Headed out of the hotel early in the morning as we assumed that we will use up all the promised 8 hours at the mountain. There are various ways to get up there and also to come down. As we found out later then going up and coming down only by foot would take 8 hours as there are some 6660 stairs to climb :) Riina was not so happy about the stairs as she got her share at the Great Wall :)
Anyhoo, we grabbed a taxi by the hotel and showed the signs of Tianwai Village to the taxi driver (that is how it works, all the signs of places are given in chinese in the travel guide so that is the best way of clear communication) as that is where the buses would depart from. Communication with them is interesting - they have the strangest signs for numbers. When they corss 2 index fingers then this is 10 and when they lift the thumb and index finger then this is 8, other numbers we have not figured out yet :) Well 1 is easy as well, that is just an index finger. Apparently those finger combinations somehow represent their signs when writing numbers, although most of the phone numbers don't use the hieroglyphs but are written in regular latin numbers.
From Tianwai village we were able to purhase our pass up the mountain as well. Somehow they also smuggled local insurance for us, well that is comforting :) Bus took us halfway up through a windy road. From halfway up we climbed some stairs for 2 hours - that was rough. The air was a bit cooler up here, but the sun was blazing down at us and climbing up was not an easy task either so all together we were burning up in any possible way. And, no we did not need our fleece jackets that we dragged up there - we were dying of heat no matter what.
Up on the summit there were numerous temples, hotels, shops, restaruants, cliffs and some what looked like army buildings. We spent about 2 hours walking around up there enjoying the amazing views and beautiful scenery. During that 2 hours we noticed our red shoulders which reminded me that i forgot to put sunscreen on :(, I applied it on the last moment, but we both ended up getting burned in our face, shoulders and upper back - oh the night will be painful.
For the downward journey we decided to take the cable car from the summit to half way down and then walk the rest. Cable car experience was great :) At first I wasn't so sure about taking the cable car, but I'm very glad we did. Claustrophobic as I am it was a bit scary, but then again it was twice the excitement. About 5 people would fit into the single car thingy, it had seats on two sides. Whole thing was made of glass and had small windows on top - to let some air in. The ride was very smooth and lasted about 10 minutes. The view, well, no words to describe that. Rest of the way we walked down the stairs happily, made it back to town around 5pm.
For dinner we ended up walking out of 3 eating places. First eating place would serve only hotpot food which meant that they bring a huge bowl with broth and whatever you ordered would be boiled in front of you in that broth and they you would fish it out with chopsticks and eat it - somehow that did not look very appertising and we ended up leaving to find a bit better place. In the second eating place we could not understand anything from the menu and the waitress was not able the explain the food in any way so we just left. Third place smelled so bad that it took our breath away and we were not able to stay in there for longer than 30 seconds. Finally we went to some tiny eating place and ended up getting one of the best meals yet. We got white rice, steamed vegetables (yeap, this first time for us to have water soaked chinese cabbage things) and then meat pieces fried with onion. The meat dish was delicious! It had the best sauce ever - we ate every single piece on that plate, it had garlic and ginger there as well for taste. Sauce seemed to be terriaky sauce, well, it was the tastiest thing yet.
Evening was another movie night. Around 10 in the evening we witnessed rain for the first time here. Last time when it rained in Beijing then we were sleeping - we just heard it but never saw it. Last night we ran over to the hostel entrance to look at it - it was juust pouring. I could not imagine getting stuck with our pack bags in something like that while walking. I think it would come down so hard that we could not stand up :) It passed quite quickly though, rained perhaps for about 30 minutes or so and then that was it.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
day 8 - Tai'an - 24.08
Yesterday we ended up just walking around in Qingdao, just took it easy. Went and tried the Yellow Sea water on beach number 1, ate some strange fried sea animal (kalmaar) and had a nice dinner.
This morning took a train to Tai'an. It was 5 hour train ride. This train was a bit more old school one than the last one. It was overly crowded and we were sitting in a 3 seater and other 3 people were facing us, there was a table under the window in between us. We were willing to do pretty much anything so that the people around us would not snort and make their horrible noises as this would have surely made us sick to our stomach. Luckily the people in our area were quite civilized :)
At the train station we got a ticket to Shanghai for the 26th of August. Train will leave at 21:53 and arrive to Shanghai at 6am. While trying to figure out where to go from there we were attacked by whole bunch of locals who were trying to sell some tour to us and at the same time help us somehow. That is the strangest thing here - they all try so hard to help us but they can't understand us and we can't understand them, but they go out of their way to help us however possible. Whatta nice people.
For the hostel we just picked one youth hostel from the travel guide and got a taxi that took us there. Tai'an is a "small" city - about 800 000 people :) For reference Qingdao was 1.6 million and Beijing 15 million in population. Shanghai will be 15 million as well. Tai'an is so called gateway to a mountain called Tai Shan mountain - it is most revered of China's five sacred Taoist peaks, with imperial sacrifices to heaven and earth offered from its summit. That is what we have planned for tomorrow :) Tai Shan is 1545m above sea level and the climbing distance will be 7.5km
Today we already managed to visit one of the temples here named Dai Temple. It was located so conveniently across from our hostel as well :) Now we will find a place to have dinner and then will cruize around some more. Tomorrow to the mountain early in the morning as they say it all should be doable in 8 hours. Finally we will have some use for the hiking shoes and fleece jackets - maybe?
There was a question about the cleanliness - well not so good with that. All the streets smell badly, like in Thailand. At times it is unbearable and you end up holding your breath :) The smells are everywhere - on the regular streets, at the markets, on the trains, in the hallways, in the temples, in the taxis.. just everywhere. And everything is moldy (hallitanud) and damp. Yes the smells are quite horrible everywhere :(
This morning took a train to Tai'an. It was 5 hour train ride. This train was a bit more old school one than the last one. It was overly crowded and we were sitting in a 3 seater and other 3 people were facing us, there was a table under the window in between us. We were willing to do pretty much anything so that the people around us would not snort and make their horrible noises as this would have surely made us sick to our stomach. Luckily the people in our area were quite civilized :)
At the train station we got a ticket to Shanghai for the 26th of August. Train will leave at 21:53 and arrive to Shanghai at 6am. While trying to figure out where to go from there we were attacked by whole bunch of locals who were trying to sell some tour to us and at the same time help us somehow. That is the strangest thing here - they all try so hard to help us but they can't understand us and we can't understand them, but they go out of their way to help us however possible. Whatta nice people.
For the hostel we just picked one youth hostel from the travel guide and got a taxi that took us there. Tai'an is a "small" city - about 800 000 people :) For reference Qingdao was 1.6 million and Beijing 15 million in population. Shanghai will be 15 million as well. Tai'an is so called gateway to a mountain called Tai Shan mountain - it is most revered of China's five sacred Taoist peaks, with imperial sacrifices to heaven and earth offered from its summit. That is what we have planned for tomorrow :) Tai Shan is 1545m above sea level and the climbing distance will be 7.5km
Today we already managed to visit one of the temples here named Dai Temple. It was located so conveniently across from our hostel as well :) Now we will find a place to have dinner and then will cruize around some more. Tomorrow to the mountain early in the morning as they say it all should be doable in 8 hours. Finally we will have some use for the hiking shoes and fleece jackets - maybe?
There was a question about the cleanliness - well not so good with that. All the streets smell badly, like in Thailand. At times it is unbearable and you end up holding your breath :) The smells are everywhere - on the regular streets, at the markets, on the trains, in the hallways, in the temples, in the taxis.. just everywhere. And everything is moldy (hallitanud) and damp. Yes the smells are quite horrible everywhere :(
Saturday, August 23, 2008
day 7 - Qingdao - 23.08
This morning we slept till noon :D Oh that was niiice! Had breakfast in bed :) and took a shower in the smelly and full on fungus cellar. Then headed out after 2pm :D Slow mornings are nice. Apparently yesterdays weather was exception as today it is deadly hot again :( The sun is out and no wind anywhere to be found.
We found probably the only internet cafe in town :) and are struggling now with the Chinese Windows and broken keyboards. Our plan now is to go to the train station to arrange the train tickets for tomorrow and then perhaps go to some temple or something in town. Yesterday we contacted with one Couch Surfing person, so perhaps we will get together with him - he lives here in Qingdao.
But allright, not much more to tell at the moment.
Greetings and hugs to all of you!
We found probably the only internet cafe in town :) and are struggling now with the Chinese Windows and broken keyboards. Our plan now is to go to the train station to arrange the train tickets for tomorrow and then perhaps go to some temple or something in town. Yesterday we contacted with one Couch Surfing person, so perhaps we will get together with him - he lives here in Qingdao.
But allright, not much more to tell at the moment.
Greetings and hugs to all of you!
day 6 - Qingdao - 22.08
Our search for a cheaper accomodation was very successful :) Both of the youth hostels listed in the travel guide were nicely available. One of them was quite awful and dirty, but cheap - 18CNY for one bed in a room with 6 beds. The other one was much nicer and the whole 4 story building was full of foreigners :) Room for two with bathroom was 180CNY. Muuuch better than our very expensive and not so clean smelly hotel. By the second youth hostel we ended up finding another hostel, it was just around the corner, rooms were quite clean and nice and price was good for us as well - 60CNY a night. Yay :) Weather was nice, very windy and a bit cooler than usual (maybe around 20C). So we walked around the town a bit, went to the seaside and wondered in the parks. Locals exercise in the parks :) They just walk in and start doing squats and stretches, all of them in their regular clothes (women in their skirts) and then later they just walk on. Other locals gther around tables and play cards. This we have seen everywhere - they must be bored a lot or something.
Throughout the whole day we would hear some sort of bangs, sometimes in the distance and other times closer to us. They would come and go randomly. For the longest time we could not figure out what that was - sounded like shooting. In the evening we witnessed one of those "shootings" quite close up, my eardrums were gonna fall off - it was firecrackers (i'm not sure if this is the right term, but it is something you put on the ground and then fire it up and it starts making shooting noise and there is lots of smoke around it). Later when it got darker then real fireworks started - all over the city. Must find out what the celebrations were for.
During lunchtime we moved our bags to the chosen hostel and checked-in. I'm already getting used to the fact that everything must be explained with hands and making random arrows on the paper :) All gets done and clear and double checked. We took a room for 2 nights, figuring that we'll leave to Tai'an on Sunday (24th) morning.
Got some sightseeing done as well - climbed to a revolving observatory. View from the hill was amazing of course and the walk was nicec. Then our search for food store started. It is amazingly difficult to find grocery stores around here. We decided that we need some food and snacks with us at all times from now on - otherwise we might end up starving for many hours at times and that we don't want. Also we needed something for breakfast for tomorrow. Hence the need for a store. Finally we just went and asked from a random corner shop of where we could find a supermaket type store. Now we know that when we see a big make-up/cosmetics store then most likely underneath it is a grocery store as well :) Basically we need to look for a big mall type store and it will have food department as well. Finally we got our food.
For dinner we had Chinese dumplings :) This would consist of somemeat inside and noodle like cover for them (nagu hiiglaslikud pelmeenid) - they taseted very good. The only thing was that they were slippery and it was impossible to eat them with chopsticks :) Locals were laughing at us - again :D
In the evening we decided to have a movie night. We watched 2 Estonian movies that i had with me. Both depressing ones unfortunately. And then to sleep we went. Although the fireworks outside did not let us fall asleep for a while :(
Oh and my health has gotten better as well - quite normal already, couple of longnight sleeps and decent meals and all is good.
Throughout the whole day we would hear some sort of bangs, sometimes in the distance and other times closer to us. They would come and go randomly. For the longest time we could not figure out what that was - sounded like shooting. In the evening we witnessed one of those "shootings" quite close up, my eardrums were gonna fall off - it was firecrackers (i'm not sure if this is the right term, but it is something you put on the ground and then fire it up and it starts making shooting noise and there is lots of smoke around it). Later when it got darker then real fireworks started - all over the city. Must find out what the celebrations were for.
During lunchtime we moved our bags to the chosen hostel and checked-in. I'm already getting used to the fact that everything must be explained with hands and making random arrows on the paper :) All gets done and clear and double checked. We took a room for 2 nights, figuring that we'll leave to Tai'an on Sunday (24th) morning.
Got some sightseeing done as well - climbed to a revolving observatory. View from the hill was amazing of course and the walk was nicec. Then our search for food store started. It is amazingly difficult to find grocery stores around here. We decided that we need some food and snacks with us at all times from now on - otherwise we might end up starving for many hours at times and that we don't want. Also we needed something for breakfast for tomorrow. Hence the need for a store. Finally we just went and asked from a random corner shop of where we could find a supermaket type store. Now we know that when we see a big make-up/cosmetics store then most likely underneath it is a grocery store as well :) Basically we need to look for a big mall type store and it will have food department as well. Finally we got our food.
For dinner we had Chinese dumplings :) This would consist of somemeat inside and noodle like cover for them (nagu hiiglaslikud pelmeenid) - they taseted very good. The only thing was that they were slippery and it was impossible to eat them with chopsticks :) Locals were laughing at us - again :D
In the evening we decided to have a movie night. We watched 2 Estonian movies that i had with me. Both depressing ones unfortunately. And then to sleep we went. Although the fireworks outside did not let us fall asleep for a while :(
Oh and my health has gotten better as well - quite normal already, couple of longnight sleeps and decent meals and all is good.
Friday, August 22, 2008
day 6 - arriving to Qingdao - 22.08
We had made bookings for a single night in a hotel in Qingdao. Once we arrived to the city past 11 at night, we were quickly surrounded by taxi drivers in front of the train station - apparently the hotel we got booked was about 100km away :( As their english is as it is then the taxi driver called to one of his friends who translated what i said and also what the taxi driver was saying. After some negotiations and thinking we asked him to take us to some hotel that is closer. So he did, but he kept saying somegthing about police which we did not understand. First hotel we were taken to the reception lady shook her head when we entered - the deal is that since the sailing events for the olympics are taking place in Qingdao, then foreigners must stay at hotels which are 4 or more stars. This rule applies throughout the Olympics :( So basically we are stuck with some very expensive hotels here :( We were taken to another hotel, there we tried to bargain the price - no use. As time was getting close to midnight already then we did not see any choice than to stay in this one. We went to see the room first just in case - nothing pretty, but decent enough. What is with the smell though? Smells like fungus and sigarettes here.
In the morning we nearly missed our breakfast :) We were so hungry though so that would have been bit bad to go on another few hours without food. Breakfast was strange though, lots of dumplings with different fillings and some tasteless cake things. But at least it is food. Took a shower and now we are packing our things again - will leave the bags in a hotel and will try to find more suitable hotel for the next night.
Looking out of the window we are able to see the actual sun and blue blue sky - soo nice :)
So far we have had the luxury of having internet access in our hotel rooms. In the future we are thinking of trying youth hostels as well and there the conditions might not be that good :) So no idea of how regularly we will be able to post in the near future. Haven't really noticed any internet access spots in town either, also no Starbucks - maybe those are only in Hong Kong area?
I also ended up getting a local SIM card, my number here is - 15011199443. This means that my EMT card is not in use at the moment - I do put it in once in a while just to see if there are some messages or something.
In the morning we nearly missed our breakfast :) We were so hungry though so that would have been bit bad to go on another few hours without food. Breakfast was strange though, lots of dumplings with different fillings and some tasteless cake things. But at least it is food. Took a shower and now we are packing our things again - will leave the bags in a hotel and will try to find more suitable hotel for the next night.
Looking out of the window we are able to see the actual sun and blue blue sky - soo nice :)
So far we have had the luxury of having internet access in our hotel rooms. In the future we are thinking of trying youth hostels as well and there the conditions might not be that good :) So no idea of how regularly we will be able to post in the near future. Haven't really noticed any internet access spots in town either, also no Starbucks - maybe those are only in Hong Kong area?
I also ended up getting a local SIM card, my number here is - 15011199443. This means that my EMT card is not in use at the moment - I do put it in once in a while just to see if there are some messages or something.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
day 5 - leaving Beijing - 21.08
Last night we packed till very late and also sat behind the computer posting/e-mailing and loading pictures up. I was sitting right under the air conditioner, i even felt the cool air on my back at some point. Well, once I got to bed at around 3am I was freezing and my throat was aching :( Long cold shrills followed :( After some shaking under the covers I put on my woolen socks hoping that the shrills will go away, but no use :( Finally at around 5am I ended up taking maximum amount of Citrosept drops and that helped luckily. So I had caught a cold :(( In the morning we were suppose to leave hotel at 8am to do the check-out, take our big bags to the train station and head over to the volleyball game. Once the alarm went off at 7am I had gotten about 1 hour of sleep and was still feeling very weak. It was raining outside and had been raining for a while as there were huge puddles on the street. Drank one Theraflu as well hoping to get better as soon as possible as we have a long train trip this evening. I was definitely not going anywhere as I did not feel good and perhaps the volleyball game got even canceled because of the rain, dunno. But in any case we slept in. Riina went and got some fruits and juice for me later on. After eating i started to feel a bit better as well.
Negotiated with the hotel reception lady and got to do the check-out at 2pm instead of noon. Got instructions to get to Beijing South Railway Station and headed off. Getting to the station ended up being a bit more complicated than "take bus #53 for 10 stations" as we were instructed, but all the people are so helpful and nice. Nobody speaks English, but once you got a map with Chinese locations and names you just point at it and they give you further instructions. Of course the instructions come in the form of a long story in Chinese :), but pointing helps. Works like a charm.
We had many hours to kill at the train station, luckily we found electricity plug so i prepared all the entries and am now posting them from the hotel in Qingdao. Train trip was quite fine, the train was a bit smelly, but that disturbed us only for the first 15 minutes or so. I got some good sleep in during the 6h ride. Train went mostly 160km/h and the ride was very smooth.
Negotiated with the hotel reception lady and got to do the check-out at 2pm instead of noon. Got instructions to get to Beijing South Railway Station and headed off. Getting to the station ended up being a bit more complicated than "take bus #53 for 10 stations" as we were instructed, but all the people are so helpful and nice. Nobody speaks English, but once you got a map with Chinese locations and names you just point at it and they give you further instructions. Of course the instructions come in the form of a long story in Chinese :), but pointing helps. Works like a charm.
We had many hours to kill at the train station, luckily we found electricity plug so i prepared all the entries and am now posting them from the hotel in Qingdao. Train trip was quite fine, the train was a bit smelly, but that disturbed us only for the first 15 minutes or so. I got some good sleep in during the 6h ride. Train went mostly 160km/h and the ride was very smooth.
day 4 - olympic stadium - 20.08
In order to get to the stadium everybody had to pass very strict security check. Of course you needed to have a ticket to one of the events in the area to be let through. Security check was much more thorough than at the aiports. Naturally there were metal detectors but besides that they went through everybody's bag, they literally took everything out and laid it on the table. In my bag I had a my tiny laptop - this I needed to power on, he was following the power on process and let me shut it down only after the operating system came up. I also had a camera - with this i needed to take a photo and show them that it really was a camera, not just the shell. Any food and drink was taken away, any other liquid one had needed to be demonstrated - for an example i had hand sanitizing liquid which i needed to use in front of them. Chewing gum packages were also interesting to them and they did not quite understand what that was until i showed them how to "use it" :)
The lines to access the stadium were loong, it took easily 45 minutes to get through. Stadium area consisted also the ever so beautiful and fancy aquatic center. Didn't get close to that though as it was fenced off again, even withing this hyper-super-duper secure area. Aquatic center was illuminated and it changed colors, it was beautiful :) Also the park around in the olympic stadium/complex area was wonderful - clean and friendly.
Now the stadium :) We had tickets to the evening session that started at 19:00 - we got there around 20:10. Our seats were pretty much under the roof, meaning very high up, but that was ok even. Just to sit at the stadium made our mouths drop open. It was huuuuge :) I've been to some huge sports arenas, but this was easily 10 times bigger than what i have ever seen before. There were some other Estonian sitting by us, chatted with them a bit and all I heard was of how bad their living conditions are and how badly it is all organized by the Estonian travel agency. Oh I'm so glad we are doing our own thing - at least we know what we are getting and what we are paying for. Back to the stadium - the construction was magnificent, it was all just so nice and fancy. China has done a great job with the buildings - they really are all that olympic buildings should be.
Events that we had the honor to witness were:
- women's 200m run semifinals
- men's 200m finals
- women's 400m hurdles finals
- women's hammer throw finals
- men's 100m hurdles semifinals (or was that finals too? can't remember)
Most importantly though - we got to see men's discus awards ceremony :D That was wonderful. Yeah we missed the event totally and we missed the chance to congratulate him in person, but we were there for the awards giving :D YAY!
Once and a while we are doing a reality check with Riina: "Hei, guess what? We are in China, watching the Olympic events live :D" the smiles on our faces are widest ever :D
The lines to access the stadium were loong, it took easily 45 minutes to get through. Stadium area consisted also the ever so beautiful and fancy aquatic center. Didn't get close to that though as it was fenced off again, even withing this hyper-super-duper secure area. Aquatic center was illuminated and it changed colors, it was beautiful :) Also the park around in the olympic stadium/complex area was wonderful - clean and friendly.
Now the stadium :) We had tickets to the evening session that started at 19:00 - we got there around 20:10. Our seats were pretty much under the roof, meaning very high up, but that was ok even. Just to sit at the stadium made our mouths drop open. It was huuuuge :) I've been to some huge sports arenas, but this was easily 10 times bigger than what i have ever seen before. There were some other Estonian sitting by us, chatted with them a bit and all I heard was of how bad their living conditions are and how badly it is all organized by the Estonian travel agency. Oh I'm so glad we are doing our own thing - at least we know what we are getting and what we are paying for. Back to the stadium - the construction was magnificent, it was all just so nice and fancy. China has done a great job with the buildings - they really are all that olympic buildings should be.
Events that we had the honor to witness were:
- women's 200m run semifinals
- men's 200m finals
- women's 400m hurdles finals
- women's hammer throw finals
- men's 100m hurdles semifinals (or was that finals too? can't remember)
Most importantly though - we got to see men's discus awards ceremony :D That was wonderful. Yeah we missed the event totally and we missed the chance to congratulate him in person, but we were there for the awards giving :D YAY!
Once and a while we are doing a reality check with Riina: "Hei, guess what? We are in China, watching the Olympic events live :D" the smiles on our faces are widest ever :D
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