Qingdao

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I arrived early in the morning due to the train taking 18 hours when I thought I would arrive in 10 hours. The hostel I booked was not near the train station and far east towards the financial district. I showed my Chinese address to the taxi drivers and three of them had no idea where the street even was. I showed them a map of the city with a dot that showed where the hostel was, still no luck. I did not see any bus stands or signs near the train station. I decided that I would walk to another hostel that was in the Lonely Planet and see if they had any rooms that didn't show on the Internet or see if they could get me a taxi that would work. As I was crossing the street I was almost hit by the bus that would take me to my hostel. He wouldn't let me on the bus since it was out in the middle of traffic and it moved on without me. A guy pointed down the road and I started walking hoping I would come across a bus stop. There was no actual shelter area, it was just a road sign that had the bus number on it, so I waited until the next one came. After being on the bus for 45min I was getting worried I would never get there, but eventually came to the road my hostel was on and decided to get off and walk so that I would see it better. An hour of aimless wondering I finally found my destination.

Showering and sleeping came easy, finding something to do did not. I walked along the "beaches" most had algae covering them and the beach was maybe 100 sq ft of sand. Most areas had a concrete beach. This didn't stop people from swimming or having algae fights, or digging for something they were sure to try and serve me later that night. I chose not to go in, that was really the least of my problems, the main problem was that I was only able to get the Friday ferry to South Korea so I would be here for a week. I decided to switch hostels after a couple nights to a different area. This was a slight improvement. The main attraction, at least by my standards, was the Tsing Tao beer factory. This was actually rather interesting and I thought better than the Guinness factory.

I mainly chose to eat food on the street, it was much cheaper, I mean I would hate to pay over $2 for a meal. However, I did go into a nicer restaurant one night where the server brought me out a spoon and no chop sticks. I was highly offended even though it would have been much easier to eat with the spoon I decided to ask, well point, to get me some chop sticks. Then I proceeded to show the entire restaurant my amazing skills with the two sticks. I didn't choose to show everyone, it was just that everyone was watching me. After a couple of minutes the two girls next to me asked if I was an English teacher who had been living in China for years. I'm not sure if they were trying to start conversation or were making fun of my eating abilities.

I chose to take the ferry from Qingdao to South Korea and this was going to be an 18 hour journey but thankfully I would be sleeping for most of the time. It was not as good as the ferry in Finland, but that was to be expected. There was no casino, but if i wanted I could have watched a movie in Chinese with Korean subtitles. I chose to sleep instead.

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