Saturday, March 18 the cruise was nearing its end as we sailed into China.

Before disembarking, we took a galley tour. It’s always fascinating to see what an extremely efficient machine a large cruise ship’s galley has to be in order to prepare and serve (on time and at the right temperature) thousands of dishes each day.

Upon disembarkation, a driver was sent to pick us up and take us to our destination, driving through Sanya:

They call Sanya “The Hawaii of China”. Saving the distance, I can see why: balmy weather, and tourist oriented.But we had a mission: the site inspection of the latest Editions resort, designed by Ian Schrager.

But we had a mission: the site inspection of the latest Editions resort, designed by Ian Schrager.

Even though it was a Saturday, a very nice sales rep guided us through the massive and impressive property, giving us all kinds of details and gossip, like the fact that drones are not allowed to fly over the resort after a recent incident where a very famous guest saw a drone flying and voiced concerns about her privacy, or the time when corrupt Chinese government officials were the number one customer of all luxury resorts in the area, until Premier Li Keqiang took a hard line against corruption and put an end to the practice.

We had a blast talking with him, so much so that we declined an invitation for a massage, in order to be able to spend more time talking with him as he treated us to lunch at The Jade Egret.

On the drive back to the ship, Sanya reminded us of the economic power of China: construction everywhere, luxury cars, and big infrastructure already being expanded.

I also documented warships like the ones China is allegedly using to sink and harass Vietnamese fishing boats and to illegally occupy Vietnamese (and others) islands in the South Sea (which they call the South China Sea), while the international community remains mostly silent. Like Russia with Crimea. Or USA with unaccounted for drone bombings and massive spying on national and international communications.

We need to take a stand, stand up, stand united, and stop the international bullies from their criminal imperialistic pretenses.