Let's start with our residence, and move outwards. I was initially a bit sniffy about our somewhat institutional breakfast. The cooked veges were overly soft, the stuffed steamed buns a little bland. And there was no rice. (No rice! I'm now sufficiently Southeast Asian to find this shocking.) But there was usually a good meat dish (we all looked forward to roast pork day); there was always a selection of salads and pickled veges; the plain steamed buns were excellent, as was the hot, creamy soya milk. And squares of amazingly spongy cake, in different varieties, dutifully appeared every morning. I will miss Golden Heights breakfasts....

Radiating out into our locality, there's a great selection of things to buy from the kind of shops that have counters facing out onto the street. These include steamed brown buns with raisins; savoury stuffed steamed buns; and pastries stuffed with red bean paste or lotus paste.





Then there is the multiplicity of really wonderful local noodle places. Stand-outs were broad noodles like the ones we had had in Xian, tossed with chili oil and bok choy (and that same place also served the "Chinese hamburgers" we'd encountered in Xian, which are so much nicer than their Western equivalent); rough-surfaced noodles served with capsicum, tofu, and gravy; and knife-cut noodles in the most deliciously aromatic beef broth.



Moving across the river, you get Haikou's famous "Snack Street", which is basically an extensive food court. Alongside are covered arcades with yet more food offerings. All sorts of things are available, the quality is good, and the prices are reasonable. Monday became Snack-Street-Lunch day.

My favourite was the inexplicably translated "Hainan powder". Ignore the name. This is another noodle dish, consisting of greyish noodles, a thick brown gravy, pepper, crispy bits, beansprouts, coriander, and peanuts, with a bowl of broth on the side.

We tried the Wenchang chicken, which Hainan is famous for, and which is supposed to be the origin of the Hainanese chicken rice that we know, love, and squabble over in Southeast Asia. To be honest, we preferred the evolved version...

But we also had fun scouring Snack Street's various dessert shops. We sampled mango and coconut blancmange, double-boiled milk, coated taro sticks (bizarrely translated as "anti-sand taro"), and yi bua, which is a coconut/peanut/palm sugar combo wrapped in chewy glutinous rice flour skin (I can think of few more delectable things).

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I've already mentioned coconut products, but the range never ceased to amaze. As well as jellies and wafers, there are cookies, "happy coconut balls", coconut coffee, and so, so much more.



Even in the train, there is no escape from the coconut...



La creme de la coconutty creme, however, was the qing bu liang from Coconut House. At the top of the post is the grown-up version. It also comes with coconut ice-cream.





I have to single out two quirky and delicious meals. One was from Why so rush?, a little eatery in the mall near the museum. They offer the same kind of crispy-bottomed, soup-filled dumplings that we had in Shanghai. You can supplement your squirty bun with a bowl of noodle soup (mine had glass noodles, lettuce, little round crunchy things, and chilli). It was tasty, and the whole approach seemed perky and fun.

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Our very brief foray to Sanya introduced us to a different kind of eatery, with a table of stuff set up just inside the blue bead curtains that mark off the doorway. Slightly intimidated by this newness, we hesitated and walked past a couple. At the next one, an older lady beckoned us in, showing us the bowl of rice and stuff that she was eating (on the hoof, as it were, as she continued to do her rounds of the establishment). Two like that, I said. Well, we got something rather more sophisticated than that. Brought to the table were two huge bowls of rice (rice!), two plates loaded with meat, chicken, tofu, and vegetables; two bowls of broth; a little dish of a lovely peanut/chilli/coriander relish; and a fresh pot of delicious tea (made with round leaf-wrapped bundles that looked like little pumpkins floating in the pot). And the bill for all that? 30 CNY.