4-Day Sanya Fishing and Coastal Exploration Tour

We are in our late sixties and I was honestly a bit nervous about a week of ferries and boats, so we treated the four days more as a base camp than a checklist. The hotel along Sanya Bay was the right call for us. We could walk straight out onto the sand before breakfast, and the pool in the afternoon is where we actually spent most of our time. The day I keep thinking about is West Island. The ferry took about twenty minutes and then we just wandered. Fisherman's Alley is a real neighbourhood, not a set built for visitors, and I liked that nobody hurried us through it. The Sea Library is an old fishing boat turned into a floating bookshop, and I sat there for maybe half an hour reading with the whole thing rocking gently underneath me. My husband took the buggy up to the ridge; I stayed down by the water. We skipped the seafood market that evening because we were tired, which I slightly regret. Not a trip for anyone who wants to tick off everything. For us it was about right.

I came to Sanya mainly for the food and the sea, and the evening at First Market is what I'll remember. You walk past rows of tanks and pick your own fish. I had no idea what I was doing, so I pointed at a lobster and a bag of clams and let one of the stalls nearby cook the lot. Steamed with garlic, a plate of greens, cold beer. Sitting on a plastic stool at nine at night with the whole place shouting around me beat every restaurant I ate in that week. Days are hot, even in early March. I swam at Dadonghai in the afternoon, flat warm water, free entry. The sunset from Luhuitou was crowded but you get the whole lit-up bay and the little legend about the deer from the signs along the path.

I planned this trip around photography and the coast mostly delivered. Niuwang Ridge on West Island was the surprise. You take the buggy about two kilometres and then walk out onto flat reef shelves at low tide, full of small crabs and shells, and the light on the water mid-afternoon is exactly the "glass sea" people talk about. I spent two hours there and could have stayed longer. Bring shoes you don't mind soaking. Sun Bay Road is beautiful and also slightly maddening. Four kilometres of cliff road with ocean on one side the whole way, but stopping is limited to three minutes and that is genuinely enforced. I got maybe two frames I'm happy with. If you're serious about shooting it, ask your driver to plan out the pull-offs in advance instead of hoping. The Dragon Bridge in the Yalong Bay forest park I did on the last morning. It's 168 metres of swaying suspension bridge above the canopy and the glass walkway nearby gives you the whole bay. Go early. By ten there were queues for the bridge and the light was already harsh. A good trip if you accept you're working around crowds and rules rather than chasing empty landscapes.

We travelled with a seven and a ten year old in June, which is hot, humid and sticky. The smartest thing we did was drop things. We skipped the evening at the seafood market because the kids were finished by eight, and we treated the fishing boat as a shorter morning rather than a full session. That fishing morning was the highlight for them. The captain showed them how to hold the rod and my son landed something small and grey that we had cooked at a restaurant by the dock an hour later. He still talks about eating his own fish. Dadonghai in the afternoon is easy with children, shallow and free with plenty of shade. The forest park the next day involved more walking than they wanted, though the suspension bridge made up for it. Take the shuttle up if your kids are already tired, and bring water.

Short break for me, four days between jobs. Flew into Sanya, driver was waiting, hotel on the bay was nice enough that I didn't feel like leaving it much. Ferry over to West Island, swim, walked the palm promenade in the evening, ate seafood twice. The chartered boat morning was fun even though all I caught was a sunburn on the back of my neck. It's not a culture trip, it's a beach trip, and that's exactly what I booked.

My wife and I booked this mostly because of the chartered boat. We've done a bit of sea fishing off Cornwall and the Algarve and we wanted to see what the South China Sea would give us. The four-hour morning session was well run: captain, proper tackle, bait included, and he was patient with two people who kept tangling their lines. We came back with a decent box of small reef fish. Taking the catch to a restaurant by the dock and having half of it steamed and the rest in a light soup was probably the best meal of the week, and it cost less than we expected. The evenings turned out to be the part I didn't anticipate enjoying. The promenade along the bay is a good place to walk once the heat drops, and on our second night we went up to Luhuitou Peninsula, free entry and open late, and looked down at the whole city lit up. There's a legend about a hunter and a deer that our driver explained to us in about six words of English and a lot of gestures. We got the gist. Two honest notes. The midday heat is real and we learned to do nothing between one and four. And the seafood market is loud, hot and not for everyone, so don't feel obliged. If you try to see everything on this list you'll be rushing. We didn't, and it suited us.