Hello From Qingdao

Friday afternoon we arrived in China, ready for the next leg of our journey to begin. Our ferry from Korea, The Golden Bridge Five, was a bit late due to a late departure from Incheon. We had been instructed to get to the ferry terminal, as the ship pulled up anchor at six. We had a bit of a frantic rush of buying snacks and hailing a cab and arrived on time. Then began the four and a half hours of waiting to go through security. We located our bunks and rushed up to the deck, hoping to watch the boat the harbor. And waiting. And waiting. We enjoyed a nice dinner in the ferry’s cafe and then waited. And waited some more. It took an hour of belting it out in the private Karaoke room before the ship set sail. The views of the glowing city were spectacular.
The next day was spent playing dominos on the deck (Being the only tourists and Nick and I being the only kids, we attracted a lot of attention) and enjoying having nothing but open ocean and fellow boats in sight.
As we waited to disembark the ship, we began chatting with a very nice Chinese couple. New and Loulou helped us navigate the ferry terminal and find the correct bus to get to our hostel. After freshening up a bit we met them for dinner. The extra long metro ride was worth it. We were in a different part of town wrought with street vendors. Delicious smells of searing meats we couldn’t identify and ripe fruit was almost tangible. New halted us at a stall selling... a pancake? The good was a large circular pancake roughly two feet in diameter. It was puffy, probably four to six inches high in some places and kind of airy. A man would hack off a chunk with a heavy clever and then chop the piece into bite sized pieces. We were startled to see our companions pay for their portion with their phones. WeChat is an app that apparently all of China uses for everything. Texting, FaceTime, banking, cash is becoming obsolete and credit cards are practically unheard of! Considering we don’t have a phone with us we may run into some troubles, but we think our unique style will be just fine.
We then learned that you would take the delicious pieces of pancake and dip them in the richest most flavorful broths imaginable. It was nice to meet some locals and get a taste of Qingdao.

Qingdao from the ferry

Nick dominating dominoes

Last glimpse of Incheon