Part 2

Hello there my friends. Sorry to take so long to get to part 2 but I was kinda busy this past week. So here we go. We take the 3 hour ride down to Sanya. Now we thought it would be a van since there were 4 of us, but no we get a sedan and I get the middle seat. If this was home then I would have no problem, but the middle seat in a chinese car means a dead to the world butt. My butt was numb within the first 1/2 hour and was just painful after that. Rachel however was nice enough to offer her behind for the middle seat for the last 1/2 hour which was definitely a welcome move!

We get to the hostel and go to check in. To save some money we want to see if we can have all 4 of us in a room. But of course to rip us off, they won't let us do that, so we split into separate rooms, not before Rachel tries to argue and fails. Later however the clerk lady said she talked to her boss and said tomorrow night we can all be in one room. Of course it's not really a problem it's just that they thought we were some silly tourists that didn't know better. So that night we go to a restaurant down the block called Rainbow, which we pretty much have all our meals henceforth. Not just because this is a western restaurant but also because the food is really good and there are many choices. I don't think I ate the same thing twice.

Now we did arrive while a typhoon was passing so it was on and off raining quite a bit. We spent the next afternoon trying to find Lauren a good bathing suit, which turned into a bathing suit that fit and wasn't atrocious. You would think with all the tourists and the large amount of Russian immigrants that they would have western sizes but they don't. I came to the conclusion that they hid the real stuff in the back just to make all the westerners feel God awful fat! So after a lot of searching we finally finish tired and a bit defeated, so we go to Rainbow to figure out what the game plan for tomorrow is. We go to the hostel's lobby and on the wall there are many package deals to do different things in Sanya. We look through them and decide that tomorrow we wanted to try the scuba diving and then go to the hot spring. We pay and plan to get up super early.

We wake up and get ready and head to the lobby. We are met by one of the owners who kinda has an attitude off the bat but we brush it off since that's not too uncommon here when someone thinks they are above you. She takes us a few blocks away to the water and to the scuba center. She leaves us there and we start to suit up. The entire instruction was in chinese but thankfully Rachel is PADI certified. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's an international certification to scuba without having someone attached to your hip trying to tell you what to do. Also she is certified to dive to 30 meters, much farther than a novice is allowed to go. So while they are bringing the new group for instruction, Rachel runs through the basics with us so we aren't clueless. I did think that it was strange that the chinese instructor didn't talk too much about how to use the tank.

We take a little golf cart thingy to another end of the beach and wait. We are half dressed in wet suits and the most mortifying part of this whole ordeal was getting these disgusting (in my opinion) wet shoes on. If you know me you know I HATE FEET!!! so yeah... that was very hard! We wait and wait, while sitting there I look at the water to see where the boats are. I want to gauge how long it takes for each group to go and come back. Only because there are a shit ton of people here and I was just hoping we wouldn't sit there forever. So I'm watching and watching but I see no boats. All I see is a group of people floating in about waist deep water and flapping all over the place and coming back. So when it's our turn we ask the guy by the water what the deal is. Because we paid to scuba dive, not to "wanna be" snorkel in scuba gear and see nothing since there's about 20 people in about 50 square feet of water. He pretty much tells us no this is it. We ask if we can swim out since Rachel is certified, he says no. So peeved.... we leave and go back to the hostel to get our money back cause that was just total BS!

The hostel gives us our money back without too much problem. This leads me to believe that this is not the first time someone has had problems with the scuba place. Cause in China if you want your money back you need to fight tooth and nail for it. If they just hand it to you it means that they know it was bogus to begin with. So slightly annoyed that we wasted the whole day on this, we go to Rainbow to eat and plan to go to the hot spring for the night.

Hmm I'm thinking this calls for Part 3 :)... to be continued...