Hard Travelin' in China> Travels

Well, quite a bit has happened since I left Korea on Thursday. First a note, this is being posted by the Pink Wizard for me because China blocks blogger. Anyway, on Thursday I boarded a ferry that would take me overnight across the China Sea to Qingdao, China. I actually booked a bed in business class, which has four beds per room rather than economy, which has 20-30 people per room and was only 20 dollars less than business. I had heard all of the stories about business class and I wasn't going to become somebody's bitch for the night. As they say, you've got to kick someone's ass on the first day to prove you are not to be trifled with. I got into the room before any of the other passengers and hid behind the door. When a short Korean man walked into the room I clubbed him over the head with a lamp and he collapsed to the ground. I then kicked him in the kidneys, shouted in my best Korean, "That's right, I ain't going to be your bitch. Yeah, that's how i roll." Needless to say I wasn't anyones bitch that night.

While on the boat I met a guy named Angelo from the Netherlands. The world for many years has stereotyped Dutch people as speaking fluent English, being very tall and often wearing the color orange. Well Angelo fit that description quite well. He is in fact 6 foot 9 inches and just about the tallest guy I have ever met. (he also wore orange and spoke english quite well) Angelo and I just spent the last two days together, just separating a few hour ago so he can go north and I can go South. Now throughout Asia I have always drawn attention by being white. People want to talk to you, they look at you and giggle and you can very easily become the life of the party. Angelo was a freaking circus walking down the street. There are 5 different ways people reacted to him, and pretty much every single person we saw had some reaction, and keep in mind their are a lot of people here.

1- Stop, stare and shake head in disbelief and/or fear.

2- Point and laugh and call over their friends.

3- Take out their mobile phone and take a picture of him.

4- Raise their hand in the air as high as possible as if to explain to Angelo that he was in fact very tall.

5- Socialize with Angelo in a friendly way and eventually ask to take a picture with him.

Fortunately Angelo wasn't freaked out by all the attention.

So this is the 50th country I have been to so I would like to think of myself as a very experienced, savvy traveller. The following is a warning to all travelers, that no matter who you are and where you have been, there are still some things that make us all the same. You, me, them, everybody. Everybody. We can all have an off days sometimes.

Angelo and I got off of the boat at around 10 am with the goal of locking up our bags and seeing a bit of Qingdao before heading to Tai'an,about 7 hours inland by train, where we would spend the night. The city was covered in a thick, creepy fog. First thing we did was take a taxi into town, who of course tried to rip us off and with whom we had a nice yelling match with in the street. Then we went to the train station, where we could not figure out how to work the lockers and where we weren't able to find out how to get to Tai'an, our next destination. Then we found the tourist information office not to faraway, where the women working there spoke very little English and gave us very little information, which all ended up being very wrong anyway. She told us to go the bus station, a 10 minute walk away. We went there and through a translator found out that the buses to Tai'an in fact went from a station way across town and were three times as expensive as the train, which we were informed only ran in the early morning. We then got on a bus, still with our big packs on our back to head to the other bus station. After a minute on the bus we decided that we would screw the bus plan and go back to the train station and go to Ji'nan, a major city not too far from Tai'in. Angelo talked me into eating breakfast at McDonalds, because we were in a rush. Bad travel karma! After a very cheap chicken sandwich we saw an old german church, which is what Qingdao is know for, as it was for several decades in the 1800's a german owned city. From there we to the train station, were able to buy tickets for Ji'nan, which left us an hour and a half to go to an ATM, draw out money and then check our email before boarding. We first went to the ATM, which worked for me and not for Angelo so I loaned him about 125 dollars and took out 250 for myself to add to some Yuan I had traded for in Korea.

It is from here things went awfully wrong. At some point during the twenty minutes where we were checking email I lost my wallet. Whether it was pickpocketed or I left it on a table, or it fell out of mypocket i don't know, but when I went to pay for the internet it was gone. Of the 40 people in the room no one spoke english, or at least volunteered to. Angelo and I searched and even frisked the two people who were sitting next to me but it was to no avail. [Did you frisk Angelo? You should have. - ed.] My credit card, bank card and about 360 US dollars worth of Chinese currency were gone. (Also lost was my diving licence, driving licence, really cool wallet, several pictures, swisscard pocket knife and perhaps most important of all, my University of rochester student ID card. Yeah, I graduated in 2000 but I have saved roughly 20,000 dollars in the past 6 years on student discounts. I am now officially in the real world.)

So that sucked. Angelo could have given back the money I had loaned him and headed out to Tai'in by himself, but being a true Dutchman, he stayed by his fellow traveller to be of help [and to see if anything else could be stolen from his American friend. - ed.]. We went to a post office, which had a Western Union wiring service available and with the help of some great non-English speaking, non-homicidal, postalworkers I was able to contact my mother, who is a saint. I woke her up at about 2:30 AM to ask her to wire me 700 dollars. A half an hour later I had the money. Thank God (or Buddha, or I guess Mao?) forM others and Western Union.

From the post office we went to the mcdonals again to eat a pre-5-hour-train meal. Yes, I ate in a mcdonals twice in the same day. I also used a squat toilet there too. It was a weird day. From there we caught a train to Ji'nan and luckily were able to find a train from there to Tai'in. While waiting for the train we entertained about 40 or so Chinese people crowded around us in the waiting room. I spoke Chinese phrases from Angelo's Mandarin phrase book (Such as, "Are you interested in Fang Shui?) and Angelo was tall. Very very tall. The train left about a half an hour late and was packed and then for more fun, stopped for an hour for apparently no reason whatsoever. We got into Tai'in at 1AM where we were helped by two really nice Chinese college students in finding a hotel near the base of the mountain we planned on climbing the next day. The hotel was not allowed to have non-chinese guests so we were checked in under assumed Chinese names. Mine was Wu Tang. The room cost us 4 dollars each. China may be totally dysfunctional but it is cheap.

Today we woke up and with our Chinese friends we had met the night before and climbed Tai Shan, a 1545 meter high Mountain. It has been considered China's most sacred holy mountain since hundreds of years before Christ's birth and I'll say they picked a good one.

I'm now in Qufo, Confucius's hometown, which has one of China's biggest temples in his honor. Got to run. -Larry