Sunday 26th July 2009 train to Qingdao


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July 26th 2009
Published: August 24th 2009
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Sunday 26th July 2009 train to Qingdao
We boarded the train to Qingdao at 7.30am, its always a surprise what kind of train you end up on and in what seats, even where it is going in China since you just go up to the counter with a sheet of paper and hope that whoever wrote it for you isn’t ripping the piss and sending you on a hard sleeper to Mongolia. Because if they ask you any questions all you can do is shout, Qingdao or something at them wherever it is you want to go. We were expecting a hard sleeper like before, but this was a much newer train, quiet like the trains at home almost and seemed to be all normal seats, bit of a pain when the journey is 10 hours long. We closed our eyes and dozed for the first about 3 hours anyhow and looked out the windows for the next 6 until we arrived in Qingdao. I don’t find the roadside landscape half as beautiful in China as in SE Asia, I suppose it is just so much more developed, and there is a constant fog like haze, don’t think it is smog, sitting over much of the country at this time of year.

We arrived and tried to find our hostel on the map, it said in Lonely Planet that you can walk it but sure which direction are you supposed to start going in. After walking around the giant station 3 times we found a street name that looked kind of right and started a good 25 minute uphill walk with all our bags on our backs. Wrecked by the time we fell onto the steps of our hostel. We had only been able to book a dorm room for the first night and them a double for the next so for the first time in almost 4 months of backpacking we were forced to share a room with strangers, well other than our experience on the Yangtze boat but we don’t like too talk about those days any more. Saved us a few quid though as a double room was costing nearly 25 Euro. Feeling brave and adventurous after the fantastic feeds we had in Shanghais with Brian we decided how hard can it be so we went looking for a nice Chinese restaurant and soon figures out why we never really enjoyed this before. We found a nice looking and busy restaurant which had some sort of English menu, turns out they only had about 3 things off the menu though but we managed to order a couple of things anyhow. Turned out ok, nice dumplings but generally no great shakes, its easier with people who know what they are doing definitely. We had a drink in the hostel which actually has a really nice bar and common area and went off to our lovely shared room which wasn’t too bad, no sleepwalkers or snorers anyhow.




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