What I did while the temperature fell in New England

Our city, Zhuhai, is nicknamed the city of 1000 islands. One of them is visible from our apartment window (see it here and we went to another a couple of weeks ago (Qi Ao island, which Dan wrote about here).

That still leaves 998 islands to explore! So when Dan and I realized we couldn't go to the Phillipines during our week long October break (there were more problems than just my inability to spell Philippines), we decided to find a nice island nearby. Everyone said Miawan Island, about a 4 hour boat ride away, is the prettiest island in Zhuhai. But since we're foreigners, we're apparently not supposed to go. Instead, last Monday morning, Dan, our friend Luke, and I headed out to Wanshan Island to spend three days and two nights soaking up sun, surf, and seafood.

Three Americans walking around with big backpacks on was probably pretty amazing to the people in our neighborhood, as most Chinese never go backpacking, camping, or hiking. Luke pointed out this might be some people's dinner conversations tonight: "Guess what I saw crazy foreigners doing today!" We made it to the port and onto the ferry with little trouble, though they did call us into a back room to check our passports. When we arrived at Wanshan 90 minutes later, we had our passports checked again. Our guide tried to take us up to our hotel but, being savvy travelers, we pointed at the police officer holding our passports and said "no" and then made passport gestures with our hands. So we waited a few more minutes, then walked up to the police station with our guide, the officer, and some friendly-looking stray dogs. Photocopies were made, everyone in the station took a good look at our passports, then we got them back and headed off to the hotel. After ascending three flights of stairs, passing more dogs, chickens, and a goat on the way, we found that both rooms had an air conditioner, a locking door, a box with a gas mask (just in case!) and an attached bathroom with sink, squat toilet, and shower head over the squat toilet. Decent! Then they took us out to lunch along with all the other people who were on our same trip.

The guy who owned the restaurant (and also waited tables, hired boats, and occasionally drove taxis around the island) came out holding a turtle. However, nothing we were served contained turtle, so it's probably just a promotional turtle. The food was served based on difficulty to eat - we started with soup, moved on to stir-fried vegetables, a brief stop at mussels and prawns, then straight on to fish of various sizes. There was also something called li niao sha which were like half-crayfish, half-lobster. They didn't have claws but they did have spikes on the sides, and before cracking them open with your bare hands you had to wiggle the spine like a lobster massage. For the rest of the trip, whenever anyone tried to recommend these to us, they made the massaging spine motion. At the end of lunch everyone at our table wandered off, so we asked one guy who spoke pretty good English where the beach was. There wasn't one on the island, but they would take us by boat to a smaller island where we could swim. We were ready to go, right? Ohh - that's where everyone else wandered off to. We ran up to the hotel and grabbed towels, sunscreen, and our cameras.

In fact, we made all the other travelers wait for us and then we went to a little shop and made them wait longer while we bought soda and water. Somehow we still got onto the first boat to the island. I'm not sure that was a good thing, as the boat ride out there was minorly terrifying. I held onto my bag with one hand and the boat with the other and hoped my sunglasses would stay on my face. Here is a picture of the tiny open-top boat that brought us out:



but also note the beautiful blue ocean and lovely mountains in the background! The beach was fairly clean and not at all crowded - there were never more than about 50 people there, and I think they were all connected to our trip. We spotted goats and deer up on the hills above the beach, and I watched birds flying around and wished I had remembered to grab my binoculars. But I had no complaints: while we floated in the South China Sea, New Englanders prepared for the arrival of a hurricane. Suckers!

Meanwhile, we made some foreign friends:



The guy from lunch who spoke pretty good English took this picture of us with his wife. And we really are foreign friends now - when he emailed Dan this picture, he addressed it to "my American friends" and signed it "your Chinese friends."

Remember how the travel agents told us we could eat anything we wanted from the ocean, because it was free? Well, an hour or so after we got on the beach a diver came up with bags full of mussels. They were larger and more barnacle-encrusted than most mussels I've had before, so a lot of our fellow travelers got rocks and chipped off the barnacles. Then, two of the guides built a fire and boiled them. We played the confused foreigner card and wandered over just before they were done. Our gamble worked out as many of the women on the trip just kept handing me mussels. I played along like I had never had these delicious mollusks before, learned their name (qing kou), and kept saying my new favorite Chinese word "hao chi" (tasty).



When the sun started to set, the boat took us back to Wanshan Island. We snapped this photo of the view outside our hotel room as the sun went down.



Stay tuned for part two, including puppies and squid ink! (not together, that would be terrible)