Day 21: Welcome to Qingdao

Today is right at about the half-way point of the trip.  (Crap, we’re gonna be leaving so soon!)

After the twenty-six hour train to Tibet, the trip to Qingdao (think: Ching-dow) is just a quick jaunt.  To me at least.  It might be a different story for Kristy, who’s had a little tubster of a child kicking the back of her seat the whole way.

Day 9: Treacherous Train Trek to Tibet

We had planned on being in Lanzhou and exploring the surrounding environs for four days.  Circumstances (ticket availability) forced us out in less than twenty-four hours.  So we are on our way to Tibet.

Day 8: Serendipity in Lanzhou

Lanzhou is a place you go when you want to get to other places.  It’s like community college.  We came here dreaming up big plans of taking a day trip to a small buddhist village called Xiahe (pronounced: Jah-hoo, with the J sound from “dijon” and the OO sound from “book.”  Sorry, that’s as well as I can explain these sounds.) and then going to Tibet.  Of course, in an effort to make the trip as exciting and unpredictable as possible, we didn’t bother to have the transportation for these trips reserved yet.

More Day 5: Leaving on that Midnight Train to Xi’an

An introduction to the last-minute overnight train ride in China.

• Be sure to assume you won’t have trouble getting tickets.  If possible, wait until the day before you want to leave before you try to get the tickets.  This will create the following interesting results:
  • You’ll have to join a two-day Xi’an tour in Mandarin in order to get train tickets.  Therefore you won’t have any idea what is going on while in Xi’an.
  • One traveler may have to use a bunk in an entirely different train car than his friends, leaving him feeling abandoned and alone.
  • That same traveler may be stuck on the uppermost third bunk, which has about two feet of clearance to the ceiling.  This is hard for the traveler when he is six feet three inches tall.
  • That lonely bunk will be right next to the bathroom, giving the traveler the opportunity for a lot of interesting smells and sounds.

Day 5: Beijing -> Xi’an

The grass is smiling at you.

Before leaving for Xi’an we stopped by the Olympic Park to gaze in wonder at the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.  And to gander at the 7-star Pangu hotel, which has this amazing fluid, waving tower that looks to me, appropriately, like an Olympic torch.  Our dreams/whim of going into either Olympic venue were dashed by the mind-boggling number of people crowding the lines to get it.  We got over that desire pretty quickly.