Hi All,
I forgot to mention that our hostel is in an old synagogue so the internal structure and fittings are quite interesting.
Not as interesting as the gloves with little stuffed cats that many of the chinese girls are wearing or the polar bear head hats that appear regularly.
Our
room is located below a herd of elephants that periodically spot a
mouse in the corner of the room and stampede but most of the time it is
pretty quiet.
We were supposed to move today but after waiting
until 12pm to change but then the manager decided we would stay in the
same room for the rest of the stay. Excellent. More chinese TV with
overexcited chinese infomercials selling all kinds of things such as a
black hair drops that make your hair grow back overnight or a multi
purpose scarf that could be used as a beanie, shawl, dress ... and so
much more. The best was chinese salespeople who were going crazy as if
they had way too much sugar trying to sell laptops. Yes. Travel to
china and watch TV. The mongolian channel was pretty good as well.
We wanted to get the hostel to arrange our train tickets but they
seemed reluctant to take the time. So caught a bus into town. We lets
backtrack. We got onto the bus ready to pay the driver but she just
yelled and pointed at a box at the entrance. She increasingly got
agitated so I just put in 10 yen and asked for change (in english). No
response. I just walked away confused with the transaction being sure
it should have cost 2 yen. We headed into town on the bus with our
lonely planet looking for a travel agent who would help. Having slipped
our way along the icy street to the location we found that the travel
service only dealt with airline bookings. I was agitated as we needed
to get to Beijing as our plan was to be in Beijing on the 11 Jan and
was heading to the central train station to buy tickets. PS. the world
wasnt going to end if we didnt make it to Beijing on 11Jan... anyway
the train station was really busy and it was an effort just finding
where to buy tickets let alone which window to buy tickets and already
knowing we didnt have a hope of explaining what we wanted. It was at
that point I accepted defeat and went and caught a bus back to the
hostel. Getting to the bus stop was interesting as it meant going down
an underpass that opened up into a giant market area. So vast and
almost overwhelming. We got back to the hostel and Vanessa got online
and found some cheap plane tickets to Beijing. I had some money to
change as was just heading out of the hostel when they called me back
as there was a telephone call needing me to confirm some details about
the flight booking. Lucky Vanessa had used a legitimate telephone
number!
We took a bit of a break then headed out to what we
thought was the ice festival at the park near the hostel. It was not
quite as large as we expected but we went in for a look anyway. It was
a disney style ice park but more a childrens park and was pretty lame.
There were some very impressive ice carvings from the annual
international competition but something didnt add up. The ticket price
was less than expected and we were suspicious. I decided that it was
time for a slide down one of the large ramps from an ice taj mahal
before leaving. That was fun.
I got onto the computer and did
some more research and found that the ice festival was divided into
multiple events and the largest sections were on or near Sun island on
the other side of the frozen river. Doh. Lucky we had plenty of time.
Next day.
We headed
to the river. Our options to go across were to walk , catch a bus,
catch a horse and cart or catch a cable car. We took the later. It was
supposed to give us a clear view of the area to spot the displays but
there was too much haze so it was a little bit of a wasted effort. Still it was a quick way of getting to the island and only a short walk to the snow display.
This was very impressive. The scale of some of the snow carvings was impressive and we saw a work in progress budha with a team of about 50 people working on it with shovels. We thought that was pretty big until we saw one of the large exhibits which was over 100m long and 10m high. Wow we thought. There were a lot of smaller and impressive carvings scattered around the park and as we walked around we kept discovering new display pieces until we thought we were finished. No we had come in a side entrance and as we were exiting we actually came across the impressive opening piece which was either side of the path just after a bridge from the mainland to the island. Wow. Very good.
Across the bridge we went and through the entrance and ... 4 big drums. Hmmm. Drums...had to belt one. Actually most people who walked past also were drawn by the 1.5m diameter red drums. Big sound!
We were positive. Maybe we could find our way out to the siberian tiger park. There was a bus 29 sitting in a car park near us. We wandered over and pointed at the chinese writing for the tiger park and after some debating they brought out a couple of young chinese women who spoke english and said that they were also going to the tiger park and we should get on the bus. We were lucky as it turned out that the three were maths uni students on holidays and from that point onwards they decided to become our guides for the day. Good citizens.
So it was easy to get to the siberian tiger park. Just get off bus 29 at the junction then catch a bus 85 then negotiate a taxi to take us the last 2km and wait for us to visit the tiger park then drop us back at the bus 85 stop. Easy.
The siberian tiger park is a real eye opener. Apart from paying an entrance fee which entitles you a bus safari trip through the large park with lots of tigers (400 plus I believe) you can even buy live chickens (100 yen), sheep or cows (1500 yen) for feeding the big cats. We chose not to make the extra purchase.
The siberian tigers are BIG. We were in a 20 seater bus with wire mess on the windows which could still be slid open for photographs and you must be very careful not to stick you fingers out as you take images as the tigers come very, very close and are quiet. It was an amazing experience.
We went through quite a few large open enclosures which had sliding doors. Each enclosure had a different group of tigers and one had lions and ligers.
Then one of the chinese tourists purchased some live chickens so the driver got on the radio and we sat waiting. Glad it wasn't a cow...Soon a 4wd turned up in the enclosure and the tigers got excited and started chasing it. Next the door opened and a chicken was thown onto the roof of the vehicle. The tigers pounced and the victorious one emerged with the prize. The chicken lasted about 2 seconds. It didn't stand a chance.
The tigers were on alert after the first chicken. One was on top of the 4wd and needed a wack with a stick to clear it off before the second chicken was thrown out with the same quick result. Maybe a rabbit would have been better?
We then got outside the enclosure and went around for some viewing of caged cats including some white siberian tigers. There was a lady dragging around a trolley with live chickens and meat strips. Yes... 100 yen a chicken and 20 yen a piece of meat. She took out a piece of meat some tongs and got one of the chinese girls to dangle it into one of the enclosures. A tiger reached up and placed its paws on the fence about her head height. Wow. They are such huge, quick and powerful animals. I was thinking that I was glad that I wasn't in that enclosure when it grabbed the meat.
Someone purchased a chicken and it was dangled from a stick by its feet before a tiger leapt up and grabbed it. Frightening how high they can jump!
The park is supposed to be a siberian tiger conservation park...
Just before leaving a distressed Australian borrowed one of our students as he needed a translator. His son had dropped his camera into one of the tiger enclosures and wanted it to be retrieved. The price was 1000 yen and the camera wasn't that good. I thought a piece of wire with a bend in it would have done the job. We left him with his decision and headed back to Harbin.
Our angels delivered us to the main shopping street before taking a manditory photo and wishing us a good trip.
We went back to the hostel for a rest and something to eat.
Boosted by the success of the day we decided to head to ice and snow world. I asked the front desk which bus we needed to catch and the answer from the well spoken chinese boy was bus 67. So we headed out and caught the bus 67 and it didn't look like it was heading over the river which was concerning. The buses cost very little but have no heating and once the sun is gone the temperature plummets to near -30 deg C which is about the temperature in the bus. This presented a problem. We were on a bus going somewhere, we didn't know where we were, it was dark and we couldn't see out the windows as they had a layer of ice on them it was night. What to do? We sat on the bus until it terminated 1.5hrs later. What next? catch it back. I was freezing and was doing my best to conserve my heat. I was so cold that I just sat by the heater and Vanessa got some hot drinks to warm me up. Not exactly the result we expected but it did convince us that catching the bus to ice and snow world was not a good idea as we would be cold after spending time outside and the bus would not warm us up.
Next day.
We
took it easy today after our misadventure last night and just hung
around the hostel until late afternoon before heading off to the Ice
and Snow world with some of the largest ice structures in the world.
Our
pickup was between 5-6pm so we had to wait. The minute I left the room
our ride turned up and the group was out the door and missing in a
flash. We quickly went outside but had no idea where the bus was
located but luckily the host rounded us up. They spoke no english which
was a bother as we didnt know when we would get our ticket which was
concerning.
The drive took about 40min and we arrived at a
fortress of ice about 1km long rapidly changing colour. It was
jawdroppingly amazing but we had to wait and wait and wait before
getting entry as it was a group booking and two others were late to
arrive. So we were only going to have 1.5 hrs to look around which
didnt seem to be any where near enough time. It was really cold waiting
in the -26 deg C temperature and we were glad to get going. There was
something new and exciting around each corner and it would be better to
look at some images rather than me describe it. So here is a link:
http://www.rtoddking.com/chinawin2007_hb_if.htm
Note that these images were from 2007. The 2010 ice festival was similar but possibly larger.
So
we walked around wishing we had better cameras and a tripod stopping to
take a few images before our fingers went numb then having to walk
quickly for a while warm up again. It didnt take long for our toes to
feel the cold even with a couple of pairs of socks. How we wished that
we had bought a new pair of snow boots from the hostel for AUD 6 each!
It took quite a while to walk around the walled city of ice and we
didnt have long left anyway. We were supposed to return to somewhere at
815pm but that wasnt clear so we just headed to the bus and fortunately
most of the group were already inside and the bus was warm. Oh bliss.
We got back to the hostel and then needed to pack for an early start to the airport. Hope there are no mice to scare the elephants upstairs...
Bye,
David and Vanessa
