2010年7月24日星期六

Qingdao, China tour

I arrived in Qingdao early in the morning due to the train taking 18 hours when I thought I would arrive in 10 hours. The hotel I booked was not near the train station and far from 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 hotel 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 hotel 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 hotel. He wouldn't let me on the bus since it was out in the middle of traffic and it moved on without me. After no idea in my mind then I just phoned my China travel advisor from Online China Trip, she tell me waited until the next bus came. So I did and after being on the bus for 45min I was finally found my destination. Showering and sleeping came easy, finding something to do or 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 hotels after a couple nights to a different area. This was a slight improvement. The main attraction, at least by my standards, was the Qingdao 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 travel China or living here for years.
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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