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.