Our EVENTFUL trip to Qinhuangdao....

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Well this is definitely a trip that deserves a mention for a few reasons, the main one being the disastrous time we had trying to actually get to the right place. It’s going to be a long blog but Mum thought the whole thing was very amusing so thought I’d share it will you all. The story is a little outdated but as I was uploading the photos I thought I may aswell tell the whole story that accompaies the photos!!

So we had a few days off and we decided to head to Qinhuangdao, another city that is close by to Tangshan. The main things that were drawing us here was that it was a coastal city and it also had the starting point of the great wall. So I had looked up a few things online, had taken the names of a few guesthouses but didn’t book anything we just thought we’d figure it all out when we got there. After all it seemed from the accounts on the internet to be a tourist area so surely there would be accessible information right...??!

Ok so we headed for Qinhuangdao at 1.30pm on National Day....our first BIG mistake, never travel on a public holiday in China. The train station was bedlam, the trains were all delayed, the pushing and shoving was unbelievable when the train came and the train was wedged. However we fortunately had seats as we had bought our tickets the day before. So off we went and after about 3 and 1/2hours we arrive in Qinhuangdao train station. This was a bit of a shock to begin with, we were what seemed to be in a fairly undeveloped area, nothing like the Beijing train station and there was no tourist information anywhere. The train station seemed to be in the middle of this little back water area. Anyways we decided to show the taxi drivers some of the names of the guesthouses we had and they kind of laughed at us, with the language barrier we didn’t know what was going on but decided to go for a wander and see what we could find.

As we walked along we came across this built up area with lots of big hotels like the Best Westerns, the Marriott etc. This was not what we’d expected and definitely well beyond our price range so we decided to find an internet cafe to locate a guesthouse/accommodation within our budget. Now this was our next problem, we could find internet places but we couldn’t use them, “why?” because we were foreigners, at the time we couldn’t understand why we couldn’t use them but later found out that in China they don’t like the foreigners in the internet cafes because they worry that we might be using the internet for.... what is beyond me? Do I look like a computer hacker?! Anyways we went up to the Best Western figured they would speak English and might help us out. The doorman was lovely he walked us round to an internet cafe but again we weren’t allowed in, but he brought us back to the hotel and let us use the internet in one of the hotel conference rooms. With the help of Google maps we located a guesthouse within walking distance so off we went.

Found this guesthouse with only a few difficulties, yet when we got there it was all Chinese speaking staff but Demond had learnt enough Chinese to tell them we needed a room. They had rooms and we thought bingo 😊 but wait, we were foreigners and we couldn’t stay here. We tried another little hotel close by and the receptionist spoke perfect English but it was the same thing no foreigners. She pointed us in the direction of the lovely big international hotels and said we would have to stay there. So off we went looked at a few but they were very expensive, eventually we found one that was reasonably enough priced, at this stage it was dark, I was tired and I didn’t really care about the price. However when we went to check in, Demond hadn’t got his passport as it was getting processed for his work visa so we couldn’t stay. Aaahh we were completely out of options so we decided to give up head back to the train station and go home.

But the disasters didn’t stop there, when we got to the train station there was no trains with seats that evening back to Tangshan (being a national holiday). But we booked tickets anyways and got prepared for our long stand back home. So we finally got on the train after of course, a nice long wait, it was awful there wasn’t room to swing a cat. After about two hours one of the train officials asked us where we were going. We told him Tangshan and he shook his head and started rambling at us in Chinese in a very unfriendly manner. Now my Chinese was none existent and Demond’s wasn’t good enough to understand what he was going on about. At this point the whole carriage was pushing up towards us to find out what was going on. Asian culture has it that if there is a problem, EVERYONE sticks their noses in to find out what the problem is. The train official shouts down the carriage does anyone speak English and a young girl comes forward to help translate the problem. Problem being we had missed our stop. This I couldn’t understand as it had taken us 3 and ½ hours to get to the place and in just over 2 hours we’d missed our stop? Anyways we had, then he started saying we would have to pay extra money because we’d gone beyond our stop and we’d have to buy new tickets to get home. The whole thing was a disaster, I was very frustrated getting even more so as everyone was listening intently and believe me not discreetly to all that was going on. The next stop was almost an hour away and we were eventually told we could get off there and they’d put us on a free train back to Tangshan.

Off we got at the next stop and we were handed over to another train official but thankfully this guy was lovely and spoke pretty decent English. We then had to wait for our train back however we were given seats and also informed personally as soon as we were in Tangshan! We eventually got back to our apartment at 3.30am after one of the most disastrous days travelling; I think I have had since leaving home 😞.

The next day we didn’t go anywhere but we looked into where things had gone wrong. Firstly turns out there is 3 main districts in Qinhuangdao; “Bedihaide” beside the beach which was where I had looked up the guesthouses, “Shanhaiguan” where the great wall was and “Haigang” which was where the main train station was and where we ended up, but there was nothing there that was of interest to us. Little did we know these districts were train rides apart no wonder the taxi driver looked at me funny when I showed him the names of the guesthouses, we were miles away. This was just a reminder of how big China is, cities that are so spread out that you need to get a train between the districts.

Off we went for round 2 of trying to find the location we wanted, this time we knew in advance we would get off the train at the Bedihaide stop. And when we got off it was exactly what I’d expected to find the first day. A nice train station with a tourist information booth that spoke English and provided English maps, this was the touristy area I had been imagining. Success, we explored this cool little place, it was definitely unfortunate that we had missed the good weather as this place would have been somewhere really nice to visit in good weather as it had a beautiful beach and the whole area was geared towards a summer time beach resort. The guesthouses were much more accommodating to foreigners and we wandered this quaint little town (see photos) and had a great day. The following day we got the train to Shanhaiguan amidst more delays as it was still the holiday season but it wasn’t too far away, when we got out here we had our first glimpse of the great wall. Then we got on a ridiculously packed bus and made our way out to “The Dragons Head” where the great wall begins. Unfortunately there was a lot more to explore around here but because of our wasted days and the train delays we didn’t get to see everything. However now that we know how to get there we will go back in the future to see some more.

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Photos

Most of the buildings had russian lettering
....apparently the town gets hundreds of russian tourists every year, they have really put their stamp on the place!