The Sanya Blog, Hainan, China

Something for you budding James Camerons and YouTube fiends out there. We’ve launched the Waboba Asia Video Competition.

The first prize is a weekend at one of Sanya’s five-star resorts. The prize includes flights to and from Sanya from anywhere in Asia, plus two nights in a five-star hotel, plus 5,000 RMB in cash.

To enter the competition, all you have to do is shoot a video that has a Waboba ball in it somewhere, preferably with it bouncing on water.

Feeling inspired? Maybe you think you could do better than Nate and Brendan’s video for the Surf and Skate.

For full details of the competition, click here.

Tags : competition, video, waboba, 水上跳球

The Bounceologist is moving onwards and upwards. We are now contributing posts directly to the Waboba Blog Asia website. Here’s one about the Sanya property bubble and that terrible sinking feeling you get when you realise you backed the wrong horse.

And what a bubble it is. Prices here doubled overnight.

Tags : bubble, hainan, inflation, property, real estate, sanya

Apologies for the oceans of time since the previous post. Among the many things keeping us from blogging are preparations for the Second Surfing Hainan Open on November 6-8.

We’ve been building the website for the event, and if all goes according to plan (assuming there’s a 3G signal at Mama’s Restaurant in Riyuewan), (Read more…)

Tags : beach, events, haikou, hainan, riyuewan, sanya, surfing, surfing hainan, surfing hainan open

We’re not letting you off lightly. Pack up your guts, trunks, bikini, shades, SPF30 and your best sense of adventure. You’ve got things to do before the rocking starts at the First Annual Sanya Music Festival…

For full details, click here.

Tags : beach, china, entertainment, fat daddys, golf, hainan, hotels, jetski, luhuitou, marina, music, nightlife, sail, sailing, sanya, sanya bay, St Ives, surfing, waboba, windsurf, yachting

Is it or isn’t it a bubble? In his latest Real Estate Review, Mario over at Sanya Expat takes the view that the Sanya property market could well be a bubble, but a bubble with room to grow.

Mario’s report is a handy overview of the market and the pricing in the various parts of town, and a rehearsal of the argument that surging demand for a place in the sun could keep local property prices rising for a good while to come.

But what’s with all of the frantic building, especially on second-tier sites set well back from the beach? Is it waving or drowning? (Read more…)

Tags : apartments, bubble, china, dadonghai, economy, property, real estate, rental, sanya, sanya bay, sanya expat

Aw c’mon, mobile phones, man bags, cigars, cocktails with curly straws and umbrellas in the top… they’re all just like so NOT NOW, like so way back last week or something, LOL, ROFL, , etc.

In the Sanya beach style happenin’, the cool points are all with the Segway now, that sleek combination of übermodern silent mobility, gravity defiance and spinning gyros.

Gently lean forward and you’re hurtling toward the sea with no sign of stopping. A subtle wiggle of the hips and you’re whizzing impressively past the bronzed Russians in their bikinis. Another wiggle and you’re up at the ice cream counter ordering two Cornettos.

All it needs now is a cup holder. (Read more…)

Tags : beach, china, fun, hainan, sanya, segway, sheraton, style, yalong bay

“People believe a little too easily that the function of the sun is to help the cabbages along.” Gustave Flaubert

And Flaubert was right, of course, because as any sailor, surfer, windsurfer or kitesurfer will tell you, the sun is actually there to make the wind blow and the waves topple over.

Warm winds have blown through Sanya for nearly a month now, so we recently doused ourselves in sunscreen and headed off to Sanya Bay to try out the latest on offer in sailing and windsurfing. (Read more…)

Tags : beach, china, dadonghai, hainan, howard johnson, sail, sailing, sanya, sanya bay, windsurf, windsurfing, yalong bay

“So the Hieronymus Bosch bus headed out of Kesey’s place with the destination sign in front reading ‘Furthur’….” Tom Wolfe

The turning point for Sheldon Habiger, one of the founding partners of Element Fresh, came on a damp January day in Shanghai, 2006.

After eight years in Shanghai, and two weeks before the start of the ear-splitting pyrotechnics to welcome the Year of the Dog, Sheldon watched his young son – suffering from asthma and allergies and intermittently deaf – walk a few short steps and then stop in exhaustion.

Enough was enough. “We have to leave,” Sheldon said to his wife, Linda. “We just have to go.”

It is a point that many sinophiles (ourselves included) are reaching during their time in China. After years spent working hard and playing hard in China’s big cities, learning Mandarin and accumulating valuable China experience, the arrival of children provides a sudden and often stark demonstration of the need to live in a less polluted environment. (Read more…)

Tags : air, bar, beach, china, economy, education, element fresh, entertainment, expat, family, fat daddys, food, foreign, hainan, health, healthcare, lifestyle, pollution, restaurants, sanya, sanya bay, schools

We’ve just taken a lightning tour of the Sanya treehouse hotel – lightning because the usual entry fee to the Sanya Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone, which hosts the hotel, is 150 yuan per person. Our host, Leon, could get us in for free, but only for half an hour. He floored the accelerator on our golf cart, delivering us to the site with just enough time for some ooohs and aaahs and the taking of photographs. (Read more…)

Tags : camping, china, family, hainan, holiday, hotels, outdoors, sanya, tree, treehouses, wild

“Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred cliches moves us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.” Umberto Eco

In the middle of Sanya Bay, between the rambling edge of the city and the start of the up-market hotels, there’s a long, flat stretch of beach that advertises elsewheres.

The tour buses don’t stop here, driving on up the beach road past sun-bleached billboards promoting villa developments further up the coast.

Here, there are no swimmers, no surfers, no buckets and spades, and hardly any fishermen. You would be forgiven for not noticing the place at all. A flat beach meets a flatter sea.

And yet, this particular stretch of beach just happens to be one of the most fiercely photographed panoramas in the whole of China. (Read more…)

Tags : dadonghai, economic, economy, hotel, marriage, perfect2, photo, photograph, sanya, sanya bay, tourism, travel, wedding