Harbin Ice Festival

Continuing the trend of new year travels, another weekend, another trip. This time to Harbin. Ever since hearing about the Ice Festival at Harbin, it's something that I wanted to see. Being comfortable in tropical climates, snow, ice and cold in general still fascinates me. So I wanted to head to somewhere cold... colder than Beijing cold. Harbin was supposed to be the answer. In this respect I was a little disappointed. Sure it was cold, but it wasn't thaaat cold. I think it went down to about -15, but with copious layers of clothing, it wasn't too much trouble to handle - I was expecting much worse (apparently I missed a big snow storm by a day!). It was kind of like eating a KFC Zinger after seeing the ad on TV - sure it's a little hot, but there's no flames coming out of my mouth.

Anyway, you shouldn't write off Harbin as a warm place based on my detailed one weekend study of the meteorological conditions of the area, it's been a warm winter this year. Harbin itself is an interesting place worth a visit. The city has a reasonably strong Russian influence which is apparent. The city also seemed friendly enough and was easy enough to get around. I wasn't there for long, and I was there for one reason really, to see this Ice Festival - so that's what I did. Before going I was given a tip to go the the Snow Fesitval during the day time and head to the Ice Festival (basically next door) in the evening (because it's more spectacular at night with lights on). This is what I did, and it turned out to be a very good tip. The Snow Festival was pretty good, albeit quite expensive. Basically you walk through a park which has many giant sculptures made of snow. Kind of a nice way to spend an afternoon. There are also some (expensive) activities you can do in the park like taking a dog sled (on dogs that have no idea what they are supposed to be doing), driving a go kart, sliding around in a tube etc, which can be done - but honestly they looked pretty lame for the most part. So after a couple of hours walking around and snowball fights in the park we headed off to the Ice Festival - what I was really looking forward to. There was nice lady out the front of the Snow Festival who offered to drive us for free to the Ice Festival so long as we bought the tickets off her. We did. She delivered as promised. Everyone was happy. Although, somthing dodgy was definately up. We were escorted through the entrance, not in the same way that the regular people were. But anyway, it worked out well for us, and cost the same price (and we got a free lift included!). So, now that I have gotten past explaining the details of entry, I can now explain the Ice Festival itself. Imagine this: a large, cold outdoor area full of giant stuff made out of ice. Well, that's basically it. There are castles, and temples and slides and fish and wind mills and towers and all sorts of things made out of ice. Some of the ice buildings you can enter and even climb. It's damn slippery though climbing ice staircases. As with all Chinese tourist attractions, it's also quite crowded. So basically, if the guy at the top was to slip and fall over, then he would take the 200 people below him out too. Which would be quite comical. Nevertheless, during my brief stay (un)fortunately, I didn't see this happen. The Harbin hosptial must be kept very busy dealing with ice fall related injuries.
I arrived at the ice festival a little before sundown and walked around a bit. Then the sun went down. The temperature dropped a few more degrees. The lights came on. That was nice. The ice sculptures are lit up in various coloured lights, which gives a nice effect at night. So overall, yeah, the place is better at night. Aside from one thing - you need to watch out for the horses that runaround with tourists following in carts behind them. The horses go pretty fast and don't seem to care if there are people in their way. These horses become a little more difficult to dodge when it gets darker. Another facet of Harbin life that keeps the local hospital busy I'm sure. So the Ice Festival was certainly worth the visit, but I couldn't help feeling the same as how I felt when I visited Legoland: "This is awesome, but it would be so much more awesome if I was 10 years old!" So that's pretty much my experience of Harbin. The following day I had two choices 1) visit the tiger park, 2)laze around the city. I chose 2. I sort of regret not going to see the famed Harbin tiger park, but at this point I'd had my maximum dose of Chinese tourism for the weekend so I decide to relax instead and see what the new city had to offer. I also discovered what the city doesn't offer - tissues. In the room I stayed in there were no tissue (not even toilet related) and also in every single restaurant I went to, none pro

vided tissues. You had to buy some (they were on the menu), and when you did you get a whole box of them. I guess every city has its weird quirks. Overall, Harbin is a good place to visit if you enjoy ice related amusements the way ten year olds enjoy Lego.

Shangri-La

After the two days of walking we were ready for some rest. Shangri-La is an ideal chilled out place for a rest. A really interesting place, with a few different names, but i'm going to stick with Shangri-La for the purposes of this post. The Shangri-La old town - which wanted to be like Lijiang's old town, was burnt down a year ago. I'm not sure if it's because of this, or just because it's quite hard to get to, there seemed to be no tourists there. A very nice place to relax and walk around. There is a monastery just outside town to go see. We rolled along on a bus to go and see it. It's pretty expensive once you get there. Still probably worth seeing if you've never been to Tibet (like me). There is a large Tibetan influence in Shangri-La - we tried some yak, and various other Tibentan foods. It was strange and unlike anything I'd ever eaten before - but it was still quite nice. Yak butter milk tea was a bit too rich for me though! For those wondering, yak tastes exactly like beef. After all this relaxing in Shangri-La, we needed something to do. We searched the town high and low for Yak wool jumpers. The closest we could find were outrageously coloured hoodies. They were promptly purchased.

Other than that, there's not that much to say about the place. It's cold. It's pleasant. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

This has to be one of the most beautiful places in China. Just a naturally beautiful location that China hasn't managed to interfere with too much yet with its unique brand of tourism. I think the main reason is it's a little tricky to get to, but not too tricky luckily! We took a flight from Beijing to Lijiang. Lijiang is one of those towns that suffers from the aforementioned problem - naturally beautiful, surrounded by snow capped mountains, but completely destroyed by local tourism. There is a "old town" which is apparently UNESCO heritage listed. I'm no expert, but most of the buildings seem newly built to look old and they are all just shops and restaurants anyway. Since the old town of Lijiang was so disappointing, we ventured to the "ancient town" of Shuhe, which was not far away. This was even more commercialised than the old town - essentially an ancient looking shopping mall. So after seeing what Lijiang had to offer we decided it wasn't for us. Time to get out to some of those surrounding snow capped mountains I say! Since hearing of it, the High Trail of the Tiger Leaping Gorge had been high on my todo list. The Gorge (or "George" as one traveler from Sydney insisted it was pronounced) is a 2hr bus ride from Lijiang. This was amazing. Not the bus ride, the hike. One of the best hikes I've ever done. The best part of two days walking, and constantly faced with epic views. The main thing that struck me is how big everything is. There is no hope of capturing it all in a photo. Even standing there looking at the gorge, the surrounding mountains, villages and farmland you have to look around constantly to capture it. There is just so much to see. And this is how it is for the entire two day walk. It's not like some other walks where you might walk for a long time to see the view... no... the view is always there, by your side, as you walk. Outrageous. The walk itself is almost "choose your own adventure". There are so many trails crisscrossing the mountain. Initially we were worried that we might get lost by taking the wrong trail, but it soon became apparent that they all headed vaguely in the same direction, so you'd get to the end, but maybe a bit later. Alternatively, you can try to determine which is the "main" route by trying to analyse which path contains the most donkey shit. We started the hike in a village and walked through some farms, precariously avoiding goats and cows as we climbed to what we thought was something near the peak of the ridge. This is followed by a merciful stretch of flattish land through some forest before the "28 bends" starts The 28 bends was supposed to be the hardest, but it wasn't too bad. The main problem with this section was that it exposed us to the sun!! We prepared for cold (we went in winter), but totally forgot about the sun. The result? We got burnt to shit. It's very sunny up there above the clouds, and the damn sun gets reflected in all directions by the surrounding snow capped mountains.  
We thought we were hiking pros. We thought we could have the two day hike done in a day if we pushed it. But since we were such pros we thought we'd take it easy and get to our night's accommodation in about four hours. It turns out we were not pros. The first day we walked about 7 hours and reached the "halfway house" guest house just before sundown feel cold, tired and very hungry. The "halfway house" is pretty poorly named as we discovered the next day, as there was only a couple more hours left before we reached the end of the trail. The next day we got up and armed with a hello kitty guitar and local Yunnan drum we completed the walk making many friends and terrible music along the way.
A great thing about this walk is that there are guest houses dotted along the trail where you can stop for the night or just for a rest. The guest house we stayed at was comfortable enough. The trail seems to end at a guest house called Tina's. Tina is apparently a very good business woman and seems to dominate all else in the region - she makes things quite convenient for travelers, with shuttle buses, hostels in neighbouring towns and shitty hand drawn maps. But my advice to potential travelers is that there is no need to rely on Tina's services. She's a bit expensive, and there are a myriad of other (friendlier) accommodation and transport options available. After we finished the trail we After we finished the trail we headed down to the gorge itself. This is done by climbing over a series of sketchy ladders and footbridges as we made our way down the almost shear cliff face. This is not one for the "scared of heights" persuasion. But it's definitely worth it. If you rush you could do it in 2 hrs, but we did it slowly in 4, taking time to stop for pictures and take in the power of the river flowing through the gorge. Amazing. Again, the size of the thing is unimaginable. As a small observation made on this trip, travelling with small pink Hello Kitty guitars is extremely entertaining.

Mongolia - Terelj National Park

We didn't spend too much time in Ulan Bator.  It's a busy city with constant traffic jams and power stations built far too close by causing a permanent haze over the sky, in what is otherwise a pristine country.  The city is interesting enough, but only a quick stop while we purchased some of Mongolia's fine cashmere (it's expensive!).

The last part of our trip was mainly spent at Terelj National Park, a national park only about 60km away from the capital.  This park is quite a sight in the autumn time.  I spent many hours aimlessly hiking around, and really enjoyed taking in the scenery.  On one of the hikes a friendly cat joined me, following me around for about two hours before deciding it was bored.


Our first night there we spent with a nomad family.  Again no running water, but satelite TV.  Lhama, our host, wore makeup, jewelry and high heels as she shoveled shit around and milked cows - quite a site. We helped her make dinner, tsuivan, a stir-fry stew thing with vegetables, flour based noodle like things and horse meat.  It was quite tasty, and pretty easy to make.  We drank plenty of milk tea, and watched as she made an uncountable number of things out of milk - my favorite being butter, which was the tastiest I've ever had.  We slept the night in a ger, and woke up freezing cold as out fire had died down over night.  This was the first time this family had tourists stay a night, and I think both we and the family were pretty happy with the result.

The next day we stayed in a ger camp, also in the national park and quite nearby.  It was more comfortable, but definitely didn't have the same feel as staying with the family.  As with the Gobi, we didn't really "do" a hell of a lot at Teralj National Park, but had a great time absorbing in the quietness and peacefulness of the place.

The last stop on our trip was a visit to a Kazakh family in the burbs of UB, because we could. Again this was the first time that this family had a tourist visit.  They were a very nice family.  So nice in fact that they had won "family of the year" a number of times.  Again we peeled and chopped and helped make a noodle soup for lunch.  At one point the man of the house walked in with traditional Kazakh costumes and told us to put them on for some reason.  He was having a good time at least.

I left Mongolia very happy and relaxed.  This was a place that was not only a beautiful landscape, but unlike many places in the world, it's occupants also knew that.  The Mongolians take great pride in their country and are always looking to protect it and its inhabitants.  Luckily for me, they are more than happy to show you around too.