First thing we went by taxi to the train station and got night train tickets to Jinan, leaving our rucksacks in left luggage and then went off to see Yantai. According to Tobin and Tracey, who used to live here, and virtually every China guide I've read, Korean food in China is at its best here due to the large Korean population, so we went to find lunch! The night before I had seen a lot of Korean shop signs and stuff, but now we couldn't find a single Korean restaurant. After wandering around for quite a while, hunger got the better of us and we found a Chinese restaurant instead. We each ordered a set of food which came with rice, watery vegetable and egg soup, kale in sauce, cold crispy spring green vegetables and a bizarre savoury blancmange-type contraption, plus a cold tea drink which tasted of honey and was absolutely vile, and our choice of main. Liam chose chicken and I had beef steak with potatoes. The whole meal was very nice; I ate all of the blancmange which got more watery and oily as I ate and had ham and crabsticks in it. Strange but equally edible. Still don't know what it was though. We also got some Oolong tea which was really not very nice at all. So we were very full when we left! We didn't have a clue what to do in Yantai apart from tourist bus number 17, and we didn't know where that ran from so we went to an internet cafe to find out. When we went on t'internet we found we had a message from Tracey recommending things to do, see and eat in Yantai, which was really nice of her. We decided to try out her suggestions though we didn't have very much time left before our train was due to leave (10.40pm) as it was now around 5pm. When we stepped outside the sun had set and the night market was set up and trading. I stopped to get a fried pancake wrap with meat and herbs; nummy but didn't sate my hunger! I stopped to buy some socks but when the stallholder said 5 kuai for some reason I baulked and walked on. Further down I realised that 5 kuai was a pretty damn good price and that I really wanted the socks, so we turned back. After that we walked to the train station, where we'd bought tickets that morning, where Tracey said the 17 and other buses went from, but when we got there the 17 wasn't listed. In fact other buses were listed as stopping at the train station three stops on, as well as the station we were at which had a different name. Totally confused, we jumped on the bus that was listed to go to the university as Tracey had recommended going that way to see the best things. But we arrived at the university and it clearly wasn't the one Tracey had meant, which is on the coast. So we got on a bus to return which said it was going to the train station, and when we got to the stop called 'train station' we realised what had happened. The station was under construction, and a temporary one had been put in place, a bit further down the line, like a big aircraft hangar, where we'd been that morning to buy our tickets. The 17 was also listed as a temporary service so instead we just got in a taxi and asked for the uni. The 17 apparently takes the scenic route to the uni, along the beautiful coastline and that's exactly where our driver went, so no harm done in missing out on the bus! We got to see the coast which was indeed very pretty. I love the sea; beaches and coasts always prick me up. Which is weird seeing as I live in the most inland city in the WORLD.
At the uni we quickly found the blue and white fronted Korean restaurant Tracey recommended. We ordered the spring onion pancake, a favourite of Tobin's, and also got pork and onions, deep fried sweet potato, which was a little bland but very hearty and moreish. We also braved sea slug (sea cucumber) which was in fact not sluglike or bad at all! Not tasty enough for us to finish the dish by any means though - kind of crunchy and stringy and nothing like I expected. The name sea cucumber makes a little more sense now I've eaten it.
Thinking by this point we'd better get a move on we stopped at a delightful public bathroom and then caught a bus back to the temporary train station. We still had a bit of time so we went looking for snacks and a notebook for me (the latter to no avail, there is a dearth of notebooks in east-coast China) and then bought some tacky shell things for Catherine to go with the three shell turtles I'd bought earlier, that had mulicoloured straw hats. Their tackiness pleased me immensely. They sell these shell things all over Yantai; it would be wrong to pass them up! That's my defence anyway.
We got on the train after a wait in the aircraft bunker, and discovered the sleeper bunks were practically impossible to get into, compared to the ones we'd had to Taiyuan anyway, and particularly bad for one with legs as short as mine. There was no ladder or ladder-like footholds but instead fold-down footholds - one above each bed. That meant that for the first step I had to get above an entire bed. I accidentally touched the first bed and the woman there had a nervy b because my foot went near her pillow. Desperate times, love, desperate times. There were no overhead luggage racks to put bags along the length of train like there normally is. However when we finally climbed up we found we had a huge ledge where we could store our bags, thank God. I didn't fancy sharing a bed with my rucksack. Settled into sleep I had a short moment of claustrophobia which is weird because I've never once felt it before, not even on a crowded bus or subway, where I actually enjoy the squishedness! I think it was because I needed the toilet and realised I couldn't go because I couldn't get down or back up. I felt a bit trapped by the shortness of my legs/lack of gymnastic ability of my entire body. They turned the lights of (without warning, of course) at 11pm, so off to bed it was.
The mystery blancmange.
The market, bustling with activity.
Korean dinner! Spring onion omelette and pork and onions at the front and deep-fried sweet potato slices and sea cucumber at the back.
The little Korean restaurant near Yantai University.
Liam looking astonishingly happy to be in his train bunk.
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