September 12th - 9月 12日

If there is something I love about living in China, that is food and its colourful food markets. Here in Sanya there are many interesting places where you can get lovely local food but also many other provinces specialities and of course there are many exotic food markets ready to be explored.

So I thought it would be a good idea to keep you updated about some food discoveries in Hainan Island.

Most of the restaurants here have fish tanks where you can choose your alive future seafood and even kill it yourself (there isn’t any fresher than that). But these tourist places are pretty expensive. Luckily I met Ambrose, a Cantonese guy who invited me and some friends to a secret sea food night market hidden somewhere in Sanya city. We didn’t hesitate and a group of twelfth hungry people went for it (in China the quantity of people for dinner is directly proportional to the number of dishes you will be able to try, I loooove big Chinese dinners!).

This place is an open air market called “Friendship Seafood Square“.

If you like seafood this is the place to go, if you don’t still a very interesting place as it could be even better than scuba diving.

So that’s the first step, buy your fresh seafood and vegetables at the market area. The price depends on your barging skills. It can be very cheap, especially when you have a skilful Chinese bargainer friend like Ambrose that do the hard work for you.

But the most interesting part of it is all these little kitchen areas ready to sell their cooking skills to get your dinner ready. It is so nice to see them cooking, you can learn a lot about it.

I got pretty impressed by Chinese men’s cooking abilities. I rarely have seen women cooking in this kind of street food places. I’ve noticed that at least here in Hainan generally men cook and women pick up the money.

Food was amazing! But sorry, as I love secret hidden places I will keep it that way and won’t tell you where it is. One day you might be lucky and get invited too. 🙂