Disappointing beach
08.04.2017 - 09.04.2017
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Living in Guangdong
on baixing's travel map.
I had a short weekend, because I was invited to attend the opening of the culture festival on Friday night. The beach at Yangjiang wasn't too far away, so I took the first bus out there at 8:20 a.m. The entire time we were driving, this old woman with a terrible cough sat beside me and would not lean back in her chair, as if she was avoiding me. Racist jerk.
I didn't actually make it to the beach until about noon.
But the good part was, I could walk to my hotel from the bus station and it was a nice day. The walk was pretty long, but it was nice to enjoy the beach on a cloudy day, when no one was there. The hotel I booked was all the way down at the end of the beached. I marched directly there.
Once inside, there was a distinct smell of wet dog but a nice view, so I didn't complain.
Nobody had attempted to improve the smell at all. I opened the two tiny windows and turned the fan to high. I was in desperate need of a shower, so I cleaned up and then headed out.
The beach here had too many rules and I never quite figured them out. I know this: you will get whistled at by a very smelly man, if you try to walk the entire length of the beach. If you cross the rope he is defending, he will yell at you and follow you until he gives up. Then, if you cross the next rope, down the beach, there is another smelly man who will not let you cross it again, and leave for some reason. This was all very confusing because there were a lot of people walking around not getting whistled and yelled at who were doing the same thing as I was. It was quite unpleasant. I managed to make my way down to the other end of the beach, out the other side and continued on towards Ma Wei island.
The beach was clean and soft, but I wanted to go for a walk. I saw on China Travel Guide, there was some sort of an island "20 minutes" away on foot. Um, no it was more like an hour, and I had to navigate a dirt road full of debris, such as broken windows and hazardous waste spilling from paint cans and other unknown vessels.
Me Wei (Horse tail) island, was packed with at least three tour buses, which had passed me on the way there. There were a lot of abandoned restaurants there, which was highly disappointing, because I was feeling ravenous at that point. Garbage was strewn all over the beach, and I wasn't as impressed by the sunset as other people seemed to be. It was interrupted by large fishing trawlers making a racket anyway.
I strolled on back down the road I had came on, and found a large restaurant that seemed to be open. It was built right on top of the water and had one of those aquariums, so I thought the fish would be fresh.
There were some local people fishing off of the edge of the dock there, and one of them spoke English. He said this place's food was "OK", but there was nowhere else to go, so I waited until they opened. When the chef arrived, I ordered some clams. He brought them to my table with pepper sauce and it was quite good.
However, at least 10 or 12 of the clams didn't open and the very last one (after I had eaten the rest of them) was all black inside. I was horrified. They tried to charge me 56 yuan for this terrrible dish, but I left 20 and wrote BAD on the check. After that, I probably contracted another parasite to add to my collection. Who knows what'll be wrong with me in the morning.
I walked back to town and unfortunately I was only wearing flip flops. I hadn't anticipated this long walk, and my feet were killing by the time I got back. I fell asleep quite early after watching some fireworks on the beach from my window.
I got up too early and felt dehydrated. I drank a lot of tea and then pooped out all of the clams, hopefully.
I decided to get brunch and go home at 3 p.m. The last bus of the day, instead of leaving in the morning on Monday. I went down to the beach with my journal and towel for a few hours, observing the peaceful fishermen. That was very nice and relaxing.
Brunch was soup with some fresh seafood thrown ontop, along with some seafood dim sum dumplings. Here were some of my choices: