D5：白马井 →东城

January 14, 2025

At 135y per night for a room in a self owned building in a village whose only attractive quality is it's proximity to the train station, my room better be fucking glorious, and it is.

Given the huge number of hotels, aparthotels¹, guesthouses, and whatnots on the coastal strip barely 10km away, I'm not entirely sure who their target market is; but, the contrast between Very Traditional (and Very Expensive) wooden furniture in the lobby with the disco lights in the hallways and the sparkle grout² in the rooms makes me wonder if the owners were even particularly sure of who their target market is when they opened in June of this year³.

For today's Oatmeal, I'm discovering that the Black Sesame Porridge is almost as bad tasting as the Peanut Protein Powder

The early 90s style villas in front of the tower blocks tell me that they've been trying to make this a Winter Holiday Destination for a while

Coffee and oatmeal in the room as is the norm, I also have the packet of instant coffee that came with the room because a) knowing how well Japan does all things coffee, how bad can instant coffee from Korea be⁴? and b) comparison makes my coffee taste that much better.

Particularly as I had taken my Ozempic shot in the morning, I'm almost certain I didn't eat enough yesterday. I'm really loving the benefits⁵ that are coming along with my dropping nearly 20kg last year, but, I've quietly disapproved over the years of people I know on super restrictive diets⁶ and, if it comes with permanent damage to my physical⁷ or mental health, "looking conventionally attractive" is not enough of a benefit to me.

So many Planned and unnamed roads around here that they've been numbered

No apparent reason for this road to be blocked off, especially as it looks like the road I was on was completed quite some time ago

Which means, even though I've not even done 10 kilometers by this point, I stop for a plate of the most incredibly spicy fried noodles at a sidewalk stall shortly before I go back on to Ocean Flower Island.

This time I take the "pedestrian and bicycle" bridge underneath the traffic bridge. It's very pretty to look at. But it's a terrible structure with pointless ups and downs, paving that is asking for someone to turn an ankle, a Security Guard who is even less competent than the ones up above at checking to see if people crossing onto the island are "allowed⁸," and no curb cuts on the island side.

Weirdly enough given the weather or how common it is in southeast Asia, sidewalk barber shops are not common in Hainan

However, as with this scary mobile dentistry stall, it is a poor northern Chinese thing⁹

My packages turn out to be on Island No. 2, where most of the apartments are, and there's no one doing any kind of checking either between 1 and 2, or for coming on to No. 1, so unless it's about keeping motorcycle taxis out of the commercial area where there are likely to be people who need motorcycle taxis, I can't figure out what the guards are all about.

Finding the courier shop in the maze of tower blocks takes me a bit of time. Then, because every winter has to have at least one interaction with a snowbird to show why they have such a bad reputation, the woman who jumped the queue yells at me for being "too pushy" about pointing out that she had to walk around me in order to go ahead of me.

On the Pedestrian Bridge to the island the Hilton is on

He stopped me to ask questions about my fork bags

Leaving from Island Number 2, there's a similarly bizarre "pedestrian structure" which extends out from the side of a bridge that already has perfectly good sidewalks.

Finally free to go biking, my first and only point of interest for the day is the White Horse Well that gives the town of Baimajing its name. As historic sites that have been attested to in the written record for over 1,000 years go, it kind of sucks. Even the wear marks that show that people have climbed up the horse-sized statue of a horse and sat on its real saddle don't really add much to the site¹⁰.

My options from here are fairly limited. I'll initially try to see if I can make it to a village named Paris where I'm not in love with the prices I've been told over the phone for either of their not-bookable-online hotels, but I know that my dawdling, detouring, picture-taking self averages around 10 kilometers per hour once conversations and the occasional piece of proofreading are accounted for and that would mean riding in the dark.

Paper talismans I noticed when setting up my tripod

White Horse Well. It's a well. It has a white horse.

From the deep dive I did while trying to figure out what to say during my video, I prefer the corrupted pronunciation theory over the fairytale origin of the well¹¹

Which I can do.

I just don't want to.

Instead, I'll go to the town of Dongcheng that I stayed in on last year's Round the Island. First on the Coastal Tourism Highway, then on a county-level scenic road, then on some actually scenic farm roads.

And, because I've got to stop for things like fried balls of yumminess, weirdly pyramid shaped tombs, sharing road info with a trio of Round the Islanders who are on touring appropriate bikes they brought with them¹², and a recently renovated historic well that's midway through a rededication ceremony, I still make it in to Dongcheng as the sun is setting.

Since these are from the early 90s, this breaks my rule about not making graves whose occupants are remembered by the living a focal point of a shared photo, but they are really really really weird graves

The guy in brown is only carrying a single spare pair of underpants

My fried noodle dinner dents the hungriness but doesn't make it completely go away.

Unfortunately, there aren't any fruit shops between dinner and my hotel and I still haven't decided if I like the salt and honey preserved whampee fruit I bought from a convenience store.

I correctly picked the same hotel as the one I stayed at on last year's Round the Island, and she just invites me behind the Front Desk to register myself without me even needing to ask.

¹ A non Airbnb type place where you are getting an actual useable apartment but your existence as a tourist isn't damaging the local housing market.

I'd've stayed longer or asked more questions but the volume of the music was hurting my ears

² I love sparkle grout

³ They added me on WeChat and I creeped their Channels

⁴ Very. The answer is "very."

⁵ Such as not having to walk my bike up mountains

⁶ Like 1,200 calories a day, or limiting their food consumption to a 4 hour window each day, or picking one day a week to just not eat at all

⁷ The ones that worry me the most are the people who see nothing wrong with their hair falling out because they are regularly failing to hit their base metabolic caloric requirements

Late 19th or early 20th century Shophouse in a row of more modern Shophouses

A more modern (maybe 1980s) Shophouse with an epic balcony

⁸ or stopping them if they aren't

⁹ In theory, the snowbirds who have come down from the north are all quite well to do. This does not, however, stop them from acting poor.

¹⁰ There's a nearby temple that's supposed to be better but, by the time I'd taken all my shots and handled the work that had come in from the Media Center, I was running low on daylight

¹¹ One of the men who held the title of Fubo General, they're not certain which one, is said to have visited Hainan on a tour of southern China. His white horse kicked at the sand and caused a sweetwater spring to gush forth.

There are four options for gender. Not sure what the difference is between "can't tell" and "don't know"

Towel Swans! Even the Hilton didn't have Towel Swans!

¹² The sheer number of 517 bikes I've been seeing says they must finally be making decent money

¹³ Speaking to the value of going places you've already been, I didn't notice it when I came this way on my way to the Hilton

Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 300 km (186 miles)

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