You can read about the excursions in a brochure (without prices) that you’ll be given on the bus from the airport.
Then it’s up to you: you can go on excursions on your own by taxi or bus; you can go through the agencies you’ll find on the streets — there are plenty of them, but the excursion prices don’t differ; or you can go through the hotel guides, but that’s expensive.
For example, an excursion to the Nanshan Buddhism Cultural Park + the “Edge of the World” park costs $70 (500 yuan) with the hotel guide. If you go by taxi (as I did): 120 yuan to the Buddhism centre, 60 yuan to the park, 60 yuan from the park back to the hotel, 120 yuan entry to the Buddhism centre and 81 yuan to the park = 441 yuan. And by bus it’s just 15+15+15 yuan in fares plus 120+81 yuan entry = 246 yuan.
The Nanshan Buddhism Cultural Park is a huge park with beautiful lawns and the great Nanshan statue, which you can enter and climb to the top of (for an extra fee). The “Edge of the World” park — as the name suggests, you’ve probably guessed it’s also a park, with beautiful views of the South China Sea and some interesting stones. One of these stones declares that this is the edge of the world. Have you ever been to the very edge of the world? And yes, it’s very beautiful.
The “Deer Turns Its Head” park: 10 yuan by taxi + 45 yuan entry + 15 yuan for the bus to the top (optional, but it’s a very steep hill); on the way back you can walk to the hotel in half an hour.
A romantic park, from the top of which an insanely beautiful view of the sea and the island opens up. It was built by 3 world giants, China among them; the entrance area features an interesting composition interweaving art from India, Vietnam, even the Ottoman Empire, and, oddly enough, a Native American theme as well… The park has an open-air theatre and an absolutely incredible synthetic theatre in the classical style… The picture gallery consists of a single painting… it’s 700 years old and actually measures 1 by 3 metres, but in the viewing tunnel it’s rendered as a three-dimensional object (stereometry), and in motion too… a full, detailed story of the daily life, architecture and relationships of the people of that time — and, of course, the clothing of the different social classes…
The legend
A legend of the island’s Li people tells of a hunter who once saved a graceful doe fleeing from a leopard. On learning of this, a greedy ruler who needed deer antlers to make a potion ordered the animal to be tracked down and killed. He had the young man’s mother thrown into a dungeon until he got what he wanted. The hunter set off, and after long wanderings he saw the deer on a high hill. Drawing his bowstring, the young man took aim — but a moment before he shot, the deer turned and looked its pursuer in the eyes. The young man could not release the arrow. And then the doe turned into a young beauty. It was love at first sight. The lovers soon married and built a house on the mountain. The island’s indigenous people revere the goddess who took the form of a doe as their ancestral mother.
The Atlantis Sanya hotel is one of the most expensive hotels in Sanya. I don’t remember exactly how much it costs to get there. It has a water park and a large aquarium where you can touch some kinds of animals. For an extra fee you can also swim in the aquarium with sharks. There are also various cafés and boutiques. You can buy excursions to this hotel from guides, but they usually only include the water park and sometimes the aquarium, with a time limit.
On the beach there are various water activities: banana boats, ringos, jet skis and rides on small motorboats. In the evening, musicians perform live music on stages at the cafés all along the beach promenade.
Pros and cons:
If you go with a hotel guide or a street tour operator, you’ll have a guide who tells you all about the places you visit, BUT their Russian accent is simply awful. You can hardly understand anything they say in Russian — even English is clearer than their Russian, although I can’t boast of good English myself. Not everything worth visiting is in the guides’ selection — for example, the Atlantis hotel with its aquarium and water park.
If you go by taxi, you’ll get there quickly and be the only passenger. All taxis use meters and nobody will cheat you: if the meter shows, say, 113 yuan, in most cases they won’t charge the 3 yuan, and sometimes not even the 13. Once you arrive, you’re not limited in time — you can stroll there as long as you like, and you can try tagging along with Russian-speaking groups with guides and eavesdrop on the information they’re given. Cons: you don’t have a guide, you have to find and pay for tickets yourself, and you need to explain clearly to the taxi driver where you want to go. (At the hotel I found photos of the places — for example the “Nanshan Buddhism Centre” or a photo of the deer turning its head — and when I showed the photo, 90% of the time they knew straight away where to go; if they didn’t understand where it was, they ran to other taxi drivers themselves to ask. On all my taxi trips I was always taken where I asked.) Important: when you arrive at the hotel on the first day, take the hotel’s business card with its Chinese name and photograph the hotel so the name is visible — that way you’ll have a better chance of getting back to your hotel without any problems.
And finally, the cheapest option: travelling by bus. The fare depends on the distance; usually it’s no more than 20 yuan from one end of the line to the other. The pros are the same as for a taxi, plus the price.
Cons:
1) You need to find out the number of the bus going where you need to go, and also the number of the bus that will bring you back (they may differ). You can find this out from tourists or hotel guides — or from a local you’ve made friends with, if you can talk in a language you both understand.
2) You must not miss your stop; for this I used the offline maps in maps.me.
3) When paying the fare on the bus, bear in mind that they don’t give change, so you need small money.
4) You need to find the bus stop and get to it.
You can read about where to eat in my previous article.
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