We spent 3-4 days in Sanya and struggled to find things to do and weren’t impressed with anything about it, from the hotel, to the beach, to the service, to the people, it was all rather unspectacular and one of the most boring holidays I’ve had. If you’re golfing, yep, there’s what appears to be some good golf courses there, but other than that, unless they’ve built a time machine or something else not seen anywhere else in the world, there’s nothing to see or do in Sanya that make it worth going.
We stayed at the Hilton Sanya Yalong Bay Resort & Spa, which was fine but honestly, it was like Sanya itself, totally forgettable. I couldn’t tell you anything about the hotel either good or bad. This place is very popular with mainland Chinese and Russians. It’s become a magnet for mainland Chinese who want to get married on the beach and in 2015, apparently hosted two thousand wedding parties, 300,000 wedding couples who went there to shoot their wedding photos, and 200,000 honeymooners. So you’ll see loads of mainland Chinese all dressed up on the beach taking cheesy wedding shots. Entertaining to say the least.
More about Sanya from the official tourism website: “Sanya is now undoubtedly on of the best destinations for tour, vacation and leisure time in China. Being the only tropical coastal city of tourism, Sanya is a garden city all year round, a center of fashion business and exhibition, a city of leisure time and activities, and a place boasting the longevity of its residents. It is a sunny city that has more than 300 days of sunlight in a year. Warm winters and not-so-hot summers guarantee that this place has blooming flowers all year round. The rate of forest cover in the area of Sanya is 64.4%, and the public green space cover in the urban area is 44.6%. The quality of air and environment of Sanya ranks first among all cities in China. According to the air quality survey over 148 cities of 45 countries by the UN from 1998 to 2003, Sanya claims the first place in Asia, and second place in the world.”
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