Long weekend in Sanya, Hainan Island

At the end of June, we took our second vacation since moving to Shanghai. There is an island in southern China called Hainan Island, and the resort area is called Sanya. It is known as the "Hawaii of China", and it was very beautiful! We travelled with a group of about 20 people from Dow Corning as a group tour arranged by DC.

We arrived on a sunny Wednesday at the Marriott Sanya. The greeting committee gave us each a shell necklace with a star-shaped emblem imprinted with "Marriott Sanya". We got all checked in to our room, and what a beautiful view we had of the greenery and the beach.


The boys got a little goofy after the travel, so we snapped a picture of them before we headed off to the beach and the 3-level pool (complete with 2 waterfalls).


The beach was spectacular! There was quite a nice breeze while we were there, which always makes for good wave-jumping. The waves kept trying to pull down Derek's trunks, but no loss of trunks or sneak-peeks of his backside (thank goodness!).





All around the grounds, they had these warrior statues. The boys humored Mom with a couple of pictures...


Most of the time was spent in the pool.


There were limited restaurants in the hotel (one Chinese, one Japanese, and one "Western" that wasn't so great), so we ventured out to a restaurant plaza about a mile from the hotel. The walk was quite warm (average temp while we were there was about 95!), but we found a good restaurant for pizza as well as a small grocery store to get some chips and pop for snacking throughout the day. Another visit found us at a Japanese restaurant getting noodles, shrimp tempura (which Alex LOVED and ate 3 plates of himself!), and soup. We always made sure to get dessert at a local ice cream parlor to keep us cool on the walk back to the hotel.

The only downer of the vacation was Derek getting sick on Saturday. Poor little dude was so worried about not making it to the bathroom that he curled up on the floor and slept!


Luckily, he only got sick a couple of times, slept for 14 hours straight, and woke up on Sunday morning feeling better than ever! Mark and Derek decided to do a little balcony dancing to celebrate feeling better on our last day at Sanya.


After a few last-minute pictures, we took off for home.


Sanya was beautiful...I can see why it's such a popular vacation place! With it only being about a 2-hour flight from Shanghai, it's highly possible that we might be repeat visitors in the future...

and the adventure continues...