*Geisha Steve, Emperor Stephen, and Emperor Bill
Bill flew in from San Fran and in the matter of a few weeks we tore up Seoul, Korea and ate all the sonyupsou (Korean BBQ) and kimchie we could handle. So we got on a ferry and sailed across the Sea of Korea on an overnight ferry/cruise to Qingdao, China. The ferry was amazing, the sea was great, and we made friends with the sushi cook and after trading him some Johnnie Walker he made us the most unbelievable sushi feast I’ve ever had. In Qingdao, a harbor town with a rich beer history, the theme was beer. The Nazis took over Qingdao in the early part of the century and built and awesome brewery there, and after the war the Chinese claimed the brewery and now they make China’s #1 beer TsinTao there. We of course took a brewery tour, and the brewery is on beer street where tons of little places serve pretty good beer. Guess what we did next, yep we went to the Qingdao International Beer Festival in a part of the city called, big surprise, Beertown. The festival was unreal, beers from all over the world, imagine Kings Island, but entirely beer themed. We had heard the locals usually bring you to there tables and you get to drink for free, and we wouldn’t have believed it until almost at the end of the night a bunch of older business men brought us to their table and insisted we drink all their beer with them. Unlucky for them we could all drink a lot more than them and drank them under the table, so they left wabbling one by one and left us all their really expensive beer, which we appreciated. After Qingdao we went to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius and the location of his massive temple and palace. It was a smaller more relaxing town. The temple was extremely beautiful and amazing, I got to see man made structures over 1,000 years old. We had great dumplings while we were there stuffed with mushrooms, pork, leeks, and other awesome things. After Qufu we headed to the most likely best city in China, Beijing. Beijing was unreal. We did too many things to list so I’ll just shoot a couple off real quick. Saw the Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square, Maos Shrine, The Great Wall, Olympic Village including The Cube and The Bird’s Nest stadium, and we ate tons of Sichuan food, Peking Duck, and much more. Bejing was exhausting and amazing. Bill left, so me and Steve headed to Sozhou, which is called the Venice of China because it has beautiful canals that run all over the city. Our hostel was on the most beautiful canal. China is nuts, Steve and I are convinced they don’t have a word for no here because they build whatever they want. In Sozhou they have functioning exact replicas of England’s Big Ben and London Bridge, talk about surreal. Unfortunately my camera is broken so no pics of ol Sozhou. Luckily now I am in Shanghai, so apparently there are lots of places to get it fixed here cheap. I guess the over 2,000 pics I took in a month and a half fried it or something, that or the ridiculously dense smog got to it. Regardless, China has been extremely eventful. Everyday something is happening, and the “small” towns here have about 2 million people. In Shanghai they think there is about 25-30 million people. To put that in perspective there are about 250,000 people in Cincinnati. Well, I’m off to adventure more and hopefully chill out and relax for a few days. Until next time….
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