Hainan China is Where I’m Headed Next

Hainan is famous for it hot springs and circular high-speed train route

I am taking off for a long flight on Saturday night, all the way up to Beijing and then south, on to Hainan, an island at the bottom of China. It’s quite a long distance from the capital city down to Hainan, and I wondered why we didn’t fly right to Hanoi, which is next door. But it is what it is!

I will be joining several colleagues including Bruce Northam on this trip, they’re part of the large assembly of overseas journalists who will converge on Haikou, the island’s capital city, for the travel conference.  After getting a tour of the island’s highlights, we will have two days of meetings and then fly north to Changsa.  The itinerary is wild, taking us first to a place called the Shishan Volcanic Cluster in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan island. We will also see a famous movie-making town called Feng Xiaogang Film Commune.

We’ll fly up to Hunan for more exploration of China.

No tourism board lets you escape without seeing the most important museums and sights, so we will see the local cultural center, provincial museum, visit a hot springs region in the Wei mountains, and lots more.  One thing this trip will provide is a lot of heights. We’ll take a cable car to the top of Mt Tianzi and walk the “First Bridge Under Heaven,” one of the highlights of Zhangjiajie.  Not sure how much of my trip will make it to Facebook, but we’ll try.