Lingshui Travel Guide

Lingshui is an autonomous county 80kms northeast of Sanya in the south of Hainan Island. It's a sizeable city usually visited on a day trip from Sanya and lies on the G223 Expressway.

Worth It?: Only as a daytrip from Sanya.
What to Do: explore downtown, plane spotting, hike.
Best Time to Go: November through February/March.
How Long?: A couple of hours in Lingshui is enough.
Trivia: Lingshui Airbase made international headlines in recent times when a Chinese military jet collided with a US spy plane and forced it to land here.

It is around an hour's bus ride from Sanya and is the home of a large military airbase. The town is a few kilometers from the shore and harbors over 300,000 people, mainly of the Li minority. If you are into plane spotting, the best views are from the mountains to the north where you can watch huge military jets coming in.

There are plenty of hotels in Lingshui that are near to the coast, although the beaches here are not as nice as those around Sanya. The town of Lingshui is quite nondescript and not worth much time, although it does have decent market shopping.

Travel to Lingshui - Getting There

Lingshui is connected to Sanya by the G223 Expressway, with buses running up throughout the day in about 90 minutes. Sanya Phoenix International Airport is the gateway to this region of Hainan and is 80kms to the southwest. Flight time from Guangzhou is about an hour.

Lingshui Things to Do

Lingshui Attractions

Downtown Lingshui

it is worth wandering around for a few hours, checking out the warren of side streets and noodle shops.

Side trips from Lingshui

Lingshui Airbase: only really appealing to plane spotters, this airfield was home to a US spy plane after colliding with a Chinese aircraft.