Visiting Qingdao's main tourist attractions

(Well, not any more. In reality I'm failing to find words for how beautiful Shanghai is at night, but here's what I wrote yesterday before my hostel's flaky wireless fell over.)

Brewery tours can be pretty boring and the city's main museum is very boring indeed. "We've been making beer since 1905.", they say, and then they tell you in excruciating detail how they did it then and how they do it now. (Spoiler: it's the same way everyone else makes beer.) There are many rooms describing the history of the Tsingtao company and its Corporate Strategies. "In nineteenmumble we moved from the Larger Then Stronger strategy to the Stronger Then Larger strategy.", they explain, clearly. "Here's a picture of the Board at that time. Later we had some Strategic Alliances with other companies. Recently we have adopted the Recycling Economy strategy because the environment is very important. Here's a diorama of a man in a hat looking thoughtfully at some barley." I barely got out alive.

No, ok, I stayed for half an hour watching the packing production line at the end with real fascination. It's _almost_ worth going to the factory to see at how cleverly they move bottles around and into boxes. Other than that the best I can say is that it's less pretentious than the Guinness Storehouse. But most things are.

In the afternoon I saw the rather nice Tianhou Temple, devoted to a Goddess of the Sea. She's got incense burning on every flat surface and she's accompanied by threatening guardians, a friendly metal dragon who was shiny from being petted and a shrine to the God of Wealth that collected a continual stream of coins. It's a clever setup: the shrine has a small hole that you can throw coins through if you have good aim, so people keep trying.

After that, I climbed up the hill to see the Christian church, built by the Germans in 1908. It had fewer fierce statues and no dragons at all, but the clock tower was lovely.

Last thing for the day was to walk down Huangdao Road, a nighttime food market warm with orange lights and filled with all sorts of aromatic, sizzling (and sometimes wriggling) things to eat. There are hens pecking around underfoot, tanks of assorted shellfish waving claws or fronds or feelers, slabs of dangerous-looking meat on hooks, and sinister quivering objects that you're not really sure what they are. I bought three types of pancakes (all excellent) and a bowl of very spicy potatoes and beans and peanuts, then brought them back to the hostel to fill my belly. A contented evening.

Typing with my thumbs in Qingdao

For the comfort and safety of its citizens, China blocks Blogger (which is where this blog is hosted) and parts of Picasa (which is where I keep my pictures). It looks like they may have missed the mobile interface to Blogger though, so I'm writing this on my phone and we'll see if it goes through.

While I typed the last paragraph, I've collected three mosquito bites on my hands. They really don't want people to blog here :-P

Mosquitoes aside, I'm enjoying  Qingdao well enough. It's not a madly exciting place, but it works well if all you want to do is pass through immigration, book an onward ticket and eat some noodles. The ferry here was excellent too.

This town was built by Germans. It's funny to see European-style buildings everywhere and restaurants with German names. It's also why this town started producing one of China's most famous exports: Tsingtao beer.

I've got one more day here before I move on to Shanghai. Shanghai! I'm already geeking out about the maglev.

Off to China

She's got a ticket to ride... well, to sail. Assuming ferry, immigration, customs and finding the hostel all go well, I'll be back online from China around this time tomorrow.

I'm getting prepared for a less law-abiding society by deploying the horrible traveller money belt. I hate these things, but I hate pickpockets even more. I've also caved and bought the lonely planet book ($40!!! And it weighs a ton. You'd definitely know you had it in your backpack.) so I'll be able to point at place names in Chinese.

Byebye, South Korea. Your old men spat on the streets more than I was comfortable with and you tried to kill me that one time, but I liked you a lot otherwise! Thanks for all the food <3

Recovering from Jirisan in Seoul

One more post while I have wifi (and it got pretty long, sorry) to share pictures of what I spent the last three days doing. Jirisan was a big deal for me because it was my first proper solo hike, as well as the longest and most difficult trail I've done so far and my first time hiking at night. (In case this sounds insane, I'll add that I chose very busy, popular trails and went at the weekend). It was also the first time I turned up in a village looking for a homestay, which I was a bit nervous about, but which turned out to be fine.

I did my research, reading about various trails online, spending half a day scouring Busan for a trail map (and another evening translating it into English) and learning the basics of reading Korean characters so I could verify my path by reading trail and village names on signs. I had my trusty compass, raincoat, water purification equipment, spare socks, plenty of food and a few bars of chocolate. It was on.

The first day and a half were brilliant. I easily found a homestay and a gigantic hot meal. I clambered on ropes across a river and successfully translated Korean words on signs. I felt pretty clever, I have to tell you :-) It got steep, and sometimes the trail was hard to find, but it was all under control. And then it started to get misty and the mist turned to rain. I began to find that slogging up the horrible bits wasn't nearly as much fun without my hiking friends there to share the pain. The rain meant there was no reward: every view was like standing inside a cloud. Without someone else to say "Wow, we're seriously supposed to go up _that_?", it was hard to get enthusiastic about the climbs. Near the end of the day I just wanted to be out of the rain so I didn't stop to eat when I got hungry. (Tip: this is stupid.)

The penultimate peak, Jungbong, was a great celebration. I had it to myself for a few minutes and I stood in the white mist, arms in the air, declaring the third highest peak in South Korea to be mine. From there, it was a hard but triumphant 45 minutes up to Jirisan's 1915m peak, Cheonwangbong. And it was _rubbish_. The top was crowded with a group of noisy people, all very comfortable with the height, leaning back off the ridge to take photographs, trusting their hiking boots and poles. They bustled and shoved and barged into each other at the edge of this sheer mountain top and I, without mountaineering in my blood and with low blood sugar, was suddenly really scared that they'd knock me off the edge. I inched back down to flatter ground and sat and ate chocolate until I  was un-scared again. Lesson learned.

After that, the hour scrambling downhill to the shelter in rain, cold and no visibility was horrible and being the only person at the shelter without a stove or a circle of friends was miserable too. In New York I'd have been fine with mooching a mug of hot water for tea off a stranger, but I didn't have the energy to conquer the language barrier. It was all a bit sad and lonely on Sunday evening, so I wrapped up in my blanket in my corner of the cosy (and heated!) shelter and went asleep. Sleep is usually a good remedy for things.

Since I'd never really hiked at night before, and since the day before had ended so badly, I wasn't sure I wanted to take out my headlamp and join the group climbing back up to the same peak at 5am. I was awake anyway though so I ate a huge breakfast and decided to tag along and bow out if it got at all scary. This turned out to be a great call: I ended up in the middle of the pack, which meant help and encouragement for the rough bits,  hearing other people wheezing around me, and feeling like I was part of things. Before I knew it, it was brilliant again.

We got up there just after dawn to shouts of welcome from two guys who'd arrived just before us. One of them saw that there was a non-Korean and shouted "Welcome to Jiri Mountain!". I felt personally welcomed :-) They gathered the ten or so of us into a circle and shared a bottle of soju. The first glass, with much bowing, laughter, thanks, applause and great ceremony, was given to the mountain itself, then they filled a glass for everyone else.

In great spirits (and warmed by great spirits), we set off in various directions down the mountain. I was going to the same place as two young guys, Han and Jon, and we trudged downhill at a solid pace for the next six hours, declaring "Very easy!" after every horrible slope and  chanting "bus bus bus bus bus bus" to try to convince the bus terminal to move up the mountain to meet us. (It didn't work). Han spoke a bit of English and Jon didn't and we had good conversations anyway.

Overall, it was a good experience and a learning experience and, if my knees ever recover, I would like to hike in Korean mountains again. I'm in bits today though. I couldn't get out of bed the first couple of times I tried and I stayed in Busan for an extra half day until I was sure I could manage the subway stairs. Every time I stand up or sit down it's with an oof of pain. All of that downhill is rough on the joints.

Finally, I should mention that when Tiarnan was heading off to hike the Appalachian Trail and I was looking at visiting random dictatorships, I joked that he'd probably get kidnapped by militants and I'd get eaten by bears. The very first sign I saw on Jirisan? "Asian bear. Carnivorous" with a lot more text in Korean. So that was reassuring. (I'm pleased to report that Tiarnan got  home safe and unkidnapped from the forest and that I have not yet been eaten by a bear.)

In a Vietnamese soup shop in Seoul

At home I try to eat sustainably. When travelling I just try to eat. "Huh, I wonder what I just ordered... kitten noodle soup? Well, that's a shame. Pass the soy sauce."

Food's interesting because it's such a huge part of our lives and it's so easy to get wrong. For example, lots of Japanese and especially Korean food comes in a bunch of little bowls. Sometimes it's for mixing together, sometimes it isn't. You just have to know. Similarly, you just have to know whether you're supposed to eat with your hands or a fork, whether something is a condiment or an integral part of the dish, whether there's a big chunk of wasabi, chili or raw garlic sitting right there that you probably don't want to eat in one bite. And then, is it ok to slurp from the bowl? Can you double-dip? Can you ask for it without meat? With chips?

There's a good chance that you're doing something culturally weird, like ordering porridge for dinner or soup for breakfast. Or something disgusting, like tearing bread with your left hand in a country where the left hand is unclean. At any moment you're probably being rude, ridiculous or gross and people might not tell you. So it goes.

Lots of types of Japanese restaurant bring you food and a hot plate or stewpot and leave you to it. Wait, come back! I don't have basic life skills here. How do you do okonomiyaki again?

People tend to not get offended if you eat food wrong (probably apart from the poo-hand situation), because you're just an idiot foreigner who doesn't know how to behave. If you're polite and friendly, you can get away with it being part of your idiot foreigner charm and people are lovely about sitting down and showing you how to debone a fish or whatever. You really can cause offense through ignorance in other ways though. Tipping, for example. Tipping is the worst. Over here you don't do it at all (hurray!) but on the first day of my very first ever trip, I had a room go quiet when a restaurant owner held out the (very small) change and I picked up the coins from his palm. It was a keep the change sort of place, and you're supposed to know that. Try not tipping for drinks in the US and see how quickly you get served next time. Tipping is hard. They should hand out informational leaflets at airports.

The big thing you can do wrong here is put your feet in the wrong place. Shoes off at the door, slippers in the house, bathroom shoes in the bathroom. No slippers on tatami floors. Undoubtedly other rules that I don't know and have broken fifty times. At the hostel today I hovered outside until the guy came out to see why I wasn't coming in. "Should I take off my shoes?" "No, of course not! Shoes are ok here." Huh. It's all part of the mystery of travel, I guess.

On the internet

Photos for the US and Japan.

whereistanya 2011: USA

whereistanya 2011: Japan