I knew that my flight was going to be badly delayed when they started serving the food while we were still sitting on the tarmac. I had just eaten a rather large and expensive breakfast at the airport, so just picked at mine. If I had of known I would have just waited for the plane food. The flight was maybe couple of hours and uneventful. I took the subway to where I was staying. A couple of annoying things about the subway. One you can't buy a through ticket, when I got off the airport line, I had to queue up to buy a ticket for the rest of my journey. Then when I got to what should have been my stop, the train sailed through it. I later to I d out that thirty ... read more

5th Jul: Time to leave the city and head to the beach for some r&r. Off the coast of Ningbo, there are lots of islands varying in size. Putuoshan is the most famous one, and is visited by lots of Chinese people. The owner of the guesthouse I stayed at in Qingdao had driven down to Putuoshan to watch the sunrise. I do hope I get there one day, but for this trip we were heading to one of the smaller islands nearby. We had hired a small coach to take us, so the trip should have only taken a couple of hours, however some of our party were very late to the meeting point, meaning we sat around waiting for over an hour. This caused the coach driver to get very mad. When they eventually ... read more

The morning began with dumplings for breakfast again. The owner of our guesthouse wasn't impressed when we told him the place we had been to the previous morning, telling us that, that place was number 2 in Qingdao and that the best place for dumplings was just down the street from the hostel. I had really enjoyed the dumpling from the day before, so this place would have to be good to bet them. We had walked past the dumpling place near the hostel quite a few times, it seemed never to shut. If the staff weren't in the upstairs part filling and folding the dumplings by hand, then some other members of staff were working in the basement, producing the filling/or dumpling skins. This place definitely didn't seem very customer friendly as all the tables ... read more

Finally a proper break and a chance to escape Ningbo and explore a new place in China. I took a flight to Qingdao, which was only about an hour and a half. I got a nice view of Dongqian Lake as we took off, however that soon disappeared as we got into the pollution smog. The smog was even worse as we were descending in to Qingdao. I took the bus from the airport into the city. That took a little over an hour. I didn't realise that the stops were announced in English the audio was that bad. I had a quick walk to the place I was staying. The guesthouse was really nice. My friend was already there relaxing so we took some time to catch up since we hadn't seen each other for ... read more

A 22 hour stopover! 10th Feb: My flight arrived in the early evening. I had booked with Scoot, but had received an email a couple of weeks ago saying that due to aircraft maintenance we were being upgraded to a Singapore Airlines flights. That was a score! It was nice to have a bigger, comfier plane and get a meal included (I had a lovely beef rendang curry), but they had took out all the magazines and there was no in flight entertainment. Instead I had almost 8 hours of kindle time. I also chatted to my seat mate, which is something I never normally do. It was nice to have some conversation to pass the time, especially during the turbulence. Immigration was fairly quick and painless, and I headed into the city by metro. The ... read more