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:

Sunday I was invited by my landlord to go see Laoshan Park, which is this large park type tourist trap by the famous Laoshan Mountain about an hour and then some outside of Qingdao. Of course in preparation for the day, I had to get tanked the night before so that I would be in a hangover induced daze to protect me from any unpleasantness foisted upon me during what would be a long ass day. Of course my luck that the one day I’d being going hiking, would turn out to be the hottest day of the year, hitting a corn-on-the-cob-flavored ice-cream melting 36 degrees.

I met my landlord and her husband, both of whom are university professors, at the gates of hell my complex at 2pm. They arrived in this beast of a minivan, and we proceeded to pick up some of their professor buddies, their kid, and this one girl student who could speak moderate English to come along for the journey. I specifically requested someone who could speak English and Chinese come along for the ride, because I knew my Chinese was not yet up to the task of dealing with a full day of immersion. Of course here in Shandong, someone who can speak English is just someone who can speak moderately better than I can speak Chinese, but comes armed with one of those little translation computer gizmos in a belt holster, ready to gun down any miscommunication.

The ride to Laoshan was shorter than I expected, but was made longer by the continuous verbal Chinese examination by every person in the van. Anything that I happened to lay my eyes on became a new word for me to learn. This would become a theme throughout the day. I appreciated the fact that they were just trying to help me out, and I assumed it was in their nature being professors and all.

The comedy started when we got to the park. We passed through the gates, and of course this being a Sunday, and a tourist area, there was a traffic jam to get in. Once we were on our jolly way towards the parking lots, I could see the traffic jam was being caused by the fact that the road was one lane in sections, yet there were two lanes of giant tourist bus traffic. The concept of you go, then I go, doesn’t apply here. It’s more like: squeeze as close as you can get to the cliff and whoever is almost falling off goes. Then we get to this one point where we’re stuck in traffic on a steep incline. I believe the hamsters running around in the wheels under the hood of the van hadn’t had enough to eat today, because it kept stalling while trying to start on the hill. The solution was simply that we all get out and push as the pathetic vehicle lurched forward, very much to the amusement of the passengers in the giant buses.

We finally get to the parking lot, and everyone gets ready. My hosts offer me an array of things I don’t need, ranging from a walking stick which I first accept, to some weird polka dot leg warmers that are really for my arms to protect me from the sun, which I politely decline. Our hike begins as we made our way through the gauntlet of shops of hawkers selling the same shit in every stall, which seems to go on for about 20 minutes. This is how it is at every place that draws tourists throughout the country.

Once we get to the actual trail, the number of people thins out to an acceptable level and we spend several hours walking around the various features of the mountains. At every decent photo site, I am transformed into Mickey Mouse at Disneyland as I’m forced to pose in 700 pictures in every combination of people from our party. Later in the afternoon we got to some snack place where we ate a bunch of strange things that normally I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Garlic and bean jelly salad, sticky rice triangles and eggs that had been boiled in a broth that imbued them with magical powers. These were washed down with what everyone wants after hours of hiking in ass sweat forming heat; hot bitter green tea. Later on we finally got back to the jalopy and went for some traditional dinner at some random guy’s house in the country. All the food was from the local area, and was surprisingly delicious. The feast consisted mainly of mountain vegetables, which were quite flavorful as opposed to some of the bland junk that I’ve had to cope with.

The day was long, especially because it was mostly in Chinese, and a lot of new words that I won’t be remembering. My hosts really went out of their way to make sure I had a good time so I really appreciated that. Laoshan is a nice little day escape from Qingdao for those who haven’t been. But it’s a one-time deal. According to one of my friends, I missed the side with all the rice paddies and stuff on it that’s supposedly neat. I don’t care. It costs like 80 kuai entrance, plus probably 100 to get there. Although the area is nice, a lot of the features inside the hiking area are man made, including the water features. So just like a Playboy model, it looked good on the outside, but who the hell reads Playboy anymore? I want my nature natural thank you very much.

Pictures on the clickthrough

Yes that is a corn on the cob ice cream bar. Yes it did taste like a goat’s testicles (and thats salty with a butter flavor for those of you who really had to know).

The Haier Homos have manifested themselves again! And it look’s like one of them just had a Cleveland steamer!

There seems to be a contrast in the colour of the rocks there. I wonder why?

Fake waterfall.