The Qingdaou red light incident

So i am stood outside the ferry port knowing i am not that far away from the hostel and fending off all the taxi drivers.

next second this girl runs accross the road (quite fit as well) and invites me to her place.
i look accross and see a shop sign that says "sex shop".

err, i am not in the market for a sex toy at the minute thanks, i said

"no not sex shop, i have bar next door....."

"but i give you nice massage as well..........."

tempting as it was to get fleeced and robbed whilst having a beer and a massage at 7.30 am i decided to give it a miss.

so i tossed a coin and walked off to the right and end up in a very seedy, but run down version of the amsterdam red light district that ended in a dead end.

this is going to result in a mugging i thought. so i put on my best football hooligan look, and remembered the words of jonnie norman..........

"even if you just filled your pants, never look intimidated."

so i gave it my best shot and it worked.

about 2 hours later i was really getting fed up as i could not find a cash machine that accepted my card, but had no money to get a taxi to the hostel and i was tired and hot, and i had not got much sleep on the ferry.

anyway, eventually i find a friendly cash machine, and jump in a cab, and go back exactly all the way i had just route marched and simply turned left where i had gone right 3 hours earlier and arrived at the hostel.

not a good day i can tell you.

the farting dorm and the cockerel

Well what a bizarre place this is, apparently in China it is known as little Switzerland.

Thats because about 200 yrs ago, the Germans took it over, so most of the architecture is German and still remains today, and that is also why the Tsingtao Brewery is so good, as the Germans started brewing beer as soon as they arrived.

So it really does not feel like you are in China, especially as it has some really nice beaches, it feels more like exmouth.

Also they will be hosting the sailing events at the olympics here, so they have spent alot of money doing it up.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson, the beer here as a result, is as cheap as chips, and works out at about 20p a pint if you can put up with having to drink in steptoes back yard with a glass that has probably never seen fairy liquid.

food from the market is cheap as chips and you can get a filling snack for 2p.

one thing you need to watch out for is that they hang their washing anywhere and do not care where they put the line, and in many places it will cross the path at head height.

no problem when it has washing on it during the day, but at night time when it is dark.........lets just say as i ran to the kebab shop because it was cold, i nearly got decapitated.

there are 8 beds in the dorm and at nighttime it was like a comedy sketch from monty python,

the bloke above me kept talking in his sleep, another one kept farting really loud, another one kept answering his mobile under the sheets, another one snored really loud and then sort of had an epileptic fit come heart attack during his snores every two minutes, and a girl was making moaning sounds.
so it was fair to say i did not get much quality sleep.

Next installment..............the train to Beijing and the chicken feet.............