So I arrived in Tai'an on Tuesday and hadn't quite realised how difficult it can be when you are the only non-chinese person in an entire city. Fortunately a nice man took it upon himself to help me find my way to my hostel even though he couldn't speak to me at all and he didn't know where he was himself. So after he'd asked around 10 other people for directions I gave up and got a taxi.

Until 8pm on the first day I only saw one other person in my hostel......and she was chinese and couldn't speak english. So for most of day 1 in tai'an I could only speak to one of the receptionists at the hostel. However I did get to look around and managed to buy my train ticket to Shanghai. The city itself is really pretty and well kept and a really nice place to go.

The following day I climbed Mount Tai.......this is a pretty religious and spiritual mountain that's famous in China and in the past many emperors would climb it, but now is filled with temples and Chinese tourist who apparently like taking photographs with me!! It took me just over 3 hours to climb the 7200 steps to the top (1545m). I went into alot of the temples on the way up and stayed at the top for a while, looking at things like the gate to heaven!! It took just less than 3 hours to get back down and on the way I met someone that spoke English pretty well. It turned out he was on a tour with 50 other people and I ended up going to dinner with them, although no-one else could speak english. The experience of dinner was bizarre......so we piled on a coach to take us there and as we got in we all went into smaller rooms where they had already started bringing food in. They continued to bring more and more food whilst we ate so I tried a whole load of things that I still don't know what were. In less than 15 minutes we left, leaving behind around 2/3 of the food we'd been given!! I decided then to just walk back to the hostel.

I had to leave the hostel at 6am the following day to get the train to Shanghai. This time I payed for a bed and was fortunate enough to be in a very quiet carriage. Arrived in Shanghai that evening.