Vella-Wrights in China: Harbin/Haerbin and the Ice and Snow Festival!

Me at the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival

Yesterday we arrived in Harbin by train and made our way to our hotel--the Songhua Gloria Inn--near the Songhua River. We had the usual helpful people wanting to carry our bags by trolley when we got off the train but we turned them down and headed off. This was probably the easiest station we've arrived in as there were no stairs or other obstacles to manage our bags through. As we approached the exit doors we saw a huge crowd of people outside looking into the station--obviously not able to enter. We didn't know why they were waiting or whether they were all there to sell something but when we got outside we found ourselves mercifully free of sellers--no maps (we still haven't seen a tourist map of Harbin in English) or other items and only a couple of gypsy cab drivers. One even approached us at the taxi stand and said he had a taxi but the one he pointed to already had a driver. Cheeky! We went out into the taxi ranks--the taxis were lined up about 5 ot 6 deep--and the first one we approached jumped out of his cab to open the boot and put our bags in. No asking us where we were going, no 'being on a break', no refusing to take us. Thank God we're out of Beijing!!!!

At the hotel we had an additional stuff up. The Danish group were checking in and the staff behind the counter were very busy and ignored us for a while. I got our passports out (which you need to show in China to check in) and tapped them on the desk. I wanted the staff to know we weren't with the Danish group. Finally one of them looked up and went to check our booking. She was unable to find a booking in our name! But it turned out that their sister hotel--the upmarket one--was next door and possibly that was where we were booked into. So Jade and I walked outside and around to the other hotel to find that we weren't booked in their either! Uh oh! Hotel-less in fully booked Harbin during the Ice Festival. I rang the travel agent in Beijing and asked her what had happened. She checked with her staff member who had made our travel arrangements and called me back. It turned out we were booked into the hotel we had first gone to but not under our name but under the name of the travel agency, OCDF. She also rang the hotel to tell them this. Jade and I walked back to the hotel and we all checked in, relieved.

Our hotel is not at all of the standard of the other three we've stayed in but it is comfortable and very conveniently located. We have rooms next to each other but not adjoining. The hotel (and its restaurant) do not have non-smoking rooms/areas (this seems to be a foreign concept here) but our rooms are not smoky. After getting to our rooms we rested up for the morning then went out to look around in the afternoon. We are just near the Songhua River and there are many activities there available--large ice slides, dog sleds, pony and coach rides, ice chair skating, ice biking, etc. It was difficult to just go out and have a look as we had all sorts of sellers after us--ladies with various knitted beanies and mittens, others selling pony and carriage rides. We walked around a bit including past Zhonghai Park which had Disney-themed ice carvings then returned to our rooms to prepare for the evening.

At 6:30 our friends John and Emma whom I knew from Monash University (John was my language exchange partner for two years and Emma is his girlfriend who also studied there) came to pick us up go take us to the Ice and Snow Festival--the really big festival of ice carvings. We had a fantastic two and a half hours there. The place is unbelievable--much bigger and better than I had imagined. I also didn't realise that the lights in the carvings flashed several colors. We rode ice bikes--harder than it looks--and the kids and John and Emma slid down many of the slides. I had a problem with my camera as it lost charge maybe due to the cold (it was getting down to minus 20C overnight) so I ended up taking some photos with the kids' camera and they didn't come out so well because it was snowing. (The flash caught the snowflakes.) I want to go back again and take more photos and I'm sure the kids want more sliding time!!!!

I'm getting a bit tired of writing so I'll let the photos speak for themselves!