Mongolia here I come!!!!!! So my time in China has thankfully almost come to an end. This time tomorrow morning I'll be on the train watching the great wall go past the windows and the horrible grey pollution [china mist] that covers all of china will slowly fade away and I can forget that I ever had to come here again.
Qindao was almost nice. The weather cleared on my 2nd day and I managed to see some blue sky which was a nice experience for a few hours. I climbed up this hill in the middle of town that had a good view around the city. The chinese certainly haven't grasped the idea of attractive architecture. On top of the hill they had built three of the most ugly buildings ever - they were like 3 giant rount mushrooms and painted bright red, so they were visable from all over town. Despite this the views were good and it was quiet - i timed it well and arrived at lunchtime so I had the place pretty much to myself for an hour or two before the hoardes of minibuses began to turn up and the place was instantly turned from a nice quiet park into a horrible mass of people all yelling at eachother and spitting everywhere. So I quickly left.
I'd been told about the wonderful seafood at Qindao, and there were heaps of little restaurants with buckets from fresh fish, crabs and other unidentified sea animals for eating. I got a crab, and after 15min and the use of my guidebook and their mobile phone, got the message to them that I wanted them to cook it for me to eat. [Harry, if you read this, you would be pleased with my crab pulling apart skills. I managed to get all the meat] Although it tasted pretty dirty and wasnt that great, so I had to go to the only other type of food place I could find - Maccas.
When I got back to Beijing, I realised that I had survived by myself for 2 days without meeting a single person who knew one word of english and I knew no chinese except hello and thanks.
I guess another reason that I dont like China is that Ive been reading 7 years in Tibet that I bought for $1 in Saigon. Reading about what they did to Tibet made me hate them even more. Then I realised that it's probably not the best book to be carrying around in China...
There are 7 of us on the trans-mongolian trip and 5 of us are aussies. I havent been surrounded by so many aussies since Makhampom and it feels good!
