At the beginning of March, one friend was getting ready to quit their job and wanted to take a trip before looking for the next one. The idea went into the group chat and got quick support from a few others. After some back-and-forth, we settled on Nan'ao Island. None of us had been there before, and it somehow felt fitting to give our first real experience of seeing the sea in person to Nan'ao.
On March 10, two friends and I packed up at home and headed for Shenzhen, planning to meet the other two early the next morning before setting off together. We left in the afternoon, but because of the traffic restrictions in Shenzhen, our timing didn't work out. We couldn't enter the city right away, so the three of us had to wait things out in Dongguan before driving into Shenzhen once the restriction window had passed.
By the time we arrived in Shenzhen, it was already after 9 p.m. After everyone washed up, the conversation somehow shifted to a very practical question: how were four people supposed to sleep that night? We kept scrolling on our phones, wasting time until around 2 a.m., when someone suddenly suggested, why not just leave now? So we did. We got in the car, picked up the last friend, and started driving toward Shantou in the middle of the night.
At about 6 in the morning, we stopped briefly at a service area to rest, then got back on the road. As we approached Shantou, we caught the sunrise from the highway. It had already been more than 400 kilometers, but we were still fully energized by the trip itself.
Day One
We didn't properly reach Shantou until after 8 a.m. By then, everyone was starting to feel the fatigue, but we still found a place to park, grabbed something to eat, and joined the crowds for a quick walk and some photos.
At that point, we had effectively been awake for 24 hours, so there was no point pretending we could keep going. We went back to the hotel and crashed, sleeping straight through until around 6 or 7 in the evening.
Once we woke up, we went out looking for dinner. That night was also when we learned, very directly, what it means to walk into a food trap. We had casually pinned a snack street and headed over without doing much homework or reading any real guides, so we decided to walk there. On the way, we passed Shipaotai Park and got a look at the area at night. The evening view was actually pretty nice.
For dinner, we picked a roadside place at random. We ordered two dishes of marinated raw seafood, one with oysters and one with shrimp, plus stir-fried clams, two portions of some fish we didn't even know the name of, and a fried crab. We ordered the raw marinated seafood because Chaoshan-style marinated seafood is pretty famous, and we mainly wanted to try it for ourselves.
The first bite of oyster seemed fine going in, but after swallowing it, the fishy aftertaste was pretty strong. That part was still tolerable. The real problem came halfway through the dish, when we realized some of it had already gone bad. That killed our appetite immediately. The shrimp were soft and limp too, like they'd been sitting around for a long time. After that, we completely lost interest in the marinated seafood. Maybe it was just a bad choice of restaurant, but that one meal was enough to put us off.
We did try a few other local snacks afterward, including rice noodle rolls and licorice fruit, and those were decent enough.
The final verdict on that dinner came quickly: less than ten minutes after paying, several of my friends were taking turns rushing to a nearby public restroom with explosive consequences.