Next stop: Qingdao. Also here we had problems finding a place to sleep, but we got free dinner because we drank a beer with some local people.

In the morning we left the city of Qufu to go (with a change of trains in Jinan) to Qingdao. Qingdao is a rather big city, about 6 million inhabitants, in the same province as Jinan, the Shandong province. It is located near the yellow sea in the east of China. It took us about two-and-a-half hours to get there from Jinan.

At first we wanted to check in in the hostel because we already had some problems with that in Qufu. It was good that we did that because the place where we went to didn't seem like a nice place to stay the night. We ended up in some ghetto, it was very dirty and it didn't seem safe. We decided to look for another place.

That appeared to be easier said than done. We found several hotels and hostels in the neighborhood but everything was fully booked, again. Some hostel owners even tried to help us finding a place, but with no success. With the help of internet we booked a place called 'Seaview Hotel' and it looked good on the photos. After a bit of walking we arrived at the place to be and the security guard of the building told us to go to the 19th floor. On the 19th floor we only found normal apartments where people are living. One of the residents there called the number that was on our reservation and told us that the person in charge would be coming soon.

Half an hour later still no one, so we made another reservation for another place. This time for a youth hostel. That was a bit away from the center, about 40 minutes of walking. When we got there the host said that he does have a room available, that is was a mistake on the website. Fortunately there was one room still empty because those people didn't arrive yet. He called them and they said that they wouldn't come anymore. So this time we were lucky and we could actually stay the night here.

We dropped our luggage in the room and went out for eating. After searching for a while we found a nice sea food restaurant. The menu there was of course all in Chinese but they had all the different dished they had stalled out on a table so that we could choose by seeing them. We chose for a hotpot, which is a pot of boiling water and oil on the table and then you can boil your own food. The food that we chose was squid, crab, shells, vegetables and meat. We have no idea what kind of meat that was, it wasn't super tasty, it was very tough and with some peanut sauce it was alright to eat.

When we were going around the restaurant to choose the food, we of course attracted the attention of everyone and some people took some photos. One group of middle-aged men was very interested in why we came to China and so on. They didn't really speak English so a conversation didn't start but they were happy that we were there and he proposed a toast. We were drinking a bit with those guys and when we wanted to leave and pay for the meal, they insisted that they would pay. They ordered some more beer for us, we drank for a while and they paid our bill. That was very generous of them, totally unexpected.

Meanwhile it was almost midnight so we went for a short walk near the sea and then headed back to the hostel. We weren't allowed to play table tennis anymore because that would wake up the other guests, so we also just went to sleep. Luckily we managed to find a place to sleep, again.