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12/2/2013 - 15/02/2013
Qingdao is a beach resort in the north of China, famous for being the homeplace of Tsing Tao beer and, allegedly, 'the Switzerland of China'. This Switzerland claim is obviously a little suspect as I don't think Switzerland has ever been known for its beaches; apparently it's more to do with the architecture than landscapes, but that's German anyway (or at least, some of it is) so who knows. Anyway, we arrived late and at the wrong hostel, as our taxi drivers had not only joined forces to trick us into paying an extortionate fare, but also gotten the address wrong. Luckily we managed to bump into two Chinese tourists on their way to our hostel, or we never would have found it - we had to wander up several little lanes and through a small, wooded park to reach it. Our room in this hostel was a huge dorm in a separate cabin, which we had all to ourselves, and if you survived the ladder-stairs to the top of the main building, there was a little rooftop bar with views across the city (meh) and giant pretzels (!), which is where we spent the rest of that first night.
We slept through the next morning, fussed about deciding what to do and finally split into two groups for the afternoon's activities. The boys, plus Naomi, went for a tour of the Tsing Tao beer factory and Beth, Cat and I went for our own walking tour of Qingdao instead, following the map on the back of a novelty envelope from the hostel reception. We visited the old Catholic church, which was pleasant enough, then meandered down to the seaside. On our way, we stopped in an underground food market, where they had every sort of seafood kebab imaginable, for lunch. (Being wusses, we opted just to have baozi instead, although not before we'd scrutinised all of the starfish, lobsters and squid on offer.) The seaside itself was not at its best, it being a miserable, grey, misty day, but we braved the cold and walked along the pier and up and down the beach all the same. We also made a point of stopping at every souvenir stall we passed to poke through all of the rubbish on sale: every animal you can imagine made from either shells or a polystyrene-and-shell combination, often with plastic googly eyes; shell mobiles; shell dream-catchers, shell purses; little shell horns; shell-encrusted vases; shell jewellery... there were some non-shell related things too, but they were in the minority. There was a McDonald's at the end of the beach, so we took refuge from the cold there with hot chocolates, cake and blueberry muffin. After a while, we set out again to meet the the others at a nearby temple (half of us made it there, the other half ended up at a different temple on the other side of town) and decide where to go for dinner.
Dinner was to be a belated Happy-Chinese-New-Year meal for the 10 of us still remaining at this point. Naturally, the restaurant recommended in the guidebook was closed, but we found another nice one a little further down the same road - probably the nicest restaurant any of us have ever chosen to eat at. It had tablecloths and paintings on the wall and everything! We had our own private banquet room, the boys ordered a table-full of dishes for us to share, and we made things as authentically Chinese as possible by insisting on toasting each other with beer at every opportunity. After this lovely meal together, we raced back to the hostel hoping to take advantage of what we'd thought was a 2 hour all-you-can-drink beer offer. It turned out we'd misread the sign, and it was actually all-you-can-drink from 8am until 8pm. A good deal, but as we actually arrived a while after 7pm our attempts to get our money's worth nearly made us sick. This was the beginning of a very unsuccessful and somewhat depressing night out. Reports that Qingdao was a big party town were absolutely untrue. The night began rescuing a hideously drunk middle-aged Chinese man and helping his wife carrying him to a taxi, progressed by following the directions of random strangers, abandoning the few clubs we found because they were rubbish (one was packed but had no dance-floor and was extortionately expensive, another had a bouncy dance-floor but was absolutely dead, save for the sorts of people you'd rather avoid) and ended sat outside a corner shop for a couple of hours with some other foreigners we'd met. Beth, Cat, Dan, Nold and I gave up at this point and went back to the hostel to chat/fall asleep; the others stayed up to go and watch some important football match at a sports bar. They woke us up kicking and shouting at the door when they got back at about 6am, and then we all bore witness to about an hour of Pete drunkenly shouting at us (Nold and Cat more than most) and comparing us to characters from Game of Thrones.
A lot of people left the next day, and I honestly can't remember what the five of us who stayed (Henry, Naomi, Nold, Pete and I) did all day. I know that was Valentine's Day and so we all shared the romantic four-course meal offered by our hostel, then watched The Godfather III, but apart from that I've no idea. Probably slept really late, sat about doing nothing, went for food and came back for dinner...
Our last day was mostly a repeat of things I'd done with Beth and Cat the first day, but the weather was much better for sightseeing - actually sunny! We went back to the beach and stepping-stoned as far into the sea as we could, walked down the pier again (we asked an old couple to take a group photo for us here and the man wasn't satisfied until he had about six photos, one from every angle) and then I took them to a special tourist-tat stall where there was giant conch you could try to blow a sound from. There was also a search for food in what the guidebooks assured us was the Food District. It wasn't. Or if it was, it was awful, because the only restaurants were shut. Then, being very budget-conscious, we opted to get the bus rather than a taxi to the airport, which took aaages. Naomi and I managed to snag seats pretty early on in the journey, but for the boys this meant standing squished amongst 60 other people for over an hour. The much-hoped-for McDonalds/Burger King at the airport also failed to materialise, so our last hours in Qingdao were spent moaning over our instant noodles (or, if you were me, managing to throw your instant noodles all over yourself and all your clean clothes).
Only Harbin to go now!
xxx
- comments
Jim Well, yeah, you didn't do much but you did it very entertainingly. And managed to make the rest of us feel smug for staying at home.