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All pages at a glance
Four weeks, 28 nights, eleven hotels, no rental car, no tour group. What China's tropical island really costs, how to get around and what there is to see beyond the beaches.
Route
椰梦长廊
Coconut Dream Corridor
Twenty kilometres of palms, sand and evening light — the best-known image of this island costs …
第一市场First Market
Here you buy the fish yourself and have it cooked next door. And nowhere in Sanya is there closer …
鹿回头Luhuitou
The name of this hill tells a story in which a hunter doesn't shoot. The city made it its emblem …
夜游三亚湾Evening cruise on Sanya Bay
From the water Sanya looks like a different city: the palm promenade glows, the towers of Phoenix …
候鸟The “migratory birds”
Every winter this city grows by hundreds of thousands of people. Almost all of them come from the …
槟榔谷Binglanggu — Li and Miao
The women with tattooed faces here are the last of their kind. The youngest of them received her …
五指山Wuzhishan
A few hours from the beach promenade, the holiday island ends. It gets several degrees cooler …
HotelHoliday Inn Express Sanya
Close to the airport, freshly renovated. The bottom end of the price range — and proof that it …
HotelCrowne Plaza Sanya City Center
Every room with a balcony, where two rivers meet. The whole centre is within walking distance or a …
亚龙湾热带天堂森林公园
Yalong Bay Forest Park — the bridge above the forest
A rainforest on a hill, a suspension bridge 40 metres above the ground and below it the island's …
蜈支洲岛Wuzhizhou Island
This island is so green because for decades nobody was allowed to set foot on it. Today up to …
后海村Houhai Village
Twenty minutes' walk from China's most expensive resort strip lies a fishing village where since …
三亚国际免税城Duty free & free trade zone
Many of the people you see in Sanya didn't come for the beach. They flew in to shop — on an island …
HotelInterContinental Sanya Haitang Bay
Underwater restaurant, sunrise from the balcony. Two nights are enough to see the top end.
三亚公交
Taking the bus in Sanya
Almost every guidebook recommends bus route 25, which runs from Yalong Bay to Nanshan for a few …
大东海Dadonghai — the city beach
No resort, no barrier, no admission: Dadonghai is the beach where Sanya itself swims. You hear more …
亚龙湾Yalong Bay
Before a single hotel stood here, this bay was named after its sand — in the language of the Li. It …
大小洞天Daxiaodongtian — rocks, caves and ancient trees
A coastal park at the foot of Nanshan, where Taoists searched for long life, a famous monk on his …
HotelTiancheng Belmont Hotel, Vignette Collection
50 metres from the water, the palm promenade on the doorstep. The restaurant cooks Hainanese and …
海南海洋欢乐世界
Ocean Paradise — the train over the sea
A train that doesn't run along the sea but over it. Built for a park a property group planned for …
新村港Xincun — the village on the water
For centuries these people weren't allowed to live on land. So they built themselves a town on the …
海南疍家博物馆Tanka Museum — four hats on the shore
The building is shaped like a hat — the broad woven hat Tanka women wear on the water. It's the …
南湾猴岛Nanwan Monkey Island — over the raft village to the macaques
A cable car carries you a good two kilometres over the water, the Tanka's floating village beneath …
陵水县城Lingshui — the county town
No hotels for tourists, no tickets, no viewing platform. Lingshui is a completely ordinary Chinese …
HotelHoliday Inn Hainan Xiangshui Bay
Spacious grounds, very good value for money. The bay opens to the east and west — sunrise and …
官塘温泉
Guantang — the hot springs
Water hotter than any bathtub comes out of the ground by the Wanquan River. Even the inventor of …
兴隆Xinglong — the returnees' coffee
This coffee tastes of Malaysia because the people who brought it here came from there. Not by …
博鳌Bo'ao — Asia's Davos
Once a year heads of state, ministers and central bankers meet here. The rest of the year Bo'ao is …
玉带滩Yudai — the sandbar between two waters
On the left the South China Sea with its surf, on the right calm river water, in between a narrow …
潭门Tanmen — the harbour and the sea book
For centuries fishermen have sailed from this harbour to reefs now claimed by six parties. Their …
嘉积溪仔古街Jiaji — Xizai Old Street
Most people know Qionghai only as a place to pass through between the hot springs and Bo'ao. Yet …
中国（海南）南海博物馆Museum of the South China Sea
A museum that looks like a ship, right next to a harbour full of real ships. Inside lies the story …
博鳌乐城国际医疗旅游先行区Lecheng — China's medical special zone
Here you can get medicines that aren't approved in the rest of China. Legally. Patients travel here …
红色娘子军The Red Detachment of Women
This unit existed for only about a year and a half and was wiped out. Its real career began thirty …
龙寿洋国家农业公园Longshouyang — the field park
Rice fields, coconut palms, betel groves and fish ponds, with cycle paths in between — just two …
HotelHoliday Inn Resort Qionghai Guantang
25 thermal pools spread across the grounds, 08:00–23:00. On rainy days the best place on the island.
文昌航天发射场
Wenchang — rockets among coconut palms
China's heaviest rockets launch from a strip of coast where, next door, coconuts are harvested and …
宋氏祖居The house of the Soong sisters
From this farmhouse came the family whose daughters shaped 20th-century China — on both sides of a …
东郊椰林Dongjiao — the coconut forest
Here the coconut isn't holiday decoration but a whole industry. A quarter of all China's coconuts …
HotelHoliday Inn Express Wenchang
On Qishui Bay, 4.5 km from the launch pad — one of the free viewpoints during launches. Note: 30 km …
骑楼老街
Qilou — the returnees' old town
These streets weren't built by people who got rich here. They were built by people who left because …
老爸茶Laocha — “Papa tea”
For the equivalent of one or two euros you can sit here as long as you like — a morning, an …
海南省博物馆Hainan Museum — the island under one roof
If you've got to know the island piece by piece over four weeks, here you find it all again in one …
雷琼世界地质公园The volcanic field of Haikou
Haikou stands on a volcanic field. The city's highest point is a crater — and the villages around …
云洞图书馆The Cloudscape Library
There isn't a single straight line in this building. It was cast from concrete in one piece, stands …
海南科技馆The science museum — a silver spiral
A silver building that twists upwards like a cloud, opened only in April 2026. Two of its four …
五公祠The island of exiles
Whoever contradicted the emperor was sent here, to the end of the world. That, of all things, is …
海南四大名菜Four dishes and a night market
Hainan's four most famous dishes come from three places on the east coast — and if you've made this …
HotelInterContinental Haikou Seaview
Haidian Island, the Century Bridge outside the window, the old town 3 km away.
HotelHoliday Inn Express Duty Free City
Same city, two days later, less than half the price. New, directly opposite Duty Free City, 600 …
海花岛
Ocean Flower Island — Evergrande's flower island
An artificial island shaped like a flower, planned with a budget of up to 160 billion yuan. Then …
东坡书院The Dongpo Academy — the poet at the end of the world
China's most famous poet was sent here to be got rid of. He was forbidden to live in an official …
南山海上观音
Nanshan — the Guanyin in the sea
This statue is fifteen metres taller than the Statue of Liberty, stands on an artificial island in …
HotelCrowne Plaza Sanya Yazhou Bay
New build in a quiet neighbourhood, 10 km to Nanshan, 24 minutes to the airport.
崖州古城
Yazhou — the town at the end of the world
For more than a thousand years this was China's southernmost prefectural town — the place where the …
西岛West Island — the coral-stone village
An island in the middle of Sanya Bay, a short boat ride away. On one side an amusement area with …
天涯海角Tianya Haijiao — from the end of the world to the wedding photo
A few granite boulders on the beach with characters carved on them. And yet this is one of China's …
全岛封关运作The customs border — leaving China and still staying
Since 18 December 2025 Hainan has been a special customs area. Leaving the island for the mainland …
HotelCrowne Plaza Resort Sanya Bay
Large, a bit older, but good. Everything within walking distance — and livelier in the evening than …
Practical
Hotels & booking
Eleven hotels — and the question: price or status?
Swiss Army knife for China
Everything to sort out before departure and how to get around Hainan: entry, paying with Alipay & …
Alipay — Paying in China
The most important means of payment. Linked to your credit card, you pay by QR code almost …
WeChat / WeChat Pay — Messaging and paying
China's everything app: messages, calls and — with a linked credit card — paying by QR code. The …
DiDi — Taxis and rides
China's Uber: enter the destination, see the price in advance, the driver comes, payment runs …
Amap (Gaode) — Navigation and place search
The map app that really works in China: buses, trains, walking routes and millions of places. With …
Trip.com — Hotels, trains, excursions, tickets
Hotels, train tickets with your passport and admission tickets — in English or German, with an …
Translator — German/English ↔ Chinese
Menus, signs, short conversations: with camera translation and offline packs. Plus ready-made …
NordVPN / VPN — Preparing to use a VPN
Many familiar services can't be reached directly in China. If you want to use a VPN, you must …
eSIM / roaming — Internet and data connection
Without internet almost nothing works in China: no paying, no taxi, no map. Three ways to a data …
What it costs
With real numbers
When it rains
When the weather turns
About this site & imprint
Who we are, how the texts are written and how we fund this site
Hotel status using the IHG example
The golden guide for frequent travellers