Sorry this took so long to post, it took awhile to sit and write! This post is about the holiday I had from October1st to 6th.
So in China, in October, there is a holiday called.. The Chinese National Holiday.. original name huh? Regardless of what it is called though, you gotta love it ‘cause it gave us a week off work! Rather than spending the week bored in Hohhot, though, a few of us decided to take a little vacay. In the end, we decided to go to Qingdao- home of some of the best beaches in China. Since we wanted to do the trip as cheap as possible, we decided to take the train. Being from Florida, the longest train ride I had ever been on was about an hour in length. Off the bat I was a little nervous, having been told this trip would be 13 hours.
Fast forward to the train station, which is absolute craziness. Hundreds of people everywhere, some who have tickets (like my group, luckily), and some who are trying to finagle them. The trains sell tickets in the following ways: nice sleeper compartments (2 bunk beds high, privacy door), cheap sleeper compartments (3 bunk beds high, open), seats, and standing. Yes standing. People pay to stand for long long train rides. We managed to get sleeper beds all in one area, which turned out to be a real blessing because the original length of the ride I had been told was wrong. No, it wasn’t going to be a 13 hour train ride, it would be a 23 hour train ride. Biiiig difference. We managed to pass the time well though, playing cards and backgammon, eating (the Chinese love to bring huge bags of snacks on trains!), and drinking the dreaded Bijou*. Tons of people wanted to talk to us of course, some which could speak English, and some that could not. The train left at around 12 in the afternoon, and at 10 pm the turn the lights off in the sleeping compartments.
Lights came back on around 5 the next morning, which means getting up and more eating. We arrived in Qingdao a little after 11, and we were so happy to finally be off the train! We decided to take a taxi from the train station to our hostel, and there the battle began. A cab stopped in the middle of the road, and Scott, one of my traveling companions, opened the door and got in, followed by the rest of us. All the sudden, a cop was motioning for the cabbie to pull over. See, you are supposed to stop and pick people up unless you are all the way on the side of the road, which he was not. Well, the cop and the cabbie started arguing, which turned into yelling. We decided that would be a good time to get out and find another taxi, but that action prompted the cabbie to chase after us, and try to force us back into the cab. Luckily we had a Chinese native with us, but unluckily, the cabbie was a little crazy. Needless to say, we spent about 30 minutes going back and forth, trying to get away from this cabbie and him trying to get us to pay the fine the cop slapped on him for picking us up. It all ended with the cabbie actually pushing the cop and continuing to scream at him so much that eventually he was arrested, and we got away safe and sound. The craziest part about it though, was how long the cop let him go on before he actually got in trouble- he would have been arrested in a quarter of the time if it was the US!
But now onto the actual vacation and fun times. We stayed at the Kaiyue Youth Hostel, also known as the Old Church Lounge. It actually was a church long ago that was converted into a hostel, and I recommend this place to anyone who goes to Qingdao! Everyone spoke decent English, the rooms were clean and large, and the food good. After we unloaded all our things, it was time to go travel. Qingdao is further south in CHina that Hohhot, do despite it being the beginning of October, it was still nice and warm. We walked through town, checking out markets selling fried squid and starfish pops and all the knick-knacks a tourist could want. We headed to the Number One beach, to check out a Chinese beach. And no, just because it is named the “Number One” beach doesn’t mean it is the best! Think of hundreds of people sitting on the beach in normal clothes, with less than a hundred people actually in the water. I was quite the spectacle to them, in my American bikini! Women in China wear tankini-type bathing suits with little skirts, men, speedo shorts. Oh yea, I was stared at. We dared to swim for a while, but eventually it was too chilly, and we decided to find some grub.
Qingdao is home to the Tsingtao beer factory, which means of course there is a Beer Street! We headed over there for dinner, enjoying fresh seafood (well, not me, my travel buddies) and just brewed Tsingtao beer. When we headed back to the hostel we realized that right across the street was a “Beer Bar”, which quickly became one of my favorite places thus far in China. A Beer Bar is a one room “bar” with maybe a table inside and one or two outside. Also outside are kegs of beer straight from the Tsingtao factory, and the beers are sold for either 2 yuan** a pint, or 3 yuan a bag. Yes a bag, like a small one you get from the store. Beer in a bag. Brilliant. This place also served a few quickly cooked snacks like shredded spicy potato skins and some sort of sweet boiled peanuts.. yes, we went there every night we were in Qingddao!
On our first full day in Qingdao we got up early and enjoyed a nice western breakfast at the hostel- it had been three months since I had an omelet! First things we did was head out to find the Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. And yes, it was I who wanted to go there, and it was awesome. We then split up, myself and Winter (our Chinese travel buddy) went to go do girly shopping, and the boys went to do, well, who knows what. We meet back at the Number One beach later than afternoon to go, wait for it, Scuba Diving!
No, I had never been scuba diving before. Neither had the rest of us. Well, that didn’t matter. We only went to about 10 meters, and had an experienced diver going along with us, even breathing off the same tank. All we had to do was kick our feet a little, and look around. The Chinese divers thought it was awesome that I had a camera that worked underwater, and my scuba diver dude was constantly trying to find me things underwater to take pictures of. There really wasn’t much to see under the water at such a shallow level, but it was still really neat. There was lots of seaweed, small fish and big rocks, and a large amount of starfish. I took two up to the surface (one purple and white, and one orange and blue- a Gator starfish!) to get some good pictures, but decided to put them back once they looked all sad on the shore. We dove for about 45 minutes, though it felt like 5. It was an experience that I am so glad I had, and am eager to get some real scuba diving experiences under my belt!
After scuba diving and some hot tea to warm us up we decided to wander back through the city to the hostel. On our meander we found a zoo, a huge park with small roller coasters, and Red Wine Street. That’s right, this city has a Beer Street and a Red Wine Street. How awesome is that?! Dinner that night was a buffet put on by the hostel, 50 yuan for all you can eat, plus two drinks from the bar- quite the bargain! The buffet ended up being more of a race to get the food they put out, because they didn’t think as many people would be coming as actually did, but overall the food was good and I left it full enough. After the buffet was a performance of the bartender juggling flaming bottles of alcohol and the chefs twirling pizza dough. One of them even put on a mask and danced to Michael Jackson’s Beat It while twirling dough- not something I ever expected to see in China! After the show was more cheap beer across the street at the Beer Bar, and then off to bed.
Our second full day in Qingdao started with my waking early to watch the Gator game vs Alabama on the hostel’s computer and a breakfast of French toast. I think I can skip past the game since we all know how that one ended :-/. We headed to check out the zoo we found the day before, and wandered around for awhile checking out the tigers and lions and bears (oh my!). We searched for pandas, but the zoo had none. The closest thing I have seen to a panda since I have been here is a red panda, which is pretty much a red raccoon, and the baby panda, which is a black and white bird! We toyed with the idea of checking out the mini roller coasters in the park, but decided they weren’t worth the price. We then headed to a mall to find some lunch and were blissfully happy to find a Papa Johns and a Subway! We then headed to the Tsingtao beer factory for a tour. It is a really neat tour to take, even if you don’t speak Chinese. The factory is still operational, so you get to see fresh beer being brewed and shipped off around the world. At the end of the tour is something called The Drunk House, which is pretty much a big room where everything is at a diagonal, which gives you the feeling of being drunk. The funniest things about this was the kids that were playing in this! In America, I doubt they would have even been allowed in a beer factory, let alone get to play in an area that makes them think the feeling of being drunk is fun! After that, for the adults, you get to sample a small glass of freshly brewed beer- pretty fantastic! After that we headed back to the mall to go see a movie- Inception! I had seen it in theatres before I left, but the others hadn’t, and since it is hard to find movies in English in Hohhot, we decided to take one in. After the movie, we, again, went to hang out at the Beer Bar. Relaxing at the beer each night helped us meet lots of other foreigners living all over China that were on vacation, and a few of them even worked for the same company I work for! It was a great way to get to meet and make new friends and get new ideas about places to visit around China.
Our third day in Qingdao was the day we were leaving, but our train out was not till that night. We headed to check out the Number Two beach, which was a little farther away than the first one, but I had heard great things about it. It turned out to be cleaner and nicer and less populated than the Number One beach. We laid out and relaxed for awhile enjoying the fact that while people were still staring at us, there were less of them to stare! We soon discovered there was an old castle on the beach, and decided to check it out. It was your basic small castle (much like the one that is on A1A North in St. Augustine) but it gave an amazing view of the city. We then continued to wander around, deciding to take a scenic walk on the rocks of the beach. We found some old torpedoes just sitting outside someone’s house, one had a bike rested up against it! It was pretty funny to us that out in the middle of nowhere on the edge of a major city were some torpedoes.. Oh China! We followed the rocks around a point to head back to where we originally had been on the beach, but after awhile we realized that the rocks kept going and we needed to head back. We decided to cut up through the hill above the rocks, and somehow managed to come out in the middle of military barracks! Nobody actually said anything to us, but we saw many men staring through the windows at us. We didn’t even realize they were barracks until we say gates and guards at the bottom of the hill. Luckily, they didn’t seem to mind that we popped up in the middle of their base, as long as we were heading in the direction of the exit. We finally made it back to the beach we had been at and subsequently to our hostel just in time to go catch our train.
Yes, another train. This one would only be a 5 hour train, since we were going to Beijing. We were pretty happy it was only 5 hours, because we bought standing tickers- i.e. no seats. And then we got on the train. Nope, not 5 hours. Nine. There are some serious translation issues going on here! Luckily, we managed to grab some seats, and no one ever showed up to claim them! We arrived at Beijing at 5am, our first mission being to get tickets to Hohhot. The next available train was that night, so we had the whole day to explore. We first went to Tiananmen Square, and then the Forbidden Palace. It is amazing how these have been turned into tourist traps! It is also amazing that Chinese people visit Tiananmen Square for the fact that it is a popular square, and have pretty much no knowledge of the historic events that happened there. The Forbidden Palace reminds me of one of those Russian dolls you take apart and find another one inside. You go through massive gates, and are in a large courtyard, with another set of massive gates, and the same thing one more time. The third set of gates leads to the actual “city”, but the price of entry combined with at least a two hour wait in line to get in made us decide not to go in. Instead, we toured the gardens surrounding the city, which were beautiful, and cost 1.5 yuan.
After the Forbidden Palace we decided to do a little shopping. Winter, our Chinese travel companion, has a bigger shopping obsession than anyone I’d ever met before, so she took us to a massive clothes market that supplies smaller markets all over China with clothes. Endless stalls of jeans and sweaters and such on four floors of two buildings. The aisles are packed with people yelling about their deals, and shoppers trying to bargain. The Chinese method of bargaining is this: Ask how much it is. Quote a lower price. If accepted, buy. If not, walk away.
Needless to say, I am not so good at Chinese bargaining, but I did manage to get a few good deals on my trip! After shopping we relaxed in the park, and then headed out to find the mythical “Mexican Restaurant”. Lugo’s Mexican Restaurant provided me with my first nachos and margarita in 3 months, which helped satiate me for the next couple months! We then had to head back to the train station to catch our train. We didn’t manage to get sleeping bunks together for this trip (13 hours- and yes, that’s what it actually was!), so once on the train we attempted to get people to trade. Unfortunately, no one really wanted to, so we had to bypass playing games and talking on that trip and all went to sleep early. We arrived in Hohhot at 6 the next morning, so needless to say we all went home and went back to bed!
Overall, my Chinese National Holiday was awesome, I recommend anyone Qingdao to anyone visiting China- though maybe not a 23 hour train ride!
*See post about Bijou.
**Conversion: 1 yuan=about 15 cents.
