Big Fun in Big China!

Hello. So I've been away for a month now and I'm still alive. Hooray! Hope you are all wrecks without me. I had great fun in Beijing though I'm waiting until I go back this weekend to find Briony to see the tourist sights. Still we went to Silk Street which was marvelous fun. It's a 7 floor indoor market which has everything from tailor made suits to the millions of stalls of pure tat. The bargaining is brilliant fun as well. There are loads of methods we've worked out to get prices down such as walking off when they offer a price, offering ridiculously low prices, etc, etc. I didn't get my chance to try much crazy food but I will try to do so when I go back.

On Monday (13th) we got the train from Beijing to Qingdao. Qingdao is a beautiful port city with loads of beaches and piers. It has China's largest brewery, for the lager Tsingtao. On Tuesday we walked along the coastal road and went to (Xingqingdao) Little Qingdao. It's a small island, connected via a road from the mainland, with a lighthouse and some statues. We went to the brewery yesterday. It was quite interesting to hear about how the lager was orignally made in 1903 and see how they make it now. We also got a taste of the unfiltered and filtered beer and beer peanuts, which were awesome. Today we went to Laoshan (meaning Old Mountain). It was a bit dodgy because we didn't know what we were doing when we got there - it's an hour and a hald bus ride from Qingdao. We think we got sold knock off tickets, but they were the right place and they got us in so all's well ends well. The mountain was brilliant and the views incredible. It was a shame they didn't let us anywhere near the waterfalls or the dam as it looked really cool. We walked the mountain for 4 and a half hours, not even having a break or using the cable cars!

Me and Andy had a bit of a scare the other night. On Tuesday night we met a German bloke called Tim and a Chinese guy from Qingdao called Song. Both were a good laugh and the four of us got drunk and ended up on the side of the street at 3am buying meat and vegetables on a stick. That was fun... the next night wasn't. Song came to the hostal around 10pm and proceeded to buy us loads of alcohol. He then went with his brother to buy Qingdao's famous beer bags (literally a bag of beer) and somehow convinced us to go to his brothers house to drink them. We really didn't want to go and the whole way there we were both thinking the same thing without saying it... 'why don't we just turn and leg it!?' We went into the house and it was a sort of tense affair, especially as we were literally locked in behind bars. We figured, let's just drink a bit of beer with them and get the hell out. After turning down cocaine and the possibility of going upstairs to sleep with 'some Chinese girl' we told them we had to leave and went. We ran all the way home and were quite joyous to be alive once we got back to the hostel!

... so that's what it's all about I guess. We did manage to avoid him last night and will definately ignore him again tonight if he turns up! We are staying in Qingdao another couple of days. Might go to Tianjin for a couple of days before we go back to Beijing.

In other news, I have managed to get some pictures up on Photobucket. I will try to get some more pictures up if I get the chance. Hope you are all okay, and you can rest assured I wont be going back to any crazy locals house for a while.

Link: http://i572.photobucket.com/albums/ss169/ianpatmore/