Busy. Busy .Busy. The day started at 8am with a walking tour of Harbin, Alex was our guide but as we had already been exploring the night before it only consisted of being shown where to walk to the Sunshine office for Monday’s class. Instead we ventured into Harbin city to purchase some much need gloves for Nick they cost 68 RMB ($10) and are very very nice I just hope they don’t get lost. Next we shuffled (loads of ice everywhere) to the train station to purchase tickets to the Yalimbi ski resort, then our guide left us. So we headed for the first restaurant where there was a huge communication gap, both sides thinking if they could just repeat the same phrase the other party would suddenly be able to speak English or Mandarin, we had four staff escort us to our table and start demanding what we wanted before we could even look at a menu, anyway we got our food and tea then after observing other patrons realised that they wanted the money up front while we were wondering why they just didn’t do their jobs and serve the food. So then it was off to catch the 2-3 hour train and after 4 hours we got off with lots of help from a university student wanting to speak English to us. Taxi’s were readily available and we had the name of the hotel written down but that taxi wasn’t moving until we worked out that he wanted money up front 70 RMB and it had to be the exact amount, we finally got moving and it was worth every Remimbi that he charged, we are now located walking distance from the ski lift and the room has heated everything, you name it!
