Wandering Misfit: Part 4 ... a journey into the unknown

     So there I was, I had wanted to get far away from my life in Australia a goal I think I had pretty much covered, despite possibly jumping in too far down the deep end.

     China is not, as many of my friends have since said, a completely different world but it really is unlike anywhere I had been before. Having done a fair amount of travel (I believe China was my 42nd country), I very quickly understood I had really gone out on a limb this time.

     If I had headed off to Beijing or Shanghai, or even along the southern coast I think the differences would have been mostly cosmetic. Instead I had chosen a "town" off the beaten track in Shandong in northern China. Now Dongying where I chose to live is not small, not by western standards anyway. In fact it is a bustling oil town of around two and a half million people. The thing to consider though is that not only is Shandong one of the oldest and most traditional of Chinese provinces but that Dongying itself had been a mere fishing village 20 years ago and to be honest in many ways it still is.

     Getting on a bus from Beijing to Dongying was, in a word, an experience. At this point I was surrounded by people who didn't speak a single word of English (beyond the ubiquitous "Hello"). To make matters just a little more stressful I had no contact with the outside world, no idea where I was and had not heard from Tony who was supposed to be picking me up.

     After a somewhat bewildering 6 hours or so I was dropped off at a dingy looking depot in a dirty looking city only to be picked up by a guy who's only real communication was "Tony tell me bring you". So, and I realize only now as I write this how stupid it sounds, I jumped in the back of his van and took my first real trip on inner city Chinese roads.

     Even being half asleep as I was at this point I believe I spent most of the trip white knuckled and sweating. Many people will tell you that the Chinese are scary drivers. As a nation though I have to say they are not that bad, they are very unpredictable but road rage seems basically non-existent beyond gratuitous use of horns and as a general rule they drive slower than many other countries.

     The guy I was unlucky enough to be picked up by though seemed to think he was on a racetrack somewhere not a crowded city street. Fortunately he did seem to know his stuff and after around 10, miraculously incident free, minutes he dropped me off outside a restaurant on a little side street off one of the main roads through town.

      Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger.