Chenming International Hotel Shouguang

... began. As we left the train it was pretty much a down-pour. Mother nature didn't spare the wind factor either. So after the 10 minute queue (or rather free-for-all) taxi wait we were pretty drenched. Normally we don't complain about weather but there is one thing you must understand about Qingdao; it is a coastal city with beaches and beer (it's home to the Tsingtao brewery). With that said, there is not much to do in the rain! We ...

Welcome to Laizhou - a real China immersion experience. We drove to Laizhou on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful drive. Coming out of Qingdao was an experience as you saw the massive amounts of construction projects that are underway. In a five minute stretch on the highway outside of Qingdao I counted 70 construction cranes. I am not sure I even counted them all. I have included some pictures of some of the construction sites. The ...

... one I had originally accepted. Chinese parents may work night and day to pay for pricey English lessons so that their child can get a head start in this competitive society of 1.3 billion. Unfortunately, academics are not an issue to many of China's new educational entrepreneurs who put profit before curriculum and quality. Classroom experience and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certification is nice, but in many cases a ...

... and into the side of a beautiful - and weird shaped - mountain range. Like so many things that happen in China for the westerner the first visit to Tai Shan is really extraordinary. Walking up the mountain for the first time, my sense of time was soon warped because I could not at all easily guess if a given area in the small sacrificial temples jutting up along the side of the mountain were a ...

... each of the cup that we were drinking, they charge me almost between 3 and 8 Euros per cup... more the tea that I had at the end in a nice box... At the end I was obliged to pay a very high amount of money, As I traveled all the last day and as I was not really sure of the exchange rate: I paid ... As soon as I went out side, I realized that it was a ...

Every time I write anything, it doesn't submit. So frustrating! I'm in my dad's hometown. Dave and I are finally resting. But resting has turned into boredom. *yawn* bonne nuit. Don't know when I can upload my pictures b/c I can't set up the DSL on my laptop. Boo

... the humidity or the fact that I've had to replace Camels, which don't seem to exist in Asia except in the menthol variety, with Lucky Strikes, that is making it difficult to walk long distances. The hostel is nice, and as it turned out four people from the ferry were headed there so we split a cab ride. I ended up in the front. The first thing I did was try to buckle my seat belt, but I couldn't find the buckle. The cab ...

... spontaneously. We had jeans, airwalks, a bottle of water and a torch and we were ready. After all, it was April and April was warm. We looked up and saw the snow-capped, icy peaks and realised that perhaps we would need to be a little better prepared (and maybe a little fitter). We missed out on our sunrise atop the mountain crags in Japan - but I wasn't going to miss it again in China. Hence our ascension of Tai Shan. I expected the tourist shops selling ...

... please some stupid officials. WARNING to all travellers out there, if you want to travel to South Korea from Weihai in China by ferry and you dolt have a visa (even if you don't need to one because you are exempted some counties are) Weihai ferry employees wont sell you a ticket. It's not a problem if you go from Tianjin cause I done it, and I'm not sure about Quingdao

... a very short period of time The idea of not wanting to eat pork didn't go over all that well, but with all that beer, I had a huge grin on my face and knocked through alot of melon and potatoes leading me to investigate the bathroom more frequently than I would have liked. Meanwhile, the mother sprayed something that might very well have been DDT in my bedroom to ward off mosquitos Farmers seemed to be fairly ...