I just spent a week in Beihai and I am not overly excited about the place. I arrived by train from Nanning and left by plane to Guangzhou. There is only one flight a day to and from Guangzhou and Beihai. It was better for me to fly to Nanning then take the train rather that fly to Beihai and arrive at 2 am. Other cities may have more selections of flights.
IT WAS HOT. 85 degrees and 70% humidity. I went through three shirts a day. And can you imagine what several hundred tons of dead fish remnants smells like on a day like that? Not good at all but it was confined to certain areas.
Beihai is a very old city that was built around fishing and pearl industry. It is at the very tip of a peninsula that juts out into the South China Sea. All along the coast you will see either fishing boats or oyster harvesters. It is a small city and reminds me of some of the backwood towns in Oklahoma where I grew up. 1950s era.
It is not nearly as crowded as Guangzhou and you can see the sky....and it's blue! There are very few high-rise buildings, but I think that is about to change.
I found MacDonald's and KFC about a mile from my hotel. That area seems to be a commercial center. Lots of clothing, and of course pearl markets there. (There are jewelry markets everywhere). I found a computer store and an electronics outlet but nothing on the scale as the ones in Guangzhou. I think The shopping and selections are probably better in Gulian or Nanning.
I stayed in the oldest part of town. Right down by the water. The roads are terrible. bumps and chug holes everywhere. My hotel was located on an island know as seafood Island. It is covered with seafood restaurants. Everything I ate was good. Cant beat fresh seafood. I found a real Australian dude that had his own restruant selling western food. Right in the middle of the seafood village. They make a mean hamburger. I guess his name is Tommy cause that was the name of his restruant.
Transportation is by taxi or ricksha. Or if you dare, the back of a motoscooter. There are litterally thousands of motor scooters. Everywhere you look there are hundreds parked and hundreds more on the road. And they don't obey traffic signals. I swear they just blast through an intersection like they own it and surprisingly i didn't see anyone get killed while I was there. OK like everywhere else in China everyone is in everyone elses pocket. helping each other for kickbacks. So the taxi driver will argue with you on where you want to go even if you tell him up front where you are going. The taxi drivers and the ricksha drivers all will nag you to death to take you to this or that sightseeing tour or the best seafood restruant in town ...etc. There is now way around it that I found.
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Along the outskirts to the north along the coast starting from the shangra-la hotel there is a lot of new construction.
Lot of hotels and condos going up.
One taxi driver told us that the cost of one of the apartments in one of the new buildings was 10,000RMB/sq meter which is pretty amazing.
The streets are new and wide and in good condition.
All that is along the coast. On the west side of the highway it is still old and run down.
When things begin to look fresh and new you are in another city (Jinghaizhen).
Just before you get to Jinghaizhen you head due west to get to the airport.
The road to the airport looks like vast amounts of vacant land/jungle with an occasional road heading off into nowhere but in fact it is farms and industrial parks. The same is true for the coast road on the other side of the peninsula. There are a lot of new buildings that look like potential factories and warehouses. Talking with one of the locals I found out that the Beihai government is inticing new businesses to open factories there by assisting them in acquiring the land and permits and also allowing them to do business tax free for three years. Increased number of jobs raises the demand for new housing so prices are going to rise. How much is not certain.
The silver beach is over hyped. I expected to see something in the order of Disney water parks along the coast but what I found was a few hum drum beaches scattered along the coast with a hotel every few miles.
I dont know if I will go back or not. Maybe in a few years if I am in the neighborhood just to see how it has developed.
If you are familiar with google maps you can just copy and past these coordinates into the address field and the map will take you to it.
Seafood Island. 21.486496,109.103315
My Hotel. 21.486586,109.105428
Seafood restruants. and Tommies western restruant. 21.486332,109.101866
Old Town. A great look at the old town Beihai and the buildings. 21.484125, 109.104610
KFC is on your left . 21.475804,109.108733
McDonalds. 21.476233,109.109967 Also Just to the left of the door is some local food vendors.....do you feel lucky?
