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 :(