We organised a trip to the Laoshan mountain region this weekend; its a really picturesque nature reserve about 40 minutes taxi drive from Qingdao. There were eleven of us with as much Tsingtao as we could carry, a cheap “Doss” stereo from Carrefour and 200 cups for the beer pong…we were ready.

We booked a house for two nights, which worked out at Y130 each, or only £13! The house was perfectly nice with the usual amenities and the Chinese owner even cooked some food for us on the first night; with local river fish, chicken feet and other traditional dishes. I don’t think she was particularly pleased with us for arriving nearly two and half hours late and having a loud argument with the taxi driver for trying to rip us off, but hopefully she just wrote it off as typical “Laowai” behaviour. The first night it was pouring with rain, so we just ate and then had a few drinks…then a few more drinks…then played beer pong…then played a lot more beer pong; perfect. 😀

On Saturday we did some walking/hiking in the mountains. There was an old temple which was pretty cool to look around, and just a short distance away we saw a monk meditating on an overhanging rock which was both awesome and brilliantly stereotypical! The scenery really was beautiful; after reaching the end of the official path we all climbed over some of the large boulders so we could get a better view, and then just chilled for an hour or so. In contrast to the fog you so often get in Qingdao it was a day of perfect sunshine and clear blue skies, so we were all pretty content to just relax for a while.

When we made it back to the house we simply set up “ring of fire” and got drunk again; perfect. It was really, really funny, and Sophie was particularly pathetic at it, which I think deserves a mention. 😉 Sven definitely made it his personal mission to forget the stresses of the day (soaking up the sun it one of China’s most beautiful regions) and he definitely achieved it!

Brilliant weekend, hopefully many more to come! 🙂

Ben & Philipp