Qingdao Trip!
I went Qingdao last last week and I've finally going to write about it!Qingdao is a 9.5 hr ride (both train and bus) from Beijing. We spent a total of 2 days and 3 night on this trip; of the 3 nights, only 1 night is at the Hostel (Kaiyue International Youth Hostel; great place =P). The first night is on the train ride to Qingdao, the last night is on the stupid bus back to Beijing.
I have actually wanted to make a trip to 崂山, but later decided that it might be too rush to do so. Eventually, half of us made the trip to 崂山 on the second day but the other half of us stayed in Qingdao.
For those who might be interested, the
Day 1 (15/4 Saturday)
0700 – Reach Qingdao
Buy return train tickets/breakfast/Qingdao Map
Go to hostel check in
0815 – 栈桥
回澜阁
小青岛
1000 - 基督教堂
迎宾馆
信号山
1300 – Lunch
1400 – 鲁迅公园
八大关
花石楼
1800 – Seafood Dinner at 云霄路/大麦岛海鲜一条街/台东路
Day 2 (16/4 Sunday)
0800 – St Michael’s Catholic Church
老舍公园
观海山/观象山
1000 – Qingdao Brewery
1200 – Lunch/Check Out
1330 – 海军博物馆
1800 – Depart from Train station
(Estimated time of arrival at Beijing on 17/4 0550hrs)
Something like dat lah, we made adjustments of coz, but still went all of the places mentioned. And the 海军博物馆 sucked, don't even bother.
The train ride was shiok! Simply because we invested (very correctly) on the best seats money could buy. The 9.5 hour trip was damn comfy. We were in 4 person cabins and we all had beds. Poor SJ and Jeff who joined late ... they had to squeeze with the standing crowd for the night. My conclusion, it is always worth the money.
Hmm ... I wanted to go Qingdao because it simply doesn't look China. It was once German and for a short while, Japanese. Therefore, it retained a lot of German architecture for the majority part of the tourist area. The 基督教堂 looks great, so did the St Michael’s Catholic Church. Think we coulda seen the same things in SG as well, but it is German essentially, and have history significance in their very prescence. I should have been celebrating Easter inside a church, but I end up touring churches only.
St Michael's
Artists, drawin their interpretation of St Michael's.
基督教堂.The 栈桥-回澜阁-小青岛 cluster is ... hmm representative of Qingdao bah. U see it in front of the Tsingtao beer labelling and on all icons representing Qingdao. Hmm ... quite ok lah. Must see but also can don't so serious about it. U can see the whole cluster from the Mac (it's 2nd storey) by the sea.
迎宾馆 is pretty majestic, feels super extravagrant, and take a special look at the very odd Mary and 2 kids glass painting. It had Oriental facial features but Western dressing. Then you can 偷偷 climb the shed at the shed beside to get panaromic view of the Qingdao shore line. And get a shot, something like this;
八大关 is a pretty big area to cover on foot. And tonnes of people take wedding photos there *&%$, taking turns and sometimes together! And u thought even ROM dun have so many couples at one go. Parts of 八大关 is nice, very euro look, it's a much cheaper alternative to take wedding photos at Qingdao then at Europe itself. Plus the weather, floral and fauna are very 配合 during spring.
花石楼 is within walking distance from the 八大关 area, which explains why they are here, again...
It was a tiring first day, as we started the day early, and most of our time are spent walking walking and walking, waiting waiting and waiting, and picture taking taking and taking. The so-called seafood paradise of China ... hmm ... jus put it this way bah, I still prefer SG style and variety of cooking seafood bah. Perhaps, it was too short a trip, too little meals to generalise.
The Brewery was fun and interesting =)
There was supposed to be 2 free drinks but they gave us more than what we should get, explains this spastic look at the bar, 
at the end of the tour. We also got a free Tsingtao glass each, quite cool and I like it a lot.The sucky part of the trip was right at the very end. We couldn't get train tickets (there's only standing seats left) back to Beijing, and we almost bought air tickets, which is twice the price of the soft sleeper seats for the train. Luckily (and unluckily) we found bus tickets which had beds instead of seats. It was 240RMB per 'seat'. The soft sleeper train ticket was 316RMB. The air ticket was 790RMB before tax and fuel surcharge.
This is only a-third of the bus. We thought we could it was something like a coach or wat that we could talk and makan chips and we bought quite a bit for the road. End up, we could only lie down .. machiam like coffin like dat. I think even coffin have more space for one than this bus bed. But there's niceties to the bus though, the bus conductoress distributed goodie bags that had biscuits and sour plums in it. She also walked around (when there was still space, you'll read why later) like air stewardess with a pot of water asking if anybody wants a drink. When I thought my nightmare should end just at that, the 'bus stewardess' laid comforters on the pathetic corridor space. At first, I thought 'how come so hoh seh, walk also soft soft so shiok'. The truth came a few junctions later ... the bugger bus let even more people board, and they slept on the corridor!! I had 2 faces right beside mine! Guys somemore! And when things fell off the upper deck, the two buggers woke up, made noise and of course woke me up as well. I gave up trying to sleep and tried to watch 霍元甲 they were showing. Then one of the buggers sat up and watch the show as well, effectively covering the already puny common screen. Pek chek xia ...
But well, the trip on the whole was fun and amicable. I wonder if I had witnessed the birth of the first Beijing GIP couple. Most importantly, the air was fresh and the sun was comforting. It was although somewhat rushed, but still a great great getaway from the Beijing. Somehow, when we returned to normal life (Beijing), we came back to the heaviest sandstorm in 5 years *&^$
posted by taxi taker @ 10:24 PM
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