‘Please not be ill’ is the only English message on the fast moving public buses of Beijing. But that’s jumping forward a little – cast your minds back a week, when I was just about to leave lovely, civilised warm Japan…

The boat trip from Japan to Qingdao was easy enough – no where near as luxious as the boat from Shanghai to Kobe, though. The boat obviosuly used to be fairly important in its day – from the huge dining hall to the lavish dancing hall you could see that it was used to lots of important guests. Unfortunatly, that wasn’t the case for our trip. Although the boat can hold 350 people, we only had 12 people on board, including an American family teaching English in west whoop-whoop China and a Japanese painter importing expensive Japanese dolls into China. I had a 12 bed dorm to myself and was over the moon…

Sunset from the boat

I arrived in Qingdao, hoping to organise a train ticket for that night… Ha! The entire city of Qingdao is under construction for the upcoming olympics – the main train station was closed, as were many of the other main buildings. Luckily, my friend the Japanese artist had already told me this, so I managed to get a taxi to the correct station. And -woooosh – I had to swap back to Chinese mode to try and secure myself a train ticket. Luckily the language part of my brain complied, and I was able to comunicate my desire to the railway staff… Only to be told no tickets. And none for the day after… Finally got myself a ticket for two days later and made my way back to the local hostel.Where my slight cold that I’d been nursing in Japan turned into a full blown cough-all-night, blow-nose-all-day ukky cold. The weather in Qingdao was so incredibly totally and utterly cold that I went to sleep of a night wearing my full body suit of thermals, my pjs, my gloves and scarf. And the heater was on. Of a day I sported my new face mask – fantastic in keeping out the bone-chilling wind. After spending two days wandering Qingdao I caught my train to Beijing and walked into my old hostel, what a relief.

Beautiful, if slightly freezing, beach at Qingdao - notice the crazy guy running into the water brrrr

First day in Beijing was spent at the hospital, after being convinced I needed to go there by a variety of people. I was right – despite what I looked and sounded like, I wasn’t dying, just a bad cold. The doctor loaded me up with a suitcase full of pills (really, there are heaps of them) and off I went… Shopping… Where I’ve been every day since I got here, loving it. It’s also how I managed to experience the warning to foreigners to ‘please not be ill’ – a little late! Being at an international hostel is nice as well, our room is full of Swedish, American and Australians, so getting to chat to a lot of people who are starting their travels in China…Well, tomorrow I’m off to Thailand, to grab some sun before heading home…

xoxo Bobbi!