China, as a whole, was a disappointment for the most part. Hong Kong was nice, although the entire time that we were there was revolving around the giant mall that the ship basically docked at. As you left the pier, you stepped into a shopping mall. It would be great if I were a big-time shopper, but for those of you who know me....yeah. What was cool though is that all of the buildings lit up in a giant light show at 8 PM every night. Wish I could have gotten a video-tape of that.

Qingdao was very disappointing. If you look at the bottom photo all the way to the right, that was where we were docked. It was a very industrial area, not very clean and very dreary. Now, I can hardly be one to talk about complaining how a place is, we did go to India after all and in terms of pollution it was about ten times worse, however this just seemed like a very depressing place. Reminded me of Gotham city, minus the batman.

We were only in China for two days, so I really didn't get to experience that much. I did, however, go on a Tai Chi lesson with a zen master for a good couple hours and then we had a tea ceremony. So that was cool enough.

Qingdao

Country - China

Mayor - Xia Geng

Size - 10,654 sqare km

Population - 7,311,200