick, as my Vietnamese visa had already started.

The journey to Hainan included a stop-over in Maoming, as Kaiping didn’t have its own train station. As Maoming wasn’t in the Lonely Planet guidebook I had with me, this meant making things up as I went along. I got a bus from Kaiping to Maoming and had to check with the bus driver we were in the right place before jumping off. I had spent at least 25 minutes in the previous hotel asking the hotel woman on reception to write ‘Maoming East Railway Station’ in Chinese, so that I could check with someone once I was there. As with some of the previous places I’d stayed in, there wasn’t much in terms of English language translations, so I had to ask some policemen where it was. The short conversation consisted of them confirming that I had found the right place and that I could go in search of somewhere to stay. Eventually, after looking around for about an hour, I found somewhere to stay. This was quite an achievement, as practically no-one I spoke to knew any English at all. It was a bit of a relief finding somewhere that could string a sentence together!

I got the train the next day from Maoming to Haikou. This was a 6 hour journey in the hard-seat class and was actually quite enjoyable. I spoke to the woman sitting opposite, who had gone to Guangzhou from Haikou to see a doctor and we went through some of the places to see in Hainan. What was unusual about this train journey was that the train carriages were loaded onto a ferry to cross over into Hainan. This I didn’t really like, as were were effectively contained within two separate metal containers, but it was over very quickly. Once I was in Hainan I got a bus from the train station to the closest stop to my hostel.

Places I stayed at in Hainan:

Haikou (2 nights)

Here I stayed for 2 nights whilst I figured out what I wanted to do. I had about a week in Hainan, as I thought it was a good amount of time before heading into Vietnam. Whilst I was here I got the people on reception to translate what the woman on the train had written and it turned out that these were all popular tourist attractions, but a man on a bike later on explained that they were probably going to be expensive and not very authentic or genuine. Therefore, later the next day, I decided to get the man doing the painting, who turned out to be the owner, to give me some other ideas. He suggested cancelling Wanning, as there wasn’t much there and suggested that most of the east coast was a building site anyway, so there wasn’t much point in going. I couldn’t leave Hainan without visiting Bo’ao, so I made sure I went there and cancelled Wanning instead.

Whilst I was in Haikou I rented a bike and cycled to the coast. A Dutch guy, Kai, offered to come with me, but he wanted to go to the port first, to buy a ticket to Nanning. I was already running fairly late, so we both rented bikes, but both went in separate directions.

My trip to the coast was a long one. Something that is still not fully understood by the Chinese people that work in Chinese hostels is what constitutes a pleasant bike ride. This particular journey was along a lot of main roads and I had to mix with the traffic at some points. The map I had bought as well should have been called ‘planned cycle routes for 2015’, as it was very optimistic. Nevertheless, after much cycling around, I made it to the coast. It was nice; almost dererted with only a minimal amount of rubbish. The new hotels along the coast line seemed to be empty however, so I’m not sure how much of the construction work is going to be of benefit.

On the way back, I decided to follow a different route and go through the villages. I don’t know how many people go through there, but as soon as I left the main road I had school children laughing and looking at me. As I got further towards the coast, there were more people who were surprised to see me, until I got to one intersection and a load of kids on mopeds decided to join me. Only about 4 of them were on 2 mopeds, the rest were running, but they were all laughing and attempting to point me in the right direction. I didn’t know whether to believe them, so I took some of the turnings myself, until I got completely lost and got one of the adults to show me the way. We parted at the point that I could tell where I was, as I could see the bridge I had come over.

Bo’ao (2 nights)

I got to Bo’ao by bus, as I wanted a change from the train and it seemed to be more convenient. The journey was very pleasant as it goes through the Chinese countryside and at this point it was all looking very tropical. I stayed on the second bus, expecting the driver to tell me where to get off, but we reached the end of the line and there was still me and 2 other people on the bus. One was lost and couldn’t figure out where to tell his friend to come to (as he was transporting something) and the other woman had fallen asleep and overshot her intended destination. What followed was a pleasant moment where the driver smoked a cigarette and we all waited to go back again.

After wandering around Bo’ao for a bit, tring to find a hotel, I went back to one I had avoided in the beginning. This was full, but the English-speaking daughter of the woman on reception explained that they had somewhere else. They called a taxi, which was a motorbike with a kind of side-car and they drove me to one of their friend’s hotels. This was a family hotel and I stayed there for 2 nights.

Whilst I was in Bo’ao I didn’t really do much other than going for a walk along the beach and eating. On the last day, before leaving for Wuzishan, I went to one of the villages that the guide-book was suggesting, but that was it.

Wuzhishan (2 nights)

Wuzishan is in the central highlands in Hainan and so takes a while to get to. I had to go back to Qionghai to get there and had a conversation with some Chinese girls whilst I was waiting for my second bus.

Once I was in Wuzishan, I started what turned out to be a very long search for hotels. I tried about 5 places in the end, settling for the most central and most expensive. I could have easily gone for the 4th one, but by the time I had seen hotel number 5 I had been walking around for ages and so decided to go for the expensive one. It was very nice and I stayed there 2 nights.

During the daytime, I decided to climb Wuzishan mountain. This I did fairly early in the morning, as I knew it was going to take a while to get there. After getting something to eat and getting to the bus station, the woman behind the counter told me that the next bus was in at least and hour and a half and I was going to have to wait for it. This was going to get me to Wuzishan mountain far later than expected, so I walked around outside and tried some other options. The motorbike drivers were unwilling to take me there for the price of the bus, but I found another bus outside which was leaving much sooner. On it were 2 people from Chengdu who were also climbing the mountain. We had a broken conversation in English until the bus took us there. Once in the closest village, a motorbike taxi took 5 of us to a viewing gallery for the mountain. We figured-out that were were in the wrong place and the Chengdu couple paid for another motorbike taxi to the correct one. Once there, I climbed the mountain and they looked around the scenic area. I met them a few hours later and we all got the bus back to Wuzishan city.

Sanya (1 night)

Sanya I only spent 1 night in. It was very nice, but it was also touristy and expensive, so I decided to go elsewhere. I spent a day on the beach, as the weather was amazing and left.

I got a bus directly to Kaiping from Hong Kong, missing out Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou completely. It was worth it. I had a few options for where I stayed on the first night:

1. Hong Kong. This would have meant getting a bus back to where I was previously on Hong Kong island and finding somewhere to stay there. This would include the cost of accommodation, the bus to the island and then either the metro to Hung Hom and the train to Guangzhou, or a ferry to Macau
2. Macau. This would have involved going back to Hong Kong island and getting a ferry to Macau. It would also involve finding somewhere to stay in Macau and learning how the Mass Transit System worked (if any)
3. Guangzhou. A bus back to Hong Kong island and then the metro to Hung Hom and the train to Guangzhou, plus booking somewhere in Guangzhou and figuring out how to get to it.

All of these meant more travelling the same day that I got back to Hong Kong and after much consideration I decided to go directly to Kaiping, which is where I wanted to go next anyway. In the airport I found the departures section for local transport and managed to find a bus to Kaiping. There I met Yen, a Chinese person who spoke much better English than the woman trying to serve me. I was trying to ask how ‘downtown’ was written in Chinese, as I wanted something to show a taxi driver when I got there. Both Yen and the bus company worker were very worried that I was not going to find anywhere, but I didn’t think it was going to be a problem. Yen gave me his mobile number and told me to call him if I had any problems.

The bus went to Shenzhen first, where we had to wait for another, bigger bus to Kaiping. Whilst I was waiting on the bus, someone asked me where I was going and whether I was travelling. I had to move seats before we could finish our conversation, but later on, once we were in Kaiping, I got the girl to help me find a taxi. Her and her boyfriend walked me to a taxi and explained where I wanted to go, plus letting me know how much it was going to be. The taxi dropped me at a hotel, which I ended up staying in for the next 3 days.

Whilst I was in Kaiping, I visited several Diaolou and villages in the surrounding area. Dialou are old, colonial-style buildings which were built by locals, on their return from Western countries. They were used to protect the villagers and families from looters and bandits, but are very grand and ornately decorated, whilst at the same time being made from re-inforced concrete. Whilst I was there I visited Zili village, the Majianglong Dailou Cluster and Jinjiang Li village. The Historic Town of Chikan also looked good, but I only had time to go through there by bus. All 3 were excellent, with Jinjiang Li village being particularly impressive.

As Kaiping didn’t have its own train station, the next step was to get a bus to Maoming, which did. Maoming wasn’t in the guide book, so this was un-chartered territory!

I went to Taiwan on a recommendation from someone in a hostel, who was also from Taiwan, but who said I should visit. She was bound to say that I should visit, but the question that stuck in my mind, was ‘if you don’t go now, then when are you going to go?’. This becomes more pertinent when you think that home for me is almost on the other side of the planet.

I spent 2 weeks in Taiwan, covering both the Christmas and New Years periods. I think I escaped quite lightly, paying only marginally higher prices than in mainland China in some places. The thought of staying in Hong Kong for 3 weeks was too much and it would have left me no money to do anything else. Taiwan was a good choice, both in terms of the trip itself and the financial side of things.

This is the rough outline for what I did whilst I was there:

Taipei (3 nights)

Whilst I was in Taipei, I had to move hostels, but nothing on the scale of before. This involved staying in one hostel, which I found first and because of the time of year, I had to move the next day. There is a problem with hostels in Taiwan, in that they’re not recognised legally and any attempts to get them legalised are met with resistance and the requirement for a hotel permit. This are difficult to get, as there are numerous safety requirements, all designed for running a hotel. This is what was explained to me anyway and the second place I stayed in was not on the Hostel World website. It was on hostels.com (or something) and even though that said it was full, the woman in the first hostel rang them and checked there was space. This was somewhere that they were recommending anyway and as it was only down the road, I happily moved. I actually preferred the second place and the owner, Lin, gave me a good idea of what I should do with my time in Taiwan.

I spent the first few days exploring the city. I quickly decided that I much preferred it to Hong Kong, as there seemed to be the best parts from both mainland China and Hong Kong in one place. The weather was good, the women were beautiful and things were relatively cheap. During my time in Taipei, I went to the Botanical Gardens and the Museum of Contemporary Art, but it was on trying to find the Taipei Contemporary Art Centre (I had a very arty couple of days!) that I found something called the Culture Express, which is basically a guide to what’s going on in Taipei. Here I found the basis for the next day or so, going to a digital art galleries, open-air cinemas and an artists’ village. I also did a few other things, but basically decided that I could quite easily live in Taipei.

Taichung (2 nights)

I got to Taichung late on my last day in Taipei. I spent the morning trying to book somewhere to stay and after a few hours of trying, I gave up and got on the train. Once I was there I walked around for a bit, trying out hotels until I found one I liked and decided to stay there for two nights whilst I visited Sun Moon Lake.

Tainan (1 night)

Here I inadvertently spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. After exploring the city on Christmas Eve, I returned to the hostel to find them having a Christmas party. I was too tired to participate, so ate some German Christmas cake and then went to bed. The woman running the hostel, Jasmine, helped me find somewhere to stay in Taroko gorge, which was something I had been having problems with. She also recommended that I buy a train ticket for the lest leg of the journey, back to Taipei, as soon as possible. This I did in Kaohsiung, a day or so later.

The time in Tainan was spent wandering around the city, as they have a lot of historical landmarks and walking the entire distance from the hostel to the beach. This I did in under a day and managed to get back to the hostel in time for a train to Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung (2 nights)

I arrived in Kaohsiung late the same day as leaving Tainan. I went to the night market for food and spoke to the women running the hostel the next day for advice on what to do whilst I was there. I got my second haircut of the trip in Kaohsiung, after getting the hostel worker to recommend somewhere and explain the instructions in Chinese to the woman over the phone. Once I got there, it was all pretty straightforward, but I think the hairdresser cut the fringe a bit too short and so I had to get the rest to match. What I was left with something slightly different to what I imagined, but it was still much better than having it long!

The rest of the time in Kaohsiung was spent going to the P2 art gallery, which was actually shut (and very expensive), walking to the Municipal Film Archives (which wasn’t very good) and going on a tour of the night markets. The second day was spent going to the Ciaotou Sugar Factory, which was amazing. It is a disused sugar factory which is now a museum and you can walk around the entire site. I think I went into a lot of areas that I wasn’t meant to be in, but it was still excellent and well worth the trip.

Kenting (2 nights)

Kenting is a national park in the far south of the island. I got a bus here from Kaohsiung, after not really following the instructions I’d been given and trying about 3 different places before finding the right bus station. I met a fellow traveller from Denmark on the bus, who was clearly the only other foreigner, before jumping off when the driver told me to. The hostel that the man in the previous hostel had recommended wasn’t shut, but the door was open and there was nobody there other than a dog and a parrot. I went next door and got someone to check me in, but after discovering that I was the only one staying there, I decided to write them a note and find somewhere else. The place that I found was just down the road and was far nicer, even if it was slightly more expensive. It seemed far nicer anyway, until the next morning when the traffic started using the main road, which was right outside my window and I could hear all of it.

The following day was spent riding around the national park on a scooter which I had hired using my previously un-used International Driver’s Permit. I hadn’t driven anything for about a year, but they weren’t to know that and after getting one of the other customers to help translate, they lent me a bike. I went around practically all of the roads that it’s possible to go round in the park and managed to get back on one tank of fuel. The shop owners thought that there was something wrong with the bike, as I’d brought it back so soon, but I just gave it back whilst both me and it were in one piece and I had enough fuel in the tank to mean I didn’t have to fill it up again.

Dulan (1 night)

My journey to Dulan was my first experience of hitch-hiking, I think. I got to the train station and the tri-lingual woman on the information desk had explained which bus stop I needed to wait at. On her recommendation, as I hadn’t booked anything, I was on my way to Dulan, instead of finding acommodation in Taitung. The bus left without me, as it was full and whilst I was waiting for the next one, two women in a type of peple-carrier/van asked me where I was going. They both looked sweet enough and their car was empty, so I got in and they took me to Dulan. One lived there and was coming to Taitung to collect her sister (the other one), who happened to know someone with a hostel. They took me to it, I had a look around and decided that I was going to be staying somewhere else. After the woman who owned it had turned up, she rang one of her competitors and the two sisters drove me to it. We all had a look around and it was exactly what I was looking for. I spent the rest of my time there trying to get to the beach (unsuccessful) and socialising with the two South Africans that ran the hostel and the people around the Dulan Sugar Factory.

Tienhsiang (2 nights)

I got the train to Hsincheng Station from Tainan and got a cab from there to Tienhsiang. I was hoping that the Chinese person who had helped me establish how I was going to get to Tienhsiang was going to get me a bargain, but after speaking to the people in the hostel in Tienhsiang, I had paid twice as much as I’d needed to. Whilst I was there I did two things; walk along the routes marked on my Map of Taroko National Park map and celebrate New Year’s Eve.

The walks consisted of the Eternal Spring Shrine Trail, the Lushui Trail and the Baiyan Waterfall Trail. The Eternal Spring Shrine Trail was good, it was a walk around a shrine than had been built to honor the workers who had died building the route through the gorge. The second one was rubbish; it was a gradual incline, some rocks, a tunnel and a bridge. The third one, the Baiyan Waterfall Trail, was amazing. I had to rush, as it was getting dark, but after squeezing some information out of someone in the tourist information centre, I set off. The entrance to the trail was within the wall of a bridge and was a tunnel that went on for about half a kilometer. The scenery on the other side was stunning and everything was on such a big scale that it put the Lushui Trail to shame. There were about 7-8 diferent tunnels that you had to walk through, all pitch-black inside. The final one, with the water curtain inside, featured pressurised water escaping from the strata in the rocks. This was also pitch-black, but there was a small path on the inside that led onwards to the deafening sound of water coming through the ceiling and hitting the tunnel floor. It was the best part of the whole day and I got soaked.

When I got back to the hostel, the hostel workers were having their dinner around the fire. They invited me to share it with them and whilst I was sitting there, someone else in the hostel asked if there was anything happening that evening, as it was New Year’s Eve. The answer was no, but we ended-up gatecrashing the party of one of the posh hotels in the village and generally just making the most of it. The next day I got up early and walked to some hot springs the other foreigners in the hostel had told me about. New Year’s Day was spent lying in a river, in about 30 cm of scorching-hot water and then jumping in the main part of the river to cool off. I had to get out after 20 minutes, as it was so hot, but I managed to get to Hualien in time for my train to Taipei.

Taipei (1 night)

This was just a stop-over to make sure I got my flight on time. Everything went to plan and I was reminded how much I like Taipei.

I spent most of my time in Hong Kong doing 1 of 2 things; either looking for accommodation or investigating visas. Hong Kong was more expensive than I thought it was going to be. When people speak to you about Hong Kong, one of the first things they mention is usually the price. As an example, the cost of a hostel room in Chengdu, one of the cheaper places in mainland China, was 40 CNY. In Hong Kong it was 400 CNY. This takes into account the differences in currencies and in reality, the rooms in Chengdu were actually nicer. Things get more expensive around this time of year anyway, so the start of the ‘high season’ was actually a good time for me to leave.

I got to Hong Kong after setting off late from Guilin the day before. I’d got a bus from Yangshuo, where I’d met Tommy, who was visiting Yangshuo with his girlfriend. They had the weekend there, as he only got 5 days annual leave per year, so was having a very quick trip before heading off somewhere else. The bus had dropped me at the same station that I had departed from, but instead of going to Guilin North train station, I needed to depart from the main train station in Guilin. Luckily Tommy had a local guide with him and they were all staying in a hotel opposite the station, so we all walked there together.

Once I had decided that I was happy where the train station was, I went and got something to eat. As is usually the case with things like this, I had picked somewhere fairly early on and spent about 40 minutes walking around, making sure there wasn’t anything better. After eating a very basic and fairly expensive meal (my haggling skills hadn’t worked), I went back to the train station and got on my train. It was a hard sleeper and I don’t remember speaking to anyone.

The train got into Guangzhou, where I followed my Lonely Planet guide and found the ticket office for the trains to Hung Hom. They were actually marked as Kowloon, with is part of the mainland in Hong Kong, but this wasn’t totally obvious until I had checked my ticket. Some Chinese guy who spoke English remarked that we were travelling on 12/12/12 at 12:12, so the world was probably going to end.

Once in Kowloon, we crossed the border crossing (much like in an airport) and I got the metro to my first stop, the first hostel I was staying in. After checking in and getting something to eat, I managed to make it to the Tsim Sha Tsui area for the light show. This was worth seeing and I walked around the waterfront for a bit before getting the ferry across to Hong Kong island, were I got back on the metro back to my hostel.

The next few days were spent:

• meeting with Louise, Syd and Anabelle, who I know from university
• going to the film archive and an exhibition on global German design
• going up to the Victoria Peak on the tram and walking the 2-3 Km around the top
• having an impropmtu tour of the city’s parks
• moving house
• looking into visas
• seeing the Hobbit film.

Visas

The time spent in Hong Kong was meant to be a kind of holiday. The idea was that as I had been travelling for 2.5 months, the ex-British colony would be a good place to relax and get a few jobs done. One of those jobs was planning what I was going to do next. It was obvious fairly early on that I was not going to be spending the full 3 weeks in Hong Kong, so I decided to go to Taiwan. As I had a double-entry visa for China (and wasn’t meant to be flying), this meant re-entering China, getting a train to Xiamen and then get a ferry to Keelung. This would have been fine, but I would have needed a multiple-entry visa (which I should have applied for in the UK) in order to get back into China to continue my journey to Vietnam. As I didn’t know what my plans were going to be when applying for the original visa, this would have meant getting another visa in Hong Kong.

After thinking about this a lot, I decided to go to the Chinese consulate in Hong Kong and apply for a new visa. At this point I hadn’t decided I was flying, so it seemed like a logical choice. The options I was presented with by the consulate worker were as follows:

• it is not possible to have 3 visas active at once. What I had done was apply for a 2nd, single entry visa, hoping to ‘top up’ the one I had with another ‘entry’, so I could get back into China in order to continue to Vietnam. The second visa would have cancelled the first, so this was a waste of money
• it is possible that I could apply for a Chinese visa on the Chinese border (from Taiwan). This is something I would need to investigate, as the consulate employee didn’t have a number for an office there, but she did know that it was not possible to apply for a Chinese visa in Taiwan
• multiple-entry visas can only be requested by Hong Kong residents
• I could use the 2nd visa for travel to Taiwan, but I would need to fly back to Hong Kong to get a 3rd visa for re-entry to Vietnam. As I was getting the train and a ferry to Taiwan, flying back made the journey out there a bit pointless.

After going to the counter a second time to pay for another double-entry visa, I decided that this was actually a waste of time and money and that I was going to fly. This broke the rules of the ‘no flights’ ethos of this trip, but it had to be done. Taiwan wasn’t part of my original plan!

Accommodation

Even though I was in Hong Kong for one week, I had to change where I was staying 3 times. This had not happened before, as even when I hadn’t planned where I was staying, I could always extend my stay by a day wihout any problems. In the case of Hong Kong however, I had to be constantly thinking about where I would be staying next.

The first place I stayed in was actually the cheapest. I got commended by my friends the first time I met them in Hong Kong on how cheap it was. I thought it was quite expensive at the time and the price actually increased on one of the days I was staying there, but I was there for 3 nights without any problems. On day 3, I got moved across the road to one of their other flats that they had been buying and converting to apartments. There I met a Dutch couple and two Swedish girls, who let me follow them to Chung King Mansions, where they were going to be staying next.

Chung King Mansions is a back-packing ‘institution’ in Hong Kong and consists of several apartment blocks (maybe 5) that have been converted into guest houses. I think the same reason existed there as in the first place, as there was nowhere available to stay. I gave up after trying about 3 different places and went in search of an Internet cafe. After looking on Hostel World, instead of there being about 80 room listings, there were 2. One increased by 200 HKD whilst I was looking at it and the other one looked like the best of a bad bunch. I took the details for both of them and set off for Mirador Mansions, which is just down the road from Chung King Mansions. Here I spoke to someone in one of the guest houses that had spaces on Hostel World, but not in reality. Without a booking, I was not going to get anything here, but the man inside came out and offered to give me some advice on where to stay. One of the places he gave me the details for he described as having “many bedbugs”, so I crossed that off the list immediately. Amongst other places, he recommended one place in the same building, which I decided to go and have a look at. Once I was downstairs, I asked the woman behind the counter how much each room was and whether I could have a look. The cost of the room was 200 HKD, 600 HKD cheaper than the expensive place from before, but she wouldn’t let me look at it. Not taking no for an answer, I waited around until someone was free to show me a room. Having walked around for about 4 hours, as soon as I saw the room I took it. It was a single room with a 3/4 size matress and 3 of its 4 sides were touching the bedroom walls. It had air-conditioning and a bathroom and toilet, so instead of going back upstairs and talking to the original woman, I gave the person who had showed me around the price they were asking for. With this sorted, I could go and do something else with my day.

Two nights later I decided to move out, as I was in need of a change. I stayed in the most expensive place yet, a hostel on Hong Kong island which was more expensive than the first place I stayed in and less good. After having spent 7 days in Hong Kong, in 3 different places, I was ready to move on.