The Haerbin Ice Festival

We added Harbin to our itinerary because we've heard so much about it and we were there for the ice festival, which they hold every January for a month. Harbin is further north from Beijing and is not too far Mongolia. Obviously with it being an ice festival, this meant that it was going to be freezing (-20 degrees to be precise). With all the trains being fully booked, we had to get an overnight 17 hour sleeper bus from Beijing to Harbin. It was our first experience on one of these, with there being no seats and three rows of small double bunks. They were small to us but the chinese seem to fit in them perfectly. We were already cramped up as it is, but they decided to fill the aisles with people, who slept on the floor (health and safety ey??)

We went to the festival late at night as it would all be lit up and were wrapped up with layers. We got in for half price because of our fake student cards (mine is my driving license) and worked our way around. Basically this festival had huge ice sculptures of famous buildings or achitecture from around the world and it was all lit up. My personal favourite was the empire state building, which was bang in the center of all of them. We went on a few slides and climbed up most of the sculptures wherever possible. We were there for about 2 hours and we've done well not slipping but then I fall flat on my arse posing for my last pic.

The next day we walked across the huge frozen river, where loads of different events were going on. There were slides, ice skating, sledging and you could get huskey dogs pull you across the river. It was crazy because standing on a frozen river can be a bit scary to start with, plus the fact I'm trying not to slip as well. Danny ice skated for a little bit but the blades were a bit rusty and he refused to carry on. We went for something to eat before we had to endure a 24-hr train to Tai'an and it turned out to be very hard work. No-one spoke English here and they didn't have any english menu's so we used our limited chinese and hoped for the best.

Haerbin Photo Link:

http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2780790011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/