January 25, 2022
Day H5: Back to Civilization
Wanning to Lingshui
The next day I slept in so late as to miss the free breakfast. No matter then, it was going to be a short day of biking anyway. Out of curiosity I wanted to see if there were any Starbucks and much to my delight there was: only 20km away and on route. Perfect, set a course then captain GPS.
Only problem is this captain was going to get one last laugh out of me. Just like the previous day, it sent me on a wild goose chase through some rough tracks in the middle of nowhere.
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After that it was wider concrete roads to the first stop of the day. It was quite interesting because a boy was walking on the road opposite me. After I said hello he exclaimed loudly to the air, "Hey this is the first time I see a foreigner!" That was pretty cool and it got me wondering how many other people yesterday through these backroads might have said the same thing?
Then once the road led to where the expressway exit linked up, of course there was an outlet mall and a parking lot with cars where bikes would be banished far away. I had to walk a good distance to get in but I found the Starbucks and enjoyed some much needed AC.
Then I was able to link back up to 'guo dao', i.e. the national highway, and just ride on in to the next town where my hotel was booked. This time as I got further and further south, things didn't feel so much like China anymore. It was hard to put my finger on exactly what the vibe was. Somewhere like a mix between Thailand and Vietnam but with Chinese characters.
About 10km away from the destination I found an excellent coffee shop that served a nice 'pad Thai' style kind of dish with milk tea. A lot of this reminded me of Thailand actually, from the food to the style of the shop and the fact the trusty old Montague was parked not far away off to the side like it has been for the dozens of Thailand trips I had done previously.
It was starting to feel a bit surreal. Someone mentioned in the comments that they're re-starting Test And Go in February with the whole omicron threat starting to retreat. This is very good news. What makes it sad is the issue of returning to China. The country remains closed. Any return trips mean lengthy quarantines on arrival which almost nobody is willing to do. So it's a nonstarter.
It's also rather surreal that these SE Asia destinations are not that far away from Hainan Island yet they're effectively walled off. They might as well be millions of miles away.
That being said, I'm having a good enough time touring on Hainan. When the rest of the world does open up I would still consider another tour on Hainan and link that with Thailand or somewhere else in SE Asia. In the past that was easy to do as the budget airlines were using Haikou as a base for other destinations like Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. It would make sense they'd resume that as the Chinese government always wanted to promote Hainan Island as a duty free zone and for international travel.
[Update November 2022] This was not the case at all. Hainan island got walloped with an outbreak in the summer of 2022 and they tried to contain it with lockdowns etc...
The hotel turned out to be awesome, and luck was on my side when the front desk asked to see a 48 hour covid test proof. So it turned out I had hedged the bets correctly to get one back in Tunchang and it looks like tomorrow will need another test
Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,477 km (917 miles)
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