After our 3 days in Hong Kong, we headed to Sanya for a little relaxation in the sun. Sanya is a beach resort town in Hainan Provence in the South China Sea and is really quite nice. I’d equate it to the Florida coastline where you can have good beaches but nothing so great that you would want to travel more than a few hours to get there. If I was faced with 13+ hours on a plane to go to a beach, you would find us in Thailand or the Maldives (which is our next destination).
When we arrived, it was apparent that it’s the primary destination for Russians. I guess they forgot that they can just as easily go to Florida now but the price was probably much better and maybe there’s some nostalgic commie connection. I’m still not sure what the draw is.
They were relatively well mannered, quiet, and basically polite. Being a minority amongst them was not as difficult as it would be amongst other (even english speaking) nationalities. There’s something really exciting about being in the presence of citizens from our former cold-war adversaries. It’s like we have some common experience where we all grew up fearful of getting nuked. It’s very cathartic to see our former so-called enemies doing the same things we enjoy doing - like going to the beach with our kids.
Anyway, the Russian people are an interesting group. They are physically as diverse as Americans and come in all shapes and sizes with equally diverse fashion. In general, they seem to have a cautious or guarded optimism which might be due to the instability of their nation for so many generations and an untrusting nature thanks to the legacy of their KGB. Only the children of these people seemed to laugh and smile with some abandon but you could still see a bit of their parents seriousness in their faces. Two generations in a stable economy should fix it. I’m wondering what the US will be like in 2 generations.
Last night was Russian Christmas Eve (Julan Calendar) and the hotel hosted a huge outdoor celebration and buffet supper with live performances and fireworks. We could have attended but didn’t think it would be kosher. After watching from afar and seeing how it unfolded, we could have attended and would have probably had a great time. It was quite a nice surprise to be exposed to another nationality on this holiday.
By the end of our holiday, we were starting to crave the presence of anyone from a native english speaking country. There was only one family from South Africa with very thick english accents. As we checked out this morning, a group of men arrived. Not only were they speaking english with an American accent, but they were also speaking ina way that sounded more familiar…Texan!. Yep, in the most oddball beach resort in the world, a group of oil company guys from Dallas came to have an offsite meeting after spending a week in Beijing. Trust me…after a week amongst Russians and Chinese, you can tolerate any differences amongst US regions.
There’s also something cool about being in what is considered “Red China” and being able to check into a Holiday Inn, Sheraton, Marriot, Crowne Plaza, etc. on the beach. While these are western chains, their market is the burgeoning middle-class China (and Russians) though the service we received was western quality…even better.
Leave a Reply