Qingdao

Im slightly slacking in keeping the posts up to date, its because China has decided to block millions of blogs and mine is one of them, ive found a way around it so ill start posting again :)

We arrived in Qingdao and managed to get ourselves a nice little twin bed room in Zhan Ying hotel. It cost us 40 yuan (£4) per person, per night.

Once we got ourselves unpacked we were pretty shattered from the journey to Qingdao so we slept till about 1pm. After getting some sleep we had a shower, which also doubles up as the toilet and set out to have a look around Qingdao.

Qingdao is a lovel seaside city. Tall skyscrapers overlook a beach running along the coast. Theres are a few piers, fishing boats, a lighthouse and plenty of little huts and street stalls that cook freshly caught seafood.

We boooked 3 nights originally, but soon sucumbed to the laid back atmosphere Qingdao had and in the end we stayed there for 1 week.

First day we walked for hours all along the coast, through parks and checked out our surroundings, the weather was perfect, warm, but with a nice sea breeze to keep you cool.

At night time we headed out to find a place to eat. The lonely planet book said that Qingdao was a cauldron of good food, and it was not wrong! Our week in Qingao mainly consisted of eating and chilling by the sea, the two things were really that good, it' all you needed to do.

We had sweet and sour ribs (which were amazing) and vegatable dumplings. A very good start to the week of eating. (I still compare everything i eat with these ribs and nothing has beaten it yet).

There is one thing that really stood out for me on the week in Qingdao and that is the little story below.

There were plenty of street stalls selling seafood and on our third night we found a spot on the beach that sold all sorts of grilled food, it had tables and chairs set out facing the sea and looked like the ideal spot to spend the night. The chap who run it seemed to love his life. Chilling by the sea, eating seafood and drinking with his friends. He was knocking back a bottle of spirits as if it were water, me and tom had a shot each and after it burnt my insides we found out it was 54%. No wonder why he seemed to be enjoying life so much.

First time we went there we got some grilled squid. They put chilli power and pepper on them and grill them. Its really really good and cost us 8 yuan (80p). We went back there the night after and he remembered us. We quickly ordered us a round of grilled squid. This time it only cost us 5 yuan (50p). We thanked him and guessed he must of liked us or just charged less as we come back. We got another round of squid and this time he served up some octopus tentacles with it free of charge. Another example of the guenuine kindness of the Chinese people. We went back the night after that as well and stayed there quite late. This time he was giving us beers, crabs, squid and all sorts free of charge. He offered cigarettes and simply would not take no for an answer. It's a shame all we could say was thankyou. We shook hands and hugged and went back to the hotel. Still astounded at the generosity of the man (even now we didnt manage to get his name) we decided to go back there and give him more business to try and pay him back. On the last night we went back (nights before we was either too full to eat anymore or he was shut) . He still offered us free food and i tried to give him a little extra money for our last order ever. We was literally wrestling each other as he was trying to place the extra money back on the table. Tom was in hesterics, the man simply would not accept it after alll the free food and beer he gave us. We tried to explain to him that we were setting off the next morning, i dont think he understood but we said our final goodbyes and hugged and off we went.

On the third or fourth day we hired out a bike and took to the roads by ourselves, luckily not as busy and dangerous as the roads of Beijing. We spent about 4 hours riding around Qingdao and its probably the best way to see the city, any city for that matter, i think ill definitely get a bike when i get back home.

We cycled along the road that run parralell with the sea and then set off more into the city. We found ourselves in a residential area and soon came across a network of street markets. It's not in the guide book and in my opinion something they should not have missed out. Its not a tourist market so it wasnt filled with the meaningless crap you usually get but was full of food, spices, fish, meats and stalls to buy little snacks. We made our way through the market and right at the end saw a stall making pancake rolls we got 1 each and i know i say this about every bit of food i taste but they were the best pancake rolls everrrrr. The streets stunk, puddles of blood and fish insides littered the streets, they do most of the fish preperation on the streets.

On the last day at Qingdao we headed 40km east to Lao Shan, its a famous taoist retreat covering an area of 400km. We got a bus to the entrance of the area and then a cab to the mountain path entrance. It was raining by this point and i was glad i bought my rain jacket. We didnt know where we were going as usual and just headed off up a path. The clouds were low that day and visibilit y was pretty poor. As we were heading up the path we saw people coming down the path but no one was heading up like us, we later found out that theres a chair lift that takes you up there but we were happy to walk it, its a really nice place, and the low clouds may of made the views lacking but the atmosphere was great, it really felt like we was climbing up into the sky. We didnt manage to find the peak, there are loads of routes and we must of taken a wrong turn somewhere, i would recommend to try and not go when it's raining, the rock steps get really slippery when wet and the steps are steep, there were a few moments when i lost my footing and nearly fell down 20m of rocky steps.

Qingdao has been a really nice place to chill for a week, it has been really nice weather everday, after a week rest we are now ready to tackle Mt Tai and hopefully reach the peak of something.

ps i cant embed pics but you can check out my Qingdao set of pics here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_invalid/sets/72157617894614842/