Shandong

Hello everyone. My blog is back on track.

Came back from my trip yesterday (Friday) around 2 PM and was in my dorm room by 4 PM. The trip was lots of fun, as can be imagined, but extremely tiring. I'm glad we came back one day earlier than planned in order to have the week-end to recover.

Day 1 - train ride

Woke up early (6:30?) in order to make last-minute preparations for the trip. At 8 AM I met Katia and Candice in the front hall to go make photocopies of passports and Chinese lessons (for those studying Chinese) and the guide book (too heavy to carry). I went to buy breakfast for everyone - 5 pieces of meat-filled crepe-like things. They taste almost like pizza (kind of) without the cheese. At 2 kwai each, breakfast for seven people cost less than $2.

After a photo shoot in the front hall we left the campus and headed for the subway around 9:00 AM. We packed light but we also brought a lot of food in plastic bags. There were lots of people taking the subway for some reason. We found some space for all our bags. The train station was also very busy. We sat on the ground and waited for the Chinese to start moving at which point we would follow the crowd. We stood up when a line started forming and we were packed in like sardines with Chinese people surrounding us.

We got sleepers - 6 beds divided from the other "rooms" by a plank. We sat on the bottom two bunks in one of these "rooms." There was a young Chinese guy who was going to sleep on the top bunk. He's 21 and studying Chinese medicine - he's in his 4th year out of 5. He spoke English quite well. We played cards with him. We played a game of crazy eights that lasted more than two hours and I'm very proud to say that I won!!! It passed the time. Melanie and Candice slept a lot. Melanie hadn't slept the night before - she had been doing her scholarship and masters applications.

We did end up sleeping but not for long - maybe two or three hours. At 2 AM we were woken up by the conductor asking us for our tickets. We were some of the last people to leave the train. We were all super tired.

Ying Ying's parents (Ying Ying is a friend of Katia and Gaetan) met us just outside the train station. They took us on a mini-tour of the city at 2 AM. We saw the ocean (heard it mostly) and we walked for an hour up a hill to get to the place where we were going to spend the night. The father left us and the mother took us to a large room that gave directly onto the central stairs of the building (so no front door). This was our sleeping quarters. To go to the bathroom we had to cross the hallway (the stairs of the building that was covered in graffitti) and unlock the door to the kitchen which also had a bathroom. To flush the toilet we would use the water used in the kitchen sink (the water was kept in basins). So if I wanted to flush the toilet I'd have to go to the kitchen sink, take out the basin that I had just filled with water by washing my face and brushing my teeth, and put the water in the toilet to add enough pressure to flush everything into the pipe system. It was new to me. The kitchen was cold and didn't look cozy at all. It had a hot plate in a corner. Obviously it was being used by the residents of the building.

There was no shower.

Day 2 - Qingdao

By the time we had all gone to the bathroom and prepared for bed it was around 4 AM. We discovered that the mother wanted to sleep in the room with us because she had the key and she didn't want to give us the key. She slept on a mattress lain on the ground with Katia and Candice. The rest of us slept on a wooden platform covered by a sheet. Apparently the mother took a perfectly good blanket and rolled it up to use as a cushion. Katia and Candice were cold. I had a sheet on top of me but my legs were freezing. The window had been kept open. There was a lack of blankets and pillows (I used my towel). The mother didn't sleep so she played with her cell phone and kept many people awake with her tapping of the keys. I was able to doze off but not for long because the mother woke us up at 5:00 AM. Nobody understood why, but we were told to hurry up and get ready for the day. We had had not much more than an hour's sleep. Since we didn't have a key to the room we had to plan what to take for the whole day. We were out of the building by 6 AM at which point the mother left us and we had to figure things out on our own. The mother spoke no English but Katia and Guillaume were able to speak with her in Chinese.

We had some traditional bread-like sticks for breakfast that we bought from a street vendor.
We walked down to the city centre and found our way to the train station where we got directions to the bus station. The bus station took a while to find because we kept asking for directions and being pointed to in different directions. We had to take a bus that took us right past where we were staying for the night and continued to another part of town. Eventually, after quite a bit of walking, we found the station (and realised we didn't need to walk that much if we knew where we were going). We bought tickets for the next leg of our trip - Qufu, Confucius' hometown. It felt like we had done so much and it was only 9 AM. Yay for waking up at the crack of dawn!

By this time we were tired and cranky and most of us were hungry.

We went back to the city centre and went to McDonald's so that the Americans (Melanie and Candice) could eat and the rest of us could get coffee (the Chinese aren't into coffee, so it's hard to find). We stayed there around an hour and used the bathrooms.

We were right in front of the beach, which was crowded even though the day was overcast. It started to rain when we decided to go on a boat tour. A person came up to us and offered the tour to us for 10 kwai each. Although it looked kinda sketchy we agreed to pay upfront. We followed a woman who pointed to a place across the street (crossing streets is always an adventure). There we found some people waiting in the wind and rain. The group grew larger. We didn't know how long we were going to wait there. We ate Mentos that I had brought in my purse.

Finally a mini van arrived and it was get-on-the-bus-as-quickly-as-you-can Chinese style. Being polite Westerners, we didn't push and shove and therefore we didn't get on the van. We didn't know how long we would have to wait for the next one. But the next one did come quickly and we had befriended some Chinese folks who made sure we all got on. It was a packed mini-van - fourteen people in a van that was supposed to seat maybe eight, ten at most.

Once arrived at the boat dock, we had to again wait in line. Again, we had to get on the boat Chinese style and we decided to go to the front of the boat where there were no seats but good views. Well, they would've been good had it been nice weather. It was windy and sometimes it rained, but we had fun laughing about it. We had, after all, only paid 10 kwai. We took lots of pictures of each other and the coast. Qingdao is not super beautiful, but it's alright. It has some pagodas and parks and some business-looking office towers. The boat ride lasted around 40 minutes, even though we had been told it was an hour long. 40 minutes was plenty.

Back on land we walked quite a ways to try and find a restaurant to eat lunch. We chose one off the beaten path and maybe we shouldn't have because it wasn't very good. You're supposed to eat seafood at Qingdao because you're by the sea, but nobody likes it much. Plus, nobody was up for seeing the fish and other seafood living at the front of the restaurant, being taken out and killed in front of our eyes. Weak Westerners.

We ordered what we were used to eating, many of the dishes we knew from Beijing. Unfortunately, none of them tasted the same and we were quite disappointed.

After lunch we separated. The American girls went shopping while the rest of us (Katia, Gaetan, Guillaume, Loic and I) went to look at the Cathedral, built by the Germans who had had a great influence on the city even though they had traded there for only a few years around the turn of the century.

We walked down to the beach and walked along it and went a few blocks inwards to check out some nice neighbourhoods. We made our way to a park that was out in the ocean and joined to the rest of the city by a street. Unfortunately it took us quite a bit of time to get there on foot and then we discovered it cost money to enter the park and we weren't up for paying. So we found some rocks to sit on and looked at and listened to the ocean and watched some Chinese women taking photos of each other as if they were models before heading back to the city centre (still on foot).

The Americans called to see if we wanted to go buy sweatshirts for the night; because we had all been so cold the night before we wanted to wear more clothes. We were going to meet at a KFC because Katia wanted to eat mashed potatoes and that's the only place in China she could find some. There was a mix up in which KFC we were supposed to meet in but we finally found each other around 7 PM.

We found a cheap hostel in Qufu in Katia's Lonely Planet guide and Guillaume was able to reserve two rooms for the next two nights over the phone.

We looked in a funky supermarket for some clothes but ended up buying food for the next day's journey. We also went down a cool-looking street in search of an authentic restaurant. We found a dingy-looking one where the owner took us through the building's courtyard to a small building out back where there was a maze of rooms with tables and people eating inside. The Americans bulked a little but ate the food. We ordered meat kebabs and rice and this eggplant dish that everyone likes (except Katia who doesn't like veggies).

We walked home in the dark. We had planned to meet the mother in front of our building at 9 PM. We had to prepare for bed straight away. Nobody wanted to sleep with the mother so I was the sacrificial lamb. I had my own pillow and sheet. We wanted to close the window but the mother wouldn't let us (she said we shouldn't). Melanie and Candice had taken the perfectly good blanket the mother had used as a pillow the night before and used it to warm themselves. At this the mother went to take out another blanket from a closet (we could've used this blanket the night before!) and rolled it up to use as a pillow.

We would have to wake the mother up if we wanted to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Just before going to sleep I couldn't help but laugh really hard at the situation. I couldn't believe we were still doing this! It was just all so surreal.

Day 3 - Qufu

At 1 AM there was a bathroom break and the mother turned on the lights. At this point she realised how cold the room was and she went to close the window. She also took my sheet and used it as a pillow (for her only, since I had my towel) and took her pillow and used it as a blanket - but it was small and only covered her! I had absolutely nothing. She cuddled up to me but it didn't make much of a difference in terms of amount of blanket I got. Plus I could feel her every movement and I didn't feel all that comfortable about her feeling my every movement. I didn't sleep that much.

Plus, we were again woken up at 5 AM and out of there by 6, this time with all of our bags packed and ready to go.

We went straight to the bus station, taking the same bus as we had the day before. We had some baoze in a small hole-in-the-wall for breakfast. Melanie wasn't feeling well at all and didn't eat. We were early and so Loic and I searched for our coffee. We went to a hotel next door and found their restaurant on the second floor. The coffee was terrible and it was a big deal to get milk (looked like they tried to microwave it for us) so by the time the milk was ready we actually had to leave. Ah well, it only cost 4 kwai for both of them - less than a dollar.

Melanie was sick in the bus station's bathrooms and felt much better.

We found out that seats 1-7 were actually in a row, and not next to each other. I sat by myself at the back of the bus because I had wanted to be by a window and there were no window seats near the group. We sat where we wanted but then a couple came in just before we were to leave the station and they pushed out Loic and Guillaume from their seats. Loic came to sit next to me and Guillaume was right in front of us. We talked a lot and slept a little and watched the world go by.

The bus would stop in the middle of nowhere on the highway and drop people off. It was a little frightening.

We had been told the trip would last around 7 hours, but it only lasted about 5.

We got off the highway and were dropped off pretty much in the middle of nowhere ourselves. We thought we would be brought into the city of Qufu but nope, we were stuck in no-man's land. As an afterthought, I suppose we could've very well been dropped off on the highway, but since we're foreigners the bus driver might've been nice and dropped us off closer to the city. We were stared at by the local peasants. After getting over our initial shock we walked down the street where corn was laid out to dry. Shandong is corn country and there's yellow stalks everywhere - on rooftops, on the ground, in piles, or laid out chaotically.

We walked for fifteen or twenty minutes before finding a gas station where Guillaume went to ask how far away we were from the city - three kilometers. Just then a mini van rolled up and a man with his young son (4 years old?) asked us if we needed a ride. 15 kwai I think the trip cost us. Again, we were packed in tight but it was fun and the guy was nice. He came into the hotel with us to make sure we would be okay. His son was so cute but he didn't speak a word or smile, he only stared.

We each paid 100 kwai a night to stay in this hotel. We had to ask the hotel workers to open our doors for us every time we came in (we didn't get a key) and there was a curfew (in by midnight), but at least we had a shower and comfortable beds with blankets that wouldn't be used as pillows.

One slight glitch: hot water was only available from 7:30 PM to midnight. We arrived around 3 PM. We took cold showers. We were hot and sweaty and we wanted cleanliness after three days of being on the road!

We crossed the street to the bus station (we were really close) and we bought bus tickets to Tai'an, the city where we would have access to Tai'shan, the sacred Taoist mountain that we wanted to climb. We bought tickets for 15 kwai.

We went to walk around the city on our own since it was about 4 PM and all the tourist attractions closed at 4:30. We went down the main street and then through the hutong (alleyways). We lost Candice at one point. She was really scared because she didn't know how to get back to the hotel. We split up into three groups and eventually found her. We went to the local night market - a real Chinese night market. It was amazing. I loved it. Little stalls everywhere and lots of food. Everyone wanted us to eat at their place. We had noodle soup at a stall where we saw the guy making the noodles with his hands. We sat at the tables laid out in the street. It was wonderful. The soup was good.

We were back in our hotel rooms early-ish and we tried to party it up in one of the rooms but we were too tired to make it happen. We had a good night's sleep. Three boys in one room, four girls in the other.

Day 4 - Qufu

We met up around 10 AM the next day. A guy working at the hotel came to talk to Guillaume about a friend of his who wanted to take us to Tai'an - the next city on our trip. He would come with us on the bus and take us straight to a hotel there. The hotel would cost approximately the same as in Qufu. We decided to accept and meet this friend in the hotel lobby at 7:15 AM the next morning.

We went to buy an all-inclusive ticket to Qufu's tourist attractions for 105 kwai - this was much more than anyone had expected. Melanie was already out of money and Guillaume and Katia were running out. They had all expected to find ATMs that would accept their Visas but we didn't find any. Guillaume, Loic and I had a lot of cash on us so it wasn't a problem.

We visited Confucius' Temple. Although beautiful, after a while it gets to all look the same. We were lucky, the weather was great.

For lunch we wanted to sit outside and we found a great restaurant just outside the tourist attractions but the waiter didn't want to deal with us, it was very strange. He right out shouted at us to leave after we had spent about twenty minutes looking at the menu and deciding on what to order. We were quite annoyed.

We went to another restaurant that was quite busy. We waited at least fifteen minutes for menus at which point I got up to grab some from a waitress. They were set menus, the cheapest one was at 300 kwai ($50), way too expensive. We explained we wanted to order "a la carte" but we were told we couldn't. Then the waitress offered a 270 kwai meal when she saw we weren't happy with the 300 one (who knows what cheaper ones there were). It was too risky because we couldn't know what dishes were going to be served and it really seemed too expensive. After being told there was no way we could order a la carte we decided to leave, and right when we were out the door we saw the same waitress give a Chinese couple an a la carte menu with decently-priced dishes!

We went into a third restaurant where we saw right away that they had a-la-carte menus. We looked at them as we made our way up the stairs to another eating room. Along the way a waitress wanted to grab the menus from our hands to offer us those set-meal menus, it was quite unbelievable. By the time we sat down we had gotten a bad impression yet again from this third restaurant. It was extremely frustrating because it was now past 1 PM, we were hungry, and we had two other tourist sites to see that afternoon. However, we decided to leave this tourist-trap establishment as well.

We ended up going to a bakery down the street that had good sandwiches and sausage rolls and fried chicken. It was fast, cheap and delicious. Perfect.

We visited Confucius' residence quite quickly because there wasn't too much to see. We walked to the Kong forest, where Confucius is buried along with some of his descendents and family members and many other Chinese people. It took us maybe twenty minutes to walk there. It was quite crowded, but also beautiful. We walked to Confucius' grave which wasn't anything extraordinary. The Frenchies decided to walk off the beaten path to go explore in the underbrush. Melanie couldn't come with us because she's allergic to grass and Candice stayed with her. They sat on the sidewalk and talked. We found a nice place to sit on the grass and took pictures and talked. We didn't stay too long because we did have to meet up with Candice and Melanie afterwards. They were happy to go back home.

On our way we went to a supermarket to buy food for the trip to Tai'shan the next day. I bought a fake Nike backpack (it looked good - it was red) for 19 kwai (6 kwai = 1 Canadian dollar). The store worker kept repeating "very good. Very good." Famous last words. We also found fleece coats. Candice, Katia and I bought one. They cost 40 kwai each.

We ate in the hotel restaurant because nobody seemed up for moving much farther out. The American girls went to bed while the Frenchies went for a last walk around Qufu. Unfortunately we were too late for the night market - it was 9 o'clock and pretty dead. We walked around the hutongs drinking a couple of beers (not me because I don't drink) and exploring the Chinese way of life. We found a place where the owner came out to talk to us. He would've housed us for 20 kwai if we had wanted to spend the night. Too bad we had already paid for our hotel. Sleeping in a hutong house would've been so cool.

I ate an ice-cream that had obviously melted and been re-frozen. It looked gross but tasted delicious and I didn't get sick. My stomach is strong!

We sat by the city moat and took pictures of a lighted bridge.

We were in our rooms before midnight.

Day 5 - Tai'an and Taishan

The next morning the "friend" wasn't on time. I went to get breakfast at a bakery across the street. Gaetan came to get me because we weren't going to take the bus but go in this guy's mini-van. Crazy! We weren't going to pay him but rather give him our bus tickets which I suppose he would then return and get money for. Guillaume sat up front and talked with him.

It was cloudy in Tai'an. At the hotel we had to bargain to bring down the prices of the rooms. It's funny to think that in such an official-looking place bargaining is fine. If we had known, we would've bargained at the hotel in Qufu as well. This time we had room keys.

The "friend" from Qufu waited for us as we unpacked our bags and prepared for the hike up Tai'shan mountain. He took us to the bottom of the mountain where we were to take a bus up to the place where we could start walking up the 6000 steps to the peak. The entrace fee was 105 kwai, which included the bus ride up.

Climbing Taishan is literally like doing stairmaster for two hours. It's step after step after step. Plus, the steps are small. We were over-packed with our coats and sweaters and tons of food. There were tourist shops at every corner. There were lots of places to eat.

Katia had some difficulty so she went up at her own pace. The two American girls were well ahead of us. The three guys and I climbed up together. It was fun.

Once at the peak, where temples and burning incence greeted us, there was absolutely no view. Everything was misty and white. It was quite mysterious. It was also very cold. We were glad we had bought the fleece jackets. Melanie wore a hat and Candice had mittens. It started to rain so we bought ponchos for 5 kwai each - these were like plastic bags but they worked. We decided to go back down because there was nothing to do up at the top. Well there were things to do but we didn't want to go exploring under the rain.

We lined up to take the gondola back down, but then we realised that it would probably be faster to walk down. So we climbed back down all those stairs. After getting over the fact that you could slip and fall and break your neck at any moment, it was alright and it did only take about an hour, even less. People were still climbing up that mountain, even in the rain.

We had to pay for the bus ride back and for the taxi to our hotel, but considering everything it was still cheap. We hadn't eaten much (I had eaten two slices of bread and some sandwich meat and some crackers, but some people hadn't eaten anything) so we were hungry. We all took hot showers and changed (all our clothes were soaked). Everyone but the American girls met up to make sandwiches (the American girls didn't want to eat packaged meat).

The zipper on my Nike bag broke and I could no longer close it. Thankfully this happened at the very end, when we were taking the bus back to the foot of the mountain. I had to carry my bag like a baby in front of me. I had been glad it had lasted me the day.

We took two taxis into the city centre to the train station. We discovered that the only option left was to stand in the train back to Beijng. The trip was scheduled to last 7 hours. It was now Thursday and all the trains on Friday and Saturday were going to be standing-only. After much discussion we decided to leave early Friday morning (7:05 AM).

It was raining hard and we went to the nearest restaurant we could find for dinner. This place had many cats and a dog running around the place. One of the cats made a pile of instant noodles fall. It was quite funny. The food wasn't great, but it was edible. We stayed there quite a long time. The American girls didn't eat much and were still hungry. We all bought instant noodle bowls for the train ride the next day.

We took taxis back to the hotel where we sat and relaxed for a bit.

The Frenchies wanted to go back out - after all, this was our last night of vacation! The American girls would've been up for it except for the rain. They wanted us to call them when we were settled in a place.

We walked out in the rain and went to a bus shelter to try and find a taxi. There were five of us and we weren't sure a normal taxi would take us, since they usually only seat four. So I waved at a mini-van that had numbers on it. It stopped and Guillaume talked to the driver. Turns out they were a young couple - she was a student studying design, from what I could gather, and he worked, but Guillaume couldn't make out what he did exactly. Anyway, they were super nice and they made room for us in the back and took us to a KTV (kareokee place) free of charge, just because they were so nice. We all really liked them. They didn't want to go out with us though.

The KTV place was amazing. It was two floors up and a there were a hundred workers all dressed the same that were super excited at seeing white people and they all showed us the way with outstretched hands. When we went to buy drinks and food at the KTV store, all of the staff huddled around the entrance to watch our every move. Two workers held a basket for us and followed us around the store, helping our every decision. It was quite funny. We were ecstatic in our roles as super stars.

There wasn't much choice of English music. We played a lot of Madonna and Britney Spears and Abba because that's mostly what there was. Some of the workers would look through the peeping hole of our door to look at us sing. It was one of the rare times I enjoyed myself at kareokee. We just blasted our hearts out.

The hour passed quickly but then there weren't a lot of songs we could play so we left. We asked a taxi driver if he knew of a billiards place we could go to. While the driver was phoning a friend to find a pool hall, one of the KTV workers came out with an umbrella to make sure Katia and I were dry. He came all the way to the taxi with his umbrella. These Chinese...so polite. The driver found a place - bowling and billiards and card-tables. It was quite deserted. We were the only ones playing pool. It was Gaetan, Guillaume and I against Loic and Katia. I played okay and I think we won both games. The place closed at midnight so we left.

We were really tired and we went back to the hotel. The Americans were sleeping soundly.

Day 6 - train ride back to Beijing

We woke up at 5:30 AM and packed our bags (our clothes were still wet) and left the hotel around 6:15 AM. The train station was wet and soggy and packed, as usual. We bought some food at the train station.

We had to line up among the throngs to get to the train deck and then when the train arrived (it only stayed three minutes) we had to push and shove to get on. We were going to stand in the corridor between the seats. Unbelievable. Gaetan, Loic and I found a nice standing place by the sinks beside the bathrooms. Many people would come and shave and wash their faces there, but there were open windows and some room. Katia and Guillaume shared a seat when someone left, and then another person left and Melanie and Candice could sit down (sharing a seat of course). Before the two American girls had been sitting down in the middle of the corridor, making it difficult to step over them. They had to get up every time the lady with a food carriage came by. They were extremely glad to sit.

Katia and Guillaume practiced their Chinese with the people around them. Guillaume came to give me his seat after an hour or so. I gave one of the Chinese people a Canadian cent because he had a son collecting foreign money. He was very happy. Katia left to go smoke and I had the seat to myself so I slept. Loic came later to take my seat and I went to eat my instant noodle bowl with Katia and Guillaume. Two people had left near Melanie and Candice so Gaetan went to sit down as well. The train trip went actually very well, despite having to stand for extended periods of time. It was really quite alright. And once you found a seat, you could stay there for the rest of the trip.

We arrived in Beijing around 2 PM, exactly 7 hours later. Melanie and Candice were really glad to be back. They took a taxi back to the university. The rest of us wanted to take the subway. Some guy asked us if we wanted a ride, so we said okay for 20 kwai. This was really cheap. We walked for a bit in some back alleys behind the train station before we came to his mini van. Once we were all inside his van I wanted to make sure it was still 20 kwai. Turns out he had wanted 20 DOLLARS - American dollars! That's 160 kwai and WAY too expensive! Plus, we didn't have any dollars to give him! So we all tumbled out and made our way back to the train station where the subway station was. The subway was packed and we had to change subways twice and we were hot but it was a beautiful day and we were happy, although tired.

Friday evening we had dinner together in the canteen. Melanie and Candice weren't there. There had been some friction between the two "camps" I guess we could call them. I had been stuck in the middle, trying to make everyone happy. Everyone was happy with me but not necessarily with each other.

While Loic and Gaetan went on an errand, Katia and I went to Guillaume's place to look at his pictures and to drink some OJ and vodka. We listened to music from his computer. The guys joined us later and we had lots of fun. We talked about the order of the planets and I showed them how I could write upside-down (this really impressed them) and we tried writing with our left hands and we just laughed and laughed... We listened to lots of classic French songs, some of them modern. I'm going to be so French when I come back to Canada...

We stayed up until 1 AM without even thinking about it. Crazy. We didn't want our vacation to end.

Today I got the key to my new apartment. I'm on the first floor, the floor I didn't want, but it's okay. I'll survive. I'm thinking I'll move out tonight some essentials and sleep there, just to see what it's like.

Got to go pack! Yikes!

Tonight I'm eating with the Frenchies at 8 PM, then we're probably going to do a photo session at somebody's place.