Hainan Surf Blog

Shoulda started this kinda thing long ago, but alas, the technology foiled me. But now--- I have the power!!!
Well, we've made up our minds to get the hell out of Panyu Suquiouch and move to D'hai (Dadonghai for you uninitiated) in Sanya. Too hot and too much Ma Fan here: no surf and no burgers make Hammond something something...
GO CRAZY?!!!?!?! Or just move to Sanya.

So after three solid days of trudging back and forth across this little spot of a town (I think a cartographer could chart D'hai with three strokes of his pen) we had relegated ourselves to taking an overpriced apartment with an unreasonable 8 month deposit on the 11th floor of a building we'd come to refer to as "the Green glass building". Since the options for a clean and comfortable place were limited to about 5 distinct apartment complexes in town we'd given each one a name to distinguish each place we'd visited. The Big Blue apartments directly looking out over the water front were unreasonably priced at about 6000RMB per month, and still the landlords were asking for as much as a year's rent up front.

As we'd accepted our fate and adjusted our expectations to fit the reality of our budget, we made the call to the real estate agent handling our 11th floor arrangement and trudged through the late afternoon heat back to the now familiar building that would inevitably become my future residence.

Sometimes in life, there is a poetic flow to the ultimate outcome of our journeys: in this case it was something more like a limerick that must have started like: "I once met a man named Old Cheng- his eyebrows they looked just like wings..." seriously, this guy looked like a funny old sage from a Chinese kung-fu movie with an abundance of energy that defied his 70+ years. He had a younger fellow with him who turned out to be from Singapore and spoke English; as we were getting into the elevator, so were they, and they asked if we were looking for an apartment. The younger fellow, Chong, said he'd seen us trying to call the numbers displayed on the little impromptu billboards hung out on the balconies of apartments generally suited to short-term vacation rentals.

It turned out that Old Cheng's son owns about half the apartments in the building (which is actually two buildings fused together: an older relic in the front, and a more modern addition that seems to piggy-back onto the back lot of the first building as a healthy branch of coral overtakes the older decay that preceded it. We were shown two apartments that were virtually identical to the one on the 11th floor, and though we ended up choosing one on the 8th floor, we saved 500RMB per month and more importantly got a reasonable deposit arranged. Old Cheng was great about it, and kept saying "Karaoke!! Eight O'Clock!!" throughout the whole time we were looking at apartments.

This turned out to mean he really wanted to take us out to karaoke, and even at their 70+ ages, he and his wife (who had been together since high-school) were singing modern rock and roll tunes with us while throwing back beers and smokin' cigarettes. We didn't stay out too late with them, but we made some good friends and found ourselves the next place we'll call home.

All in a day's work.

-h