Hainan Hawaii

I'm going to catch up on some posts while I'm here in the US and can actually log on (wow!)...

Eli came to visit over Memorial Day and we spent a few days in Shanghai and then flew to Hainan. It's a tropical island near Hong Kong that is attracting tourists from the mainland, but when we went, most of the vacationers seemed to be from Hong Kong. We got a great package at the Mandarin from booking it on the Chinese Ebay called "TaoBao." The resort had its own beach so we stayed there for the whole time. Surprisingly it had just opened in February so it was stll pretty new. During the Danwu jie (Dragonboat holiday) we took a cooking class where we learned how to wrap zhongzi and there was also a gym, four pools, pingpong, movies...
Since we had to leave out of Haikou, not Sanya, we had to take a 3.5 hour bus ride up to the north part of the island. Because of this, we also booked a place to stay that night. It was called the Crown Spa Plaza Hotel (I had originally thought it said Crowne Plaza) and was known for it's "fish spa treatments." What's this you ask? imagine a warm pool with fish about 1-2 inches long nibbling at your skin! It's like animated exfoliation! After sitting in the pool for a few minutes, fish would come, but I could only stand at most five at a time and then had to shake them off. The picture here is a woman who seems to have hundreds of fish on her while sitting still. It was fun, but next time I think I will stick to loofa!