Last christmas we went on a family holiday. Every 2 to 3 years we're blessed with a super cool family holiday. This year we went back to Asia, Hong Kong and Sanya (China) in particular.
Sanya was totally unknown to me. You can compare it a bit with Dubai in Asia. You'll find a strip of almost every known hotel brand on the globe. Asians go crazy for that kind of convenience. Except for the Park Hyatt, which is smartly positioned away from the 'Las Vegasy' strip on the other side of the bay, the windier side of the bay - Sunny Bay.
- Luxury hotel Where to start on my adoration for this amazing architectural concept.
I LOVED IT.
The architect apparently is a Belgian fella; Jean-Michel Gathy, which is nice to know as this hotel is all about the architecture.
The outside look of the building is like a futuristic space basecamp that lightens up by night in the midst of the jungle with an amazing sea view .
The inside of the building is overwhelmingly beautiful. You get blown away, literally as some parts have open walls. So I repeat you get blown away by the mastodons of corridors decorated with contemporary art, the finest textiles, luxury woods, super high ceilings and perfect lighting. I felt like being in an Asian space movie getting lost in the beauty of this hidden gem. Not to forget a very important extra; your toilet is one of those smart toilets that are always warmed up, a delight for your bums. And they even sprinkle on your funny parts, if you're into that :)
We mostly stayed at the hotel for dinner and had hotpot sessions twice.
Hotpot is a very grateful dish, it has this 'all you can eat' vibe which we love obviously.
It's a broth/soup, mostly chicken or mushroom, where you can cook all your chosen ingredients in such as beef, mushrooms, veggies, beancurd, noodles, wontons, ... = The Asian version of fondue.
Light, easy and fun.
BEACH BARBACOA - THE EDITION HOTEL HAINAN
- Indonesian restaurant
The deal was that everyone in the family had to invite each other to a restaurant during our holiday as a christmas present. I repeat myself, we love food. Therefor we ended up at having lunch at the beach restaurant Barbacoa of The Edition hotel for an outdoor barefoot lunch experience. After all the Cantonese (coming from Hong Kong) and Chinese food we were excited to have some Indonesian food served. When we arrived at the Edition hotel we were again amazed by the architecture of this building too. The entrance was huge, the site of the hotel is huge, it's a village. They were preparing for Tiësto to come play a set the next day to celebrate NYE, so you can imagine the proportions of the property. They invited us for a walk to the restaurant so we could enjoy the views of this new luxurious urban concept hotel, happy I wasn't wearing any high heels as the walk took us almost 10minutes. Ones we arrived at the restaurant it seemed closed because we were alone, nobody was there except for the kitchen and waiter staff = 9people, we counted. It seemed that they opened it just for us!!!
" Normally we only open for dinner but we're happy to welcome you today" Uhhmm ok, the Asian hospitality = 10points!
The food was delish. We had a variety of meat, fish and veggie platters and shared everything. And to finish this lovely experience we even had a affordable and very nice rosé. Affordable as normally wines are very expensive in China, have beer instead...
As MARGAUX I MARGERITA is all about honest sharing I felt the urge to share a downside of this amazing trip.
First of all; I don't want to offend anyone and I'm no good and guilty AF too. That being clear I'll share this one.
What do you see…
Exactly Some typical holiday beach pictures I wanted to post.
But then I realised how ‘fake’ it would be not to mention the behind the scenes of these pictures.
Plastics are my main co-models here. If you look good on there's plastic everywhere in the sand.
This is the beach of Sunny Bay, where we stayed. On our first morning we had a walk on the beach to wake up and enjoy a fresh sea breeze.
I've never imagined that China had such beautiful beaches and bays. Really the sand is super soft, the palmtrees are iddylic, the color of the water is turqoise... I mean just beautiful. So we're walking and talking and at some point we start realizing the enormous amount of loose coral pieces and plastic laying in the sand coming from the ocean. It was everywhere, we were literally walking on plastic. So what do you do ? Your common sense kicks in and you start picking it up, after a couple of minutes we started looking for a trashcan. No trashcans spotted anywhere. Ok let's ask the lifeguards if they have one. They gave us bags instead to collect all the rubbish, small plastic bags, the ones like in a supermarket at the fruits & veggies department, hello irony!
Ok better then nothing. So our morning walk evolved to a family beach clean up, those crazy Belgians we saw them thinking about us. Your mind is messing with you at that moment because you know you're doing the right thing by picking it up but at the same time you know it's a never ending story because there a thousands and thousands of pieces laying there and you're the responsible and guilty motherfffffrrrr.
Next to the coral, we mostly bumped into plastic take away boxes and plastic bottles but to keep the fun level high we also bumped into gascans, fishnets and a few dead or dying fish. Just horrible. We repeated this mental gesture every morning, same as we repeatedly throw that stuff away every morning without really realizing where it ends up. in your face on your holiday, wake up call!
A good thing was that the hotel where we were staying organized a weekly beach clean up together with the guests who want to join, so they’re aware and bringing this problem to the surface. Why not daily ?
To thank us the hotel beachstaff gave us a fresh coconut, with a plastic straw in it, again with the irony! Just to show you what real story can be behind a nice (edited) holiday picture we constantly see passing on our feeds these days. Don't envy them, they're most probably posing gracefully on a pile of plastic to hit that perfect shot.
Youngsters are taking over the streets to claim their own secure and less polluted future and they have the total right for that. I have the right to wright about my encounter with this reality without sugarcoating it for the love of a "a nice feed" ! I did post a picture of the same beach a couple of weeks ago in my instagram stories and didn’t mention the plastic issue and actually questioned myself for it. Why wouldn’t I share it if I can share other 'useless' stuff I can as well share stuff that in my opinion aren’t that useless.
I’m not trying to say what you can and can’t do, as I said I’m as guilty as many of us, but being aware and keeping this topic on top of mind is more than ok and normal. It's more on the idea that I, myself wasn’t enough aware of how BIG and HUGE this problem is, as the plastic is literally growing on us. I believe we can definitely reduce our over-abuse.
Starting with rice or pasta straws for example?