Qsingtao

Keg Beer for sale on the sidewalks all over Qsingtao they give it to you in a plastic bag.





This is the beer garden near the Qsingtao factory I could only finish one beer.











This Fujia the cop who saved us. Thanks Fujia!



The internet connections have been few and far between lately so just to let everyone know we just arrived in Tanzania last night. I did want to bring the blog up to date though so I will try to start off where we went off course. China. We arrived in Beijing and we knew that it would be pretty tough to get train tickets to Tibet since the train has only been running for one year so we made that a priority. We didn't know that it takes ten days of waiting and paying the ticket scalpers a hefty commission for the tickets but we still wanted to go that route so we did it. After site seeing in and around Beijing we still had a few days to kill so we took the bullet train over to QsingTao on the east coast. The town is renowned for its international beer Tsingtao. Once a German colonial town the city looks as if it could be part of Europe.


The part with many Chinese people.





We arrived late at night and went for some food at one of the nearby seafood shacks on the boardwalk. After eating we received our bill and it was about ten times what it should have been. We argued over the price but ended up paying the bill and leaving. All night I plotted on how to destroy the shack and the owner and did little sleeping. The next day I told Elle about the excellent plans that I had devised for revenge but somehow we came to the conclusion that going to the police might be our best option. We were both pretty sceptical about the success of this maneuver but we figured it was our only choice. The Qsingtao police turned out to be the best police force in the world. Instead of laughing at us they brought in a translator from a nearby hostel and we went over the story and then went and confronted the store owner. It was a fantastic scene because it was lunch hour rush and the place was full. We marched in with three police officers and they made the owner give us our money back and then apologize. Sweeeeeet justice!





After the ordeal the officer who helped us the most (Fujia) invited us out to dinner and brought us gifts!!!!!! L.A.P.D. if you're reading this take note.





After that we returned to Beijing and then left for Tibet. In Tibet we contemplated going over land across the border to Nepal because we were so close and then continuing on to Delhi our next stop. However this turned out to be fairly expensive and since we already had air tickets out of Shanghai we decided to take an even longer train back to Shanghai 51 hours. We spent a few days in Shanghai but it was a week long national holiday and very hard to do anything. I don't know how busy Shanghai normally is but it was hard to breathe there were so many people. Luckily we only had a couple of days there and then we were off to uncrowded India!