Just this past week I made another random journey with a friend to the only beach in the Qingdao area that I haven’t yet been to. This beach was at the entrance to Laoshan Mountain. My friend called me up out of nowhere and figured that despite the encroaching smog, it would be a good day to check the beach. Supposedly this was the nicest beach in the Area, and I had nothing better to do so I agreed to go. After spending half an hour trying to figure out which bus would take us to this mythical beach, we hopped on the mighty 304 and for 70 cents and an hour of our time, we arrived at Laoshan Beach.

What can I say about this place? Well it definitely is the nicest beach in Qingdao, because it’s so far away, it gets very few visitors, and because it’s massive, it seems like no one is there. It’s also nestled between a bunch of mountains, so the views are nice. We spent most of the day just wandering around and observing the interesting features.

One of the first things I noticed when we stepped foot on the sand were these little holes everywhere. I wondered aloud as to what they might be and bent over one to examine it. Just then, out popped a mini crab like creature that began running around. I got some snaps of the little devil and then chased him back to his hole.

The beach had crabs. That’s fine I suppose. We dealt with it by staying closer to the water where the amphibious crabs preferred to avoid not because they didn’t like the water, but because they were having a food coma after devouring all the chinese people who once populated the beach.

My friend and I continued to walk and debate the nature of space time relativaty and string theory, when we came upon this little gem, that I nearly stepped on.

The beach was now tainted. I’d seen worse I figured, and once again my friend and I jumped back into the arguments and implications of the Second Treatise melding with the State of Nations, when we happened to find this poor fellow.

We weren’t sure what it was at first. I thought it was a dog’s corpse but I was secretly hoping for sentience. It turned out to be a washed up jellyfish. From this point, surely things couldn’t get any stranger, yet of course, they did. Out of nowhere, this gentleman appeared, and decided that he was going to have Qingdao Jello™ for dessert.

Before he made off with McBlobicus, I felt it necessary to feel up our floundered friend.

And for no particular reason, here’s a picture of someone’s shoes with a blubbery mess.

Despite all these minor afflictions, the beach was still really nice, in a nice setting, and there was no one there. Not even those creepy guys…however I did manage to find our ambiguously amicable amigos:

Filed under: obscure