Tour Bus Hell

[Decurso]

Well,we just back from Qindao and it was quite the trip.My Chinese friend Simon invited us to to go for the weekend for the unbeatable price of 150 RMB for return bus fair and hotel.Couldn't pass up such a great opportunity.

We left at 9:00PM Friday right after my last class.Never mind that a 10 hour bus trip is hell at the best of times,but it is much worse when it is overnight.To make matters worse there was a TV on the bus blasting at full volume all night.First it was Taiwanese pop music videos playing so loud they drowned out the MP3 player.Then it was videos of dancing girls shaking it to techno...might've like that under other circumstances.And they played movies until 3:00AM.Even after they shut the TV off it was still hard to sleep because they cruelly only had the airconditiong on for 10 minutes every hour.And who can really get good sleep on a bus at the most comfortable of times?I slept maybe 3 hours but I was waking up every five minutes.

By the time we got to Qindao I was eager to take a shower,take a nap and then change out of the clothes I was wearing and hit the beach.That's when I got a nasty surprise.Our trip was in fact a guided tour that was to begin immediately.Ugh...I hate tours.You have no freedom at all.Case in point...I found out we would not be seeing the hotel for another 12 hours.YEARGH!

Gotta admit though...Qindao is among the most beautiful cities I have ever seen.Our first stop was 30 minutes at the Harbor where we walked along the breakwater and enjoyed the beautiful ocean scenery against the backdrop of the towering skyline.Then we headed to the Number 6 Beach.Sounds great...but we only had an hour.Barley enough time to fight your way through the 300,000 tourists.I was STILL in pants(mighty uncomfortable) and not up to waiting in the change room lines just for 20 minutes on a crowded beach.I used the time to go to McDonald's and grab some much needed coffee.

Our third stop was the most appealing on paper..a boat ride around the peninsula Qindao.But we got there only to be informed they couldn't sail because of a typhoon warning.The only plus here was that we got an extended lunch break.Simon and his friends and family invited us to join them at a seafood restaurant where we feasted on ten dishes and several pitchers of icy cold Tsing Tao.It did much to lift our sagging spirits.And class Chinese seafood can't be beat.

Our next stop was a small collection of 1000 year old temples.Not as cool as it sounds.The sight was very small and and has been transformed into a gawdy tourist trap in the heart of downtown.Plus the guided tour was incomprehensible as it was in Chinese only.I would've rather seen the Governors Mansion(built by German colonialists at the turn of the century)...but I don't think the tour guides even knew it existed.Instead they took us the Aquarium...yay.Like I've never seen an Aquarium before.The fee to get in was 90 RMB,so many of us passed.That left us with three hours to kill walking downtown.God...we were so bagged and miserable.But my wife and I did find a nice western coffee shop(27 yuan a cup) and spent most of the day walking the streets near the number 1 beach and sitting in Zhongshan Park.It had it's moments.

When we got to the hotel we found out why it was so cheap.It was a dorm style hotel way up in the mountains.The missus and I almost died when we found it was four to a room...after our day we really needed some privacy.Fortunately we were able to pay 50 RMB to have a room to ourselves.the bad news...the hot water in the showers was turned off.

But by this time I was pretty numb and ready to just enjoy being free of the tour group.We joined Simon and friends for dinner at a nearby restaurant and then enticed them to join us on a cabride downtown.It was well worth the trip.I had seen a beer gardens and stage being set up in the daytime and I desperately needed some party time.We arrived to find the park full of people watching all kinds of entertainment on a giant stage...even a live band!They played everything from rock and roll to hip hop.Anytime you get to see live rock in China you can't complain.They also had acrobats and dancing girls.It was well worth the fact that small jugs of Tsing Tao cost 50 RMB.The bad news...it shut down at 10:00 because of the Typhoon warning.So we headed back to the neighborhood where our hotel was to take in the atmosphere of a local eatery where beer was a more reasonable 5 yuan for a large jug.

Next day it was up at 7:00 AM to go to a secluded beach outside town.Sounded fun...but they got there and found the beach closed.So we sat there for an hour while they tried to come up with a backup plan.The plan consisted of driving around for two hours looking for a beach.After all that we wound up back at at the Number One beach.It was tempting...but the storm weather was finally starting to appear and I didn't feel like going swimming just before a another bus ride.Instead Tanya and I grabbed lunch at a Korean restaurant and sat on the beach for half an hour.

Then the long journey home.We got stuck in traffic caused by a gruesome car wreck and later the bus driver got us lost.He nearly put us in a ditch trying to turn around on a narrow unlit country road.We finally got in at 12:30 AM.

But I told my wife we would laugh about one day...and we already are.But never again will I set foot on a tour bus....Chinese or otherwise!

[Dr. Gonzo]

Yes siree, the joys of organised travel. Did you get taken to any factory outlets for silk/roast duck etc, where your tour guide was on a %ge of the take? Did she mutter through clenched teeth "Wo xiang rang ni si" when you failed to make a purchase? Were you told that the hotel breakfast was at 7.30, only to arrive and find that all but a few ossified baozi had been devoured by your fellow tourists, who were now jockeying for prime bus seats?
The only upside of a Beijing tour we went on was actually getting dropped off and picked up at the front gates of the various attractions: it would have been hell by public transport.

[Decurso]

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention how Sunday morning we drove for an hour to get our most esciting destination......a SEAFOOD MARKET!!!!! Grrrrrrr......

[Mr Nobody]

Chinese tour operators have no idea of what westerners want in a tour, what they want to do, or much of anything else. They certainly don't communicate what the hell is going on.

I was going to give a series of examples, but none are funny enough to bother with, and not horrible enough to be shocking.

Oh, I remember one. We had a 3 day tour which included all food. So they gave 100 westerners lots of teh best chinese food. Yep, Camel hump, fishhead soup, snake, unnamed weird beasts and things from the depths of the sea and dwellers of slime. You name it. Westerners mostly demanded pitstops of Maccas to fill the hole left by being unable to eat at these huge banquets.

Needless to say, as one with a very eclectic palate, I was full as a goog. And also needless to say, they couldn't understand why the westerners failed to eat these wonderful viands they had supplied.

Oh well.

[gengrant]

gotta good one too...father in law was sitting at the table, looking all over for a fork...finally gets frustrated, flings his chopsticks across the room screaming "m'kayers, you cater to foreigners, where's my m'kaying fork?!?" All along, my mother in law (who is in health care) is practically crying as she screams at the Chinese hosts "don't put your chopsticks into the food (in the middle of the table) after they've been in your mouth!" TIFC!

[con's fly is open]

And was before they checked out the bathrooms.

[Mr Nobody]

The bathrooms are ok. It is the TOILETS that get most people.

[Dr. Gonzo]

OK. So the catered meals on our tour were basically generic "Chinese" food, bland but servicible, then get the whole contingent out the door in 40 minutes. There are places that cater for the bus trade and can serve up several troughs of soup, rice, veggies, a few meat dishes etc; a bit like school lunches.
The exception was the Beijing kao ya place near the Forbidden City. It claims to have been open continuously since the mid 19th century. Certainly the squats bore testimony to that. One fossilised squirt was labelled "Ci Xi".
What this place did do was bring out endless roast duck with the condiments. No limits. An "all you can eat" BJ roast duck place.
Pity it's one of Earth's most over-rated delicacies.
Getting a beer at these joints is close to impossible. They HAVE it, you can see it, but the guide is more interested in getting you to her cousin's salted duck egg factory soon, very soon.

[Mr Nobody]

The particular tour in questions was for a bunch of visitng Kung Fu masters from all around the world, run by our governing body in HK. For example, at one point, they took us to see a wall. We were there for about 30 minutes. We got what seemed to me to be a long lecture about brick making and masonry.

Several years later, I found out the reason. The Late Great Grandmaster's residence had been destroyed during the modernization after the cultural revolution. It was a rich dudes place, so the communists destroyed it, and rebuilt. Since the couldn't take us there, they took us to another place, so we could see the quality and kind of brickwork the master's residence had when it was intact.

I still don't see the point.

Another time another tour, another year, we were asked, are we hungry? We said yes.

So we got on the bus and drove a million miles to a nothing village in the middle of nowhere for about an hours travel. No explanation. A busload of annoyed foreigners, and they said nothing as to why we were travelling out of town or anything.

Eventually, we were at this great place on a lake, beautiful etc. Great food.

So, why didn't they just say, we are going to a great place, bit of patience needed.

Both the organizers and the organized whinged about the other's behaviour to me. I sorted it, but the next year .... same again.

About outlets etc, they didn't seem to get the idea on one trip - no we do not want to go shopping - we had just come from one week or so in HK, and even the girlies were all shopped out. We were asked, we told them, but were ignored. We stood around looking for a pub. Cold beer was in order. Didn't find any, though, apparently we had to go somewhere else.

[Seth]

I did the exact same thing, except we went to Rizhao. The cost was about the same. It was definately a torturous bus ride and I wasn't expecting anything like it. For one, I was of course the only white guy, and I was wearing this black Superman shirt. People kept doing the strong man pose to me.

The bus left Luoyang sometime in the early evening, so we were in for an all night ride. The Chinese have a habit of eating incredibly stinky things in small areas, and all excursions call for a plastic bag full of smelly junkfood. The music and Wang Li Hong videos played all night and the bus driver honked his horn every 30 seconds or so. I got no sleep at all. The bus stopped probably every 3 hours or so for a rest stop and at every stop about 5 people would get out and puke on the side of the road. In between stops an old lady would mop the center aisle with a dirty mop that smelled like bad dog breath. By the time we got there the smell was horrendous.

It was definately the absolute worse travel experience one could have. The only thing that could have made it worse was farting fat children (more common than you would think!). Thankfully no kids were allowed.

The 'hotel' was more of a dirty youth hostel with wooden boards for beds and pillows filled with black beans. The floor of the shower room was muddy, and the 2 squat toilets were black pits of hades. I'm not even sure if it was legal for me to stay there.

Fortunately the students and teachers I was with wisened up and we ditched the whole tour and did our own thing. We took a train home and booked a real hotel on the way home.

Rizhao was nice, though. Not as cool as Qingdao, but not a bad town.

[Decurso]

Thanks Seth...I feel a lot better now.Your trip sounds much worse than mine.

But my big beef isn't so much with Chinese tour groups as tour groups themselves.It's like jail.If I'd known it was a guided tour I never would've gone.Of course...Chinese tours do have their own special flaws that make them worst than most.The shopping excursions....the noise...the disorganization...the inefficiency.

I complained to Simon that this was the worst way to travel and he explained that if went we went on our own we would be lost and unable to find cheap hotels.That's when it occurred to me that foreigners know more about China than the Chinese.I have maps of Qindao,a list of good sights and a list of very cheap dorm hotels.Chinese people leave their hometowns so rarely that they feel better being driven around like cattle instead of having the awful experience of having to figure things out themselves.

BTW..this was not a foreigners tour.We too were the only only white people on the bus.At my most miserable moment a girl came up to me and started giving me the Q&A.As she progressed I was thinking"Don't say it...don't say it.." but she did."Do you like Chinese food?"It's a miracle she didn't wind up in the harbor!

[con's fly is open]

Reminds me of my very first trip to Dalian last year. We all went: my headmaster and principal (couple), manager and Chinese teacher (couple), and me. The young couple just wanted to do the lovey-dovey smoochy stuff alone, my superiors just wanted to to look into some business matters, plus do the livey-dovey smoochy stuff alone, and I just wanted to go to a genuine pub and drink and chat with whoever was on the stool next to me.

That goddamn hive mentality: we ALL had a miserable time, and none of us enjoyed ourselves. At least they got to screw back at the hotel- I got to listen to a couple screwing in the next room. Couldn't even eavesdrop on the aftertalk, since it was in Chinese.

God, this country needs some serious lessons in having a genuine good time.

[Newbs]

Reminds me of my worst tour in China. It took place on May Day this year in Suzhou. We were trapped on this bus for hours on end, with a mad Septic as our leader and some Chinese guide who couldn't speak a word of English. They starved us, we didn't have any lunch and there was not a drop of beer to be had all day.

Guided tours are maybe part of the evolutionary process that the people of a country have to go through. I'm thinking of the Japanese tourists who come to Australia. Years ago they always came in groups, including honeymoon groups, for goodness sake. Now there mixing it with the German and Pommie backpackers and becoming pretty independant. As one who thinks that large tour groups are hell on earth, it's good to see the Japanese are breaking out. Maybe the Chinese turn next. Hope so.