Arrival in Qingdao was an ease, the flight was lovely, comfy and I even managed to snooze off in the journey. The only problem was, when grabbing a taxi to the hostel, we got in and then didn't see the guy turn off the meter. It wasn't until 10minutes later to which he explained that our friends in another taxi had agreed to pay 150Yuan .. WHAAATTT! We tried to call up our friends to work out what they were playing at but noone was answering. It wasn't until be arrived at the hostel that we realised no one had infact agreed to it, they just scammed it .. thanks a lot! Even worse, they didn't even drop us off at the right hostel so had to walk 10minutes, up a lovely hill at that, to get to the right one, luckily finding some people who guided us there. The hostel was nice at the top of a hill, and had a lovely observatory tower, it was rather pretty. We had our own seperate building to the main hostel and all 10 us of were sharing, in very wobbly bunk beds. It was nice having our place, own toilets and showers... shame that the showers didn't work and the toilets were blocked by the boys within about 5minutes.. gaaahh! The hostel did serve some very nice pretzels though which I ate too many off and yummy drinks, finally had some malibu :D

Our first night in Qingdao we got an 'early' night as we were all tired from the partying in Shanghai. The next day the boys headed out to a brewery whilst us girls went to do some sightseeing, walking down the peer and along the beach. The wind make it freezing so a quick stop off in a McDonalds did no harm.. hmmmm hot chocolate. The beach was pretty and we got a go at trying to blow out of a huge sea shell/horn .. I got lots of laughs for my poor effort! We met up with the others in the afternoon and decided to go and have our first banquet together.. which worked out v.well actually. We ordered a few fish dishes seen as we were in Qingdao, eating muscles, a big fish and drinking lots of the famous Qingdao beer. It was a nice meal out actually and we did a decent job at ordering good food.. yum yum yum!! That night we wanted to go and find some clubs to head out to, hearing from Nold that it was party central here.. yeah maybe not. We ended up just chilling outside a seven eleven drinking baiju and laughing about with these guys we met earlier in the day, it was then for an earlish night whilst some of the guys went to watch the football around 3am. It was then around 5am that we were awoken by Pete, banging on the door and acting very drunk. I was very tired and just remember him talking about game of thrones... borreee. I think I got a bit stressed that he had awoken me and soon told him to settle in bed, not before Rob peed all over the toilet floor... hmm.

The next day we slept in a lot and had to then head off to grab our train to Harbin. Me, Rob, Dan and Cat grabbed a taxi and headed for the train station, it was here that we were getting prepared for our 26hour train... SITTING! We got these tickets a few weeks before, unaware that we were sitting and how long the journey was until a few days before. We stocked up on food and headed onto the train, luckily moving people about so we got a seat of four between us, more room to lay across each other without worrying where other people's feet were. I could of slept well on it if it wasn't for the fact that they kept the lights on the whole night and that there was just no room.. gaahh! I ended up just annoying the others for most of the journey, one moment having a sugar rush and running about the train then getting moody and moany. The journey actually wasn't too bad except for the night time. Luckily I noticed an empty carriage so asked if we could go into it the next morning when we still had about 10hours left. The men were nice and allowed it so we all layed across a seat and managed to get some sleep... pretty good end to the journey. It was then around 9pm.