CHINA – GUANGXI WEST, HAINAN

TRAVEL IN CHINA
1. VPN. Ensure that this is downloaded before arriving, especially if you have an Android phone whose only browser is Chrome, not accessible because of the great China firewall. There are many and one sees endless ads pushing Express VPN. I have used Lets VPN in the past and eventually (by connecting my Mac with Safari) by cable to my phone. That was the only solution.
2. Alipay. Indispensable in China. Pay for metros and everything else. Has Didi and translation and is an incredibly well-designed app. Download on your phone before you get to China and add your credit card, which I couldn’t do in China (they say for security reasons.
3. Hotels. In my last trip through China, I found getting hotels incredibly difficult as only 4-star hotels would allow foreigners to stay in them. And on Booking.com, the hotels never mention their policies about foreigners. Trip.com mentions this in every hotel, much easier. It appears that China has changed its policies and all the hotels I looked at accepted foreigners.
4. Phone. I have a VOI phone carrier called Fonus. It worked great in India and in China accessed both China Telecom and China Unicom. Despite the cost, it was worthwhile not to have to chase around an get a China SIM (which was impossible in 2024).
5. Taxis, China has Didi and it is on the Alipay app. It works just as well as Uber (I actually liked it better as the messages were much more useful). Like Uber, it is quite cheap.

Day 10 Thur Oct 23
GUANGXI WEST (Nanning, Baise, Hechi, Qinzhou) transit
Flights. Kokata to Bangkok Thai Airlines @02:00 to 06:30. Bangkok to Nanning Guanxi Beibu Gulf Airlines @19:45-13:55. 
Thai Digital Arrival Card. Started about 3 months ago, it is pain with way too many questions. I couldn’t fill it out in Kolkata and needed help in Bangkok to do it. I had a self transfer so had to go through immigration and required the arrival card to do that.

NANNING
When landing in Nanning, all the window shades had to be pulled down. The Nanning Airport is dual civilian and military. This is apparently the only airport in China that needs this.
Shuttle to hotel 20Y, one hour.
I had hardly slept on the plane, was glad for the nap I had in the hostel in the evening and was pretty tired.
A woman at the front desk was very helpful in getting my verified on Alipay. It took an endless amount of time. She phoned Alipay whose attendant was incredibly helpful. Alipay has Didi (it was only on WeChat in 2024) and a translation app. It is indispensable in China.
I had tried to get WeChat the last time I was here but was unsuccessful as they couldn’t verify my credit cards. I didn’t bother this time.
I made a bad mistake by not donwloading a VPN on my phone. With an Android phone and only Google, I didn’t even have a browser to use. Because my computer is a Mac, I had Safari and downloaded Lets VPN on my computer, but that alone would not be too useful on the road. 
ON Vienna Hotel (Nanning Railway Station). Their policy statement said they accepted foreigners. Neither of my credit cards worked so had to pay cash. Doesn’t look great in the lobby or facade but room very nice. $28/night for 2 nights.

Day 11 Fri Oct 24
My original plan for today was to go to the WHS. But all the reports were bad so I decided to skip it.
Without a phone, my plan to see the NM sites in Nanning would have been difficult. I have become museum-outed and didn’t think I would enjoy the ones here. Surprisingly, there is no museum just about the Nanning Massacre. So I basically stayed in the hotel and tried to deal with the myriad issues on my plate. It was also great to have a rest day to recover from the mess of India.
I went to the 8-story mall near the hotel and bought a China powerbank. They have to have the CCC label to pass through any Chinese airport. I had needed a new powerbank for some time and waited until I was in China to buy it. 
In the evening, I had the woman at the front desk help me to try to get either a new browser or Lets VPN. All the solutions I had thought of didn’t work. I paid her to get Lets VPN on her phone and hot spotted it, hoping that it would give me access to Google Play — but it didn’t. I connected by computer and phone with a cable and voila, I had access and downloaded Lets VPN. A month was only 47Y so I paid for it on both my MacAir and phone.

ZUOJIANG HUASHAN ROCK ART CULTURAL LANDSCAPE WHS comprises thousands of pictographs, painted on steep cliff faces along the river in a karst landscape.
The paintings were made between the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE by the Luoyue people. The site is a cultural landscape and also includes hamlets and villages where people still perform rituals connected to the rock art. They cover four distinct phases of painting and include depictions of bronze drums, ferry boats and human figures.
The pictographs, spread across three locations, can be seen from boats that navigate the river and wooden platforms on the opposite bank.
Get There: 2h bus from Nanning Jiangnan Station
Zhoulian dock. The first boat leaves at 11.30. large and covered, like a small cruise ship. A guide, almost an hour on the light sandstone walls. Ningming Huashan is the largest panel containing 1951 of a total of 4050 paintings. Are so many drawings on that one cliff that from a distance it almost looks red. There is little variation with the vast majority of them portray people (dancing puppets), there are circles with a star (representing bronze drums) and dogs. All this is linked to the ritual activities of the surrounding villages. There are no drawings of daily activities, as is common elsewhere in rock art.
Nanning has rock art copies to decorate lamp posts, supermarket roofs, even the factory chimneys. Many of the rocks walls are covered with scaffolding. Spend more time stopping at the local village for the inevitable shopping,
Most people find the art disappointing.

Guangxi Museum of Nationalities
Guangxi Provincial Museum
Nanning Museum
Geological Museum of Guangxi
Science and Technology Museum
Guangxi Medicinal Botanical Garden
ON Vienna Hotel for the second night.

Day 12 Sat Oct 25
I spent the morning finishing business. 
Train. Nanning to Zhanjiang @15:45-22:22. Hard sleeper. I like Chinese trains. I slept and read the Economist and Time
I used DiDi for the first time to get to the hotel. I like it better than Uber as it has all its features, but much better messages.
My original plan was to take the ferry to Hainan and booked the train to Zhanjiang. This was a mistake as it was very cumbersome with little benefit; I should have simply flown. So I had to book a hotel in Zhanjiang and fly to Sanya.
ON IU Hotel, Zhanjiang. The cheapest hotel in town at $20. I left my window open and got eaten alive by mosquitoes (could they smell me on the 10^th floor?)

Day 13 Sun Oct 26
I spent the morning in the hotel and went to the airport early after checkout at 1 pm. Zhanjiang has no NM sites. Taxi. The airport was 43 miles away. Called the Zhanjiang Wuchuan International Airport, it was only one year old and situated between Zhanjiang and Maoming. It was not on Google Maps. Didi 89Y
Flight. Zhanjiang to Sanya, Hainan @17:15-18:24. China Southern Airlines. None of the flights to Haikou flew direct, were very expensive and took at least 14 hours. But Sanya has cheap direct flights.

HAINAN
SANYA
The taxi to the hotel was 40Y for a 6 km drive.
Sanya is on the south tip of Hainan, a huge resort/beach town with hundreds of hotels. Many signs are in Russian.
These were the closest NM sites to my hotel, but still 10 km away.
Sanya Beauty Crown Hotel. A 3* hotel with 9 buildings, each with 32 floors and 6000 rooms in total. The fantastic buildings are all identical and shaped like trees. The buildings are white with a huge dark red tree covering the facade. Landscaping nice. Exotic gilt entrances. The nearby Pineapple Mall looks like a golden pineapple.  Architectural Delights:
Guanyin of Nanshan is a 108-metre statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin, built on top of the Nanshan Temple of Sanya. It  took six years to build and was finished in 2005. The statue has three aspects: one side faces inland and the other two face the South China Sea, One aspect depicts Guanyin cradling a sutra in the left hand and gesturing the Vitarka Mudra with the right; the second with her palms crossed, holding a string of prayer beads; and the third holding a lotus. The statue ranks among the tallest in the world: 78 meters in height without including its pedestal, and 108 meters if the pedestal is included. (For comparison, the American Statue of Liberty is 93 meters tall when its pedestal is included, and 46 meters without.)

Nanshan Temple. Under the statue.

Day 12 Mon Oct 27
Flight. Zhanjiang to Guangzhou @10:00-11:25. 9 Air

GO TO GUANGZHOU