Wednesday 12th October, 2011

Not much sightseeing happened after Crappy Land, as Penglai isn't all that big of a town and in two weeks, I can say I visited every tourist attraction they had to offer. Overall it's a nice coastal village, but I don't agree with some of the things I saw, for example, the badly treated animals and the adults and children taking a dump whenever and wherever they felt the need to...

In between, I did alot of shopping, both clothes and for nik naks and we ate out every night, at places such as Hot Pot, Steakhouses, dumpling houses and a pretty good soup restaurant, which served a tomato/vegetable soup, with added chilli. On the last night, we met Gao Lin, Andrew and Peter at the Penglai Golf Club, which was a good 30 minutes out of town in the middle of nowhere. Getting there was a little frightning. The highways were dark, with only the vehicle light beams lighting the way.

When we arrived at the golf club, we were stopped by security and questioned why were were there. With only our cab driver being able to speak the language, Daniel and I just smile and nodded as we were allowed to continue to drive inside the grounds. It was a lovely, spacious and elegant club and we sat by the bar for a drink. We soon moved upstairs to the restaurant, only to find out, we were their only customers for the night. They had to turn on all the restaurant lights just for us LOL. I don't think they get exposed to many western customers as their service didn't match up with the 5 star dining that they claimed they offer. The warm food was cold and the cold was warm. Although, I find, this is quite common in China. That's always the case with breakfast back home in TEDA. The funny thing was every time the waitress came to refill our wine glasses, she would only pour in a few drops and then take the bottle away! She was crazy!!!

We had a good evening and it was a nice way to end our Penglai visit. I also found out the golf club offered horseriding, so if I'd known earlier, I would've been up here everyday. Atleast I know for next time.

Our initial two weeks Penglai stay got extended to Wednesday 12th October, due to work reasons. We tried leaving on the Tuesday, but unfortunately there were no flights available.

Penglai is good in small doses, so we were definately looking forward to getting back to TEDA and eating good food and seeing our friends again

Last night in Penglai remains copyright of the author Two Otters, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs