This has been the best Spring Festival for me. I got to see my friends again and it was in the most beautiful city I’ve seen to date. Sanya is something of a marvel. It was my first beach resort and the heat was welcoming. Everything about this holiday has formed into a memory that I can kiss up to God in thanks. So, where do I begin?
Well, let’s start with the bad because, being my first time traveling alone, I made a few mistakes. For one, I got the date wrong and ended up in Sanya a day early meaning I had to get a room at a hostel. This led to another problem because I was dealing with a lot of them who flat out refuse to accept foreigners. I ended up spending more money on taxis than the hostel itself when I finally found one. So, when I found one around 5 am, I only got a few hours of sleep as I needed to check out at noon. I finally met up with my friends (two of them, at least) after a couple more mishaps and that’s when the real fun began.
Well, almost…
The villa we reserved for the holiday wasn’t up to our standards of cleanliness. Even worse, the landlord was so cruel and rude about it that we had no choice but to make do with it. The landlord didn’t want to give us our money back and he was trying to make us feel small. Nevertheless, we decided to stay and clean the place ourselves – while listening to gospel music. (That’s black people for you; Latin people, too.) After everything was said and done, we decided to map out what we wanted to do.
For the first FULL day of our holiday, we decided to just explore. It was just the three of us, at first, so we just took a walk around the city. We explored the nightlife and the beach. I don’t swim but I love the sand between my feet. Plus, we were still waiting for the rest of our friends. We ended up waiting for them while eating at a marvelous Indian restaurant. It was the third time having Indian food and it was too good for me to have one time on this trip; my friends agreed. Plus, the music and company were amazing.
When everybody arrived (six people) and got some sleep, we decided to do some major hiking. It was a lengthy one where I had a lot of nerve-conquering to do because we were going on various parts of the trail. It was the Holiday Resort Tropical Wonderland. We went uphill after hill and even went on a glass bridge (yes! There was a bridge made out of glass) and I was more enthralled than scared. At the end of the top, there was a sliding obstacle course that had you ziplining to the bottom in various ways. That was where I drew the line and took the bus down; my friends were understanding about that and praised me for going this far. Again, we ended the day by going to the Indian restaurant. The owner was more than happy to see us with our full party.
The next day was beach day. Again, I didn’t want to swim because (1) I can’t swim, and (2) I just wanted to feel the sand between my feet and read books. We made sure that we found a spot on the beach and I placed myself in charge of watching their stuff as I read my book. Later, we made a sand caterpillar while completely acting like kids. Of course, we had to shoo locals away who wanted to record us. One of my friends has a practice of forcing them to delete the photo and/or video while chastising them for being invasive and rude. Personally, I treat them like my students. I take their phone away and tell them that they are “on punishment for their rudeness”. And, of course, like before, we ended our night at the Indian restaurant.
The last two days were a bit more intimate for us. We decided to stay in and watch Encanto and In The Heights. We couldn’t stop crying at some parts and it ended with us going to a club/bar for some food. Since we were flights were becoming scarce and we all had to get a COVID test before boarding, we decided Friday to be our last day for us. My flight is early Saturday morning and it will be business as usual for me. To be honest, my brain hasn’t really been turned off from Teacher Mode. Maybe for like 30% Teacher Mode. Either way, I’m going to miss Sanya and my friends while, at the same time, being happy to get back to my students.
Now, please, don’t forget to follow me on my social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads) which are on the right side of my web page. Also, I do love hearing suggestions of what books to read outside of my norm (Science fiction and fantasy) as I am a part of the Goodreads’ reading challenge for 2022. My goal is to read 180 books this year and I’m already at 25. I should probably start reviewing these books.
