CHINA | Why Qingdao?

I like to say that we didn’t choose to go to Qingdao, but Qingdao chose us to go there! Haha

One ordinary day in February last year, Viv and I were chatting at a bar and having a couple of beers. That’s when he got his phone to check something we were discussing and spotted this amazing deal to fly from Melbourne, Austrália to Qingdao, China.

The flight was ridiculously cheap that we couldn’t help ourselves and ended up buying it.

It was about $200 AUD return each! WTF!!!!! Seriously, we had once missed out on an amazing deal to Japan $300 AUD return. So we didn’t think twice, we purchased the tix in less than 15 min of finding the deal haha… I guess the beer also helped a bit.

City View

Here is the thing, at first we didn’t even know where Qingdao was located! We knew nothing about it, never heard of it or anything. We literally bought the tickets and then we went to do a quick google search to check where it was and some info about it.

But basically we found that it is a city on the east coast of China and with some German influence, since they had a colony there at some point in history and we saw 2 photos of it. That’s what we knew about it and we decided not to look into it. 

We wanted to have no expectations at all and that was such an awesome thing we did. Would definitely do it again and would recommend you to do it at least once in your life!! Such a cool experience not knowing anything about your destination.

Of course after we arrived and walked a bit around we looked a bit on the internet to try to find some of the city’s highlights.

May 4th monument 

So, exciting times ahead, we booked the trip to the 12th of April (1 day after my birthday), and also just after we would have left our jobs. So it worked out very well, as a birthday trip and a farewell celebration of our unemployment!!! Yaayy! 

We still had about 2 months to go tho.

A super cute police bus (or station?!)

The only problem when you jump into this crazy deals with your eyes closed, is that you forget to think ahead haha we sometimes have serious issues with this… this time was the Visa situation… we found out the visa price a few days later… and wow, it was basically more expensive than the actual ticket!!! I know.. Well, too late, had to do it. We couldn’t cancel that flight anyway since it was a promotion and they don’t give refunds.

No problem, lesson learnt (I hope so). Weeks later we went to the Chinese Embassy to apply for the visa and they didn’t let us!! WHAAAT? 

In case you know yet, we don’t normally book any accommodation in advance. We don’t enjoy so much since if we don’t enjoy it we will be stuck there etc. So we find it easier to arrive and look for accommodation.

Well, China is very strict and they ask a LOT of info when applying for their visa… This was a bit annoying for us since we don’t plan or book anything in advance. This time we had to book accommodation in advance at least for the first few days. 

After we found this cool hotel also for a good price and seemed pretty close to the water looking on the map, we decided to book and then go back to the Embassy to apply for the visa since they didn’t let us apply the 1st time.

A mix of temples and skyscrapers in nature

All good a few days later we got the visas, all good to go, happy and excited.

Viv left his job a couple of weeks before me and I left mine just before my birthday in April, happy day!! We were free again!!!

All good, backpacks ready and off we go.

Ah, a detail, even with such cheap flight (Beijing Capital Airlines) we still got 2 free meals each, free alcohol and 20kg luggage each!!! Seriously, I could not believe it. haha Scary as the aircraft looked a bit old, but yeah haha everything went well.

We arrived at night time, took us a while to find the right bus to take into the city, but we managed. That’s when we realized we would have some issues with language barrier haha.

After getting off we walked so much trying to find this hotel hahaha our google maps didn’t work very well obviously since it’s all blocked over there.

Night view from our bedroom window

But we finally found it and what a cool hotel, wow… we had probably the BEST view in the city!!! I felt so fancy being up at the 40th floor! haha 

The room was lovely, spacious, modern, even had a washing machine! Yaaayyy

Check out the 1st video of our days in Qingdao to see some of it!!

In the morning, what a view!!! Waking up to that view for the first 3 days made us stay the entire time in the same hotel hahaha We just loved it so much we didn’t want to change and be disappointed haha

And since it was ‘my birthday trip’ too, we used it as an excuse to splurge a little bit, it wasn’t even super expensive, if compared to Austrália, it was quite cheap for what we got. 

It costed about $60-70 AUD per night (with that good deal we found, of course).

Funny thing was that such nice and fancy hotel, you would expect that at least the reception would speak and understand English… Nope. I think there was 1 of the many receptionists they had that could speak a little bit. I found it quite interesting.

The best view in town!

We walked a lot, really, A LOT, but hey, best way to explore, right?

Seafood lunch

And the food that we had wow, so much food, street food, all delicious food. Their specialty there is Seafood since it’s a coastal city. A must.

We also went to some places which we couldn't even order the food, he had to point to it and do some mimic ahha, we paid next to nothing for a huge amount of food. It was just a corner ‘restaurant’ din’t seem to have a name or anything, but they cooked in bulk! There was probably 20 cook in this tiny kitchen! So impressive. And deliiiicious.

They are famous also for their Olympic Sailing Competition / Qingdao International Regatta. Quite cool, I wish I was there at that time too, it must be pretty cool.

Sailing Sculpture

Massages! We went a couple of days for massages and they were just great! We found some with really good price and really professionals… One of the lady massagists also helped me use this weird 2 wheeled thing this little Chinese girl had as a toy haha You probably don’t know what I am talking about but yea, it was funny and if you watch the video you will understand what I'm talking about hahaha

Next post I will mention some of the places we visited and some we didn’t.