leg #2: travel China, intro to Haikou

When we got to Haikou, my friend was already kind of done. On top of the obvious and expected culture shock, we'd had a lot of people try to rip us off or screw us over, and then there was me and my general hot mess self at the time... altogether, the combination was no bueno.

We arrived, took a taxi to our hostel to settle in and hit the beach and then it started pouring. And the hostel was kind of depressing. And in an area of town with nothing to do. And staff that didn't really speak English. Blah.

So we wandered down the street, found ourselves some food and then went back to our room and said, "Screw it, this is miserable, especially for the beach portion of our trip, we're booking a resort." We found a reasonably priced five star resort (Chinese five star, mind you) and booked it for the remainder of our time in Haikou, so we'd only have one depressing hostel night. And thus my backpaker traveling mindset perished.

That done, we wandered the other way down the street to see what else was there was to see. Whilest traipsing around, I had to pee (I have to pee about every 15-30 minutes, it's ridiculous) so we decided we to sit, have some beers and people watch in a place with a bathroom.

As I said, there wasn't a whole lot around, but we walked up to what looked to be a restaurant not yet open for dinner. There was a table of people sitting there having a small meeting of sorts, so I asked if they had beer. One of the guys laughed and said yes. Another guy came out of the back and I ordered us two beers. Which we proceeded to sit there and drink.

After a while, we noticed that literally every single person that had been there was gone. The table of people had left, as had the few stragglers in the back. We were literally alone, in what was seeming less and less like a restaurant, drinking beers no one had ever asked us to pay for. It was just bizarre and funny. One of the guys eventually came back so we gave him some money, but I don't think it was a restaurant and I don't think they'd have been mad if we hadn't paid at all.

Eventually we went and had dinner as well. I ordered everything in Chinese and the proprietor was the sweetest and most accommodating guy. I was really happy that my friend was finally starting to get to see the things I love about the Chinese, not just the people that want to take advantage of a white face.

It got even better when we went to a produce market afterwards and were asking one of the vendors how to eat some fruits we'd never seen and he showed us how to eat them, gave us some and wouldn't let us pay. Plus, he had kittens for us to play with, which pretty much always ensures a good time when you're easily amused.

This, ladies and gentleman, is what mangosteen looks like. I see these all over the place but never knew what they were and I'd heard of mangosteen but didn't know what it looked like.

The texture of the skin was almost similar to corrugated cardboard, it was strange. The white insides were soft and in segments, like a citrus fruit.

This was the color of honeydew and tasted like it might be in the same family. The skin was much thinner though.

Because PBR really needed to get any lighter.

When we got back to our hostel, there were a bunch of Chinese sitting outside eating cake. Turned out it was the owner's son's birthday, so they invited/forced us to have some cake with them, take some pictures and listen to them playing guitar. They didn't really speak English, but they were nice enough. And there was cake.

Nooooot sure why they locked us in the hostel with a bike lock, but it took us a decently long amount of time to track down anyone that worked there to let us out the first morning.