qingdao (part 2): kai yue youth hostel

it was only going to be a temporary stay but it ended up being my home for about 3 months seeing as it was the cheapest place to stay in town. the hostel was originally a church in the old centre of qingdao, and it got converted into a youth hostel about 6 years ago. going up the stairs, there were two entrances either side of the small reception office. from here, there were likewise two entrances to the bar/restaurant part of the hostel called the ‘old church lounge’, open to the public as well as the guests staying at the hostel. a big social space, with discrete areas catering to everyone...  big sofas with low coffee tables, high stool and tables, discrete non-smoking nooks with see-through string ‘curtains’ for intimate discussions, a step-up stage/music area complete with guitars and conga & bongo drums and maracas. there was also a kicker/table-football game, but the icing on the cake was the medium-sized pool table. “free for guests for half-an-hour”, said the note. that half-an-hour used to stretch to hours sometimes but nobody minded so much; it was off-season then.

the second floor had rooms either side of the long corridor, and a laundry room with washing machine and dryer. the third floor also had rooms with single, double, and triple beds, as well as 7 and 8 person dorms with bunk beds. there were showers and toilets and the end of the corridor. i was in one of the cheap 7-person dorms. room 315 seemed to be the long-stay dorm as i soon discovered. max, a young english guy also teaching english there, had been there 3 months already, as well as pasha, from russia. they was also han?, from korea, who had been there the longest. there was also a fourth floor, again with rooms of all types, a library area, and a couple of small roof terraces, one for drying the laundry, and the other for eating at the small table, or for the smokers to indulge in their habit.

i soon got to know all the people working there, and likewise, they all got to know me. it was like a small community. most of the chinese had english names so it would be easier to remember: wendy, bonny, michael, emma, yolanda, chichi, lee, et al. i got to know all the good pool players and would challenge them to a game at any opportunity - sign of a misspent youth.

then the french connection arrived, antoine from france, and guillame and charlotte, and they stayed for a few weeks. peter from sweden was there on an internship for his chinese studies. antoine used to thrash everyone at the kicker. we used to collect random guests and go to eat out or to the beach. those first few weeks were great because i had plenty of free time as the job-search was going very slowly. the cost-of-living in china is low compared to the eurozone, and so i didn’t need to stress to find work quickly.

i soon discovered the food street near to the hostel, and the good places to eat... there were a couple of very popular and famous restaurants not far away, which had their tables on the pavements outside in the warm night air. it would’ve been a good atmosphere if it wasn’t for the fact that the food would sometimes take ages to arrive... two hours i had to wait one time!!... and for the fact that a lot of chinese love to smoke, before, during and after eating.

and yes, it seems like they have this disgusting habit of hocking up all the phlegm in their lungs and gobbing it out anytime, anywhere: standing, sitting, walking down the road, eating a meal. it wasn’t so bad if they were inside a restaurant, but i saw it even there. thus i avoided these two places in the end, and every time i passed the infamous one with the front-of-house ‘afro-woman’, as max had dubbed the woman with the enormous perm, she would look away as if i was a traitorous leper!

with the free wifi in the hostel, i found my little nook in the old church lounge to do my blogging... antoine had kindly given me a copy of the vpn software he had been using. seems like the great firewall of china was blocking out all the blogger websites as well as the usual suspects: facebook, youtube, bbc, etc. i didn’t use any of these in any case, but the blogger one was a necessity. and when internet time was too much, the pool and kicker were useful diversions.

qingdao is famous for its tsingtao brewery and beer, and the hostel were giving away free beer/coffee tokens each night for the guests... shame they didn’t extend that to the soft drinks. in any case, i had discovered the qingdao equivalent of coca-cola: laoshan cola. it tasted like medicine at first... i was told it had a lot of good healthy ingredients in it like ginger, ginseng, etc... but then i got addicted. so filling my aluminium bottle with this and not-so-sneakily drinking it in the ‘lounge’ was the way to go. i really took advantage of my ‘long-term-regular’ status. the young managers didn’t mind so much that i never bought anything from the bar or the restaurant - it was expensive compared to what i could get just down the road – and i was saving every yuan for the not so cheap places coming up: korea and japan.

sleeping in the dorm was ok for a while. then i was using the single pair of foam disposable earplugs i owned every night to block out any snoring, drunken talking, etc., etc. but then i got earache and stopped using them, and since that time, my sleep has really suffered. every night, there has been a snorer. snoring, in particular, just drives me completely up the wall. sign of a traumatic childhood.

i haven’t killed anyone yet, but if there is a group of people who i would have no hesitation in dousing with petrol and setting alight, it would be snorers. i would be jubilant when one left, but then came another one the very next night. it wasn’t too bad when i didn’t have to wake up early in the morning to go to work, but these last few weeks have been tough. grumpy and irritable through lack of sleep is not what i need to be when i have to teach ten-year olds at 8 in the morning. luckily, i manage to get breakfast in before teaching otherwise i would be frothing at the mouth at every little thing. bad teacher! max and sasha left to laizhou where max had scored a teaching job and free accommodation. the french connection left for korea, and antoine left to beijing and france. peter moved to new digs, and only luke is left.

tonight is my last night.... i took my last dinner at my favourite restaurant with dorothy and a new guest, mark, from holland. i sounded thrashed him at pool and kicker after. there is a tropical storm heading this way and everyone is waiting for the deluge to start. i’m a bit worried ‘cos i have the ferry crossing to incheon and korea in the morning. i hope the ferry has left incheon to make its way to qingdao for tomorrow. but looking at the satellite maps on the web, it doesn’t look too promising. the visa expires the day after tomorrow, so i’m gonna be buggered if there is a going to be a significant delay. i’ll phone up the ferry company tomorrow morning... or rather, i’ll get the reception crew on duty tomorrow morning to phone them and see if the ferry is on or not. still, i’ll have a good reason to tell them at the police station when i go to extend my visa. typhoon damrey due to hit landfall anytime in the next few hours.