Harbin

Traveling by train, by myself, with 3 kids in tow, in a foreign country, was a whole new experience. I must have checked their bags 5 times before walking out the door. I was so afraid of forgetting something or losing them. Our train left at 9:20pm I had everyone shower since it was a night train and we would sleep on the beds of the train. We had to leave from central Beijing, which is the busiest station. The lines were long to pickup our tickets, so I had the kids wait with our bags while I got our tickets. I kept looking back and seeing Connor and Carly fighting. When we finally made it in, I bought the kids dinner and we found a seat in the waiting room. It was so crowded and Camilla commented that a Chinese man was staring at her. When we boarded the train, the kids were all bunked together.

I was in the bunk next to them with an old lady and her daughter. I loaded the kids with snacks and then we all went to bed. The little old lady watched movies on her iPad and fell asleep with the movies still playing. In the middle of the night, my phone fell off the table and hit a metal trash can. It woke up everyone. We arrived in Harbin at 7:30am and we all felt pretty unrested.

Immediately, when we walked off the train, it was cold. We could see our breath. We had to wait in a line for a taxi and I prayed that our hotel room would be ready early. Our taxi got us to the hotel in 15 minutes and only cost me 11RMB. We arrived at the hotel at 8am and I had to use a translator to communicate everything to them. They said that our room was being cleaned so I told the kids that we should look for a place to eat. We walked a half mile in the freezing cold to find a little Chinese shop owned by a nice lady. We ordered all kinds of things that the kids liked. I just told the lady that we wanted nothing spicy. We ordered meat, dumplings, bread, and sweet potatoes. I did some research and found that the ice festival was better to go to at night. I figured that we wouldn't make it to night if we arrived early because it was so cold. So, I planned to go in the evening. We all took a nap when we got back to the hotel so we arrived at the ice festival at 6pm.

It ended up being perfect because the lines for the rides were really long when we got there.

But, the lines cleared out around 9pm for the slides and bikes. We saw horse carriages,

Fun Chinese Characters,

Ice Castles,

Ice Mazes,

Seesaws,

Snow Castles,

Soda machines made out of ice,

We went on a raft ice slide.

I saw the kids be completely carefree and have a lot of fun.

Carly wouldn't leave until they turned off all of the lights in the ice.

We all had a lot of fun riding the bicycles on the ice.

The taxi experience was a bit crazy. I was warned that taxi drivers will rip you off in Harbin. When I got a taxi to take us from our hotel to the ice festival, it cost us 14RMB. When we walked out to catch a taxi home, all of these taxi drivers surrounded me and were physically pushing me into their cars telling me it would cost 80RMB. I was so mean to them. The kids thought this was hilarious. We ended up getting a taxi for 11 RMB. We got to bed close to midnight. We woke up and I took the kids to breakfast. There was an older Chinese guy who kept asking Camilla questions in Chinese. It was just questions like, "How old are you? How many siblings do you have? I like your boots." I was able to translate for her. She was so embarrassed.

Harbin is in the Northeastern part of China and is the 8th most populous Chinese city. It is very close to Russia and has a majority of immigrants from the Russian Empire. They have a lot of Russian foods and stores.

We went to Zhongyang pedestrian street where there were European Renaissance and Baroque style buildings.

We tried Russian pudding pops, which were delicious. We also got Russian chocolate. The girls got glass dolls and Connor got a watch.

Connor got to experience an authentic food street in China where people dance and make weird foods. We actually saw fried starfish. Camilla almost cried. Then we wandered down the the Songhua river, where the ice was about a half a meter thick.

The river surface was about 100 meters wide. Carly sledded down the snow for al little bit and then we headed out to the ice.

Everyone was walking around on it. We immediately got surrounded by Chinese men trying to put ice picks over our shoes. i actually told them, "No" (Mao), but they pushed them on us and pushed us out onto the ice. Then, they asked us for 20RMB a person. I knew that was coming and I said "Mao! Mao! Mao!" They actually followed us until we walked pretty far away. Geese! Harbin has a lot of scammers and they obviously see me as a target. I am white and I have 3 kids.

The kids ended up spending over 2 hours playing on that ice. They would have stayed longer if they didn't have to pee. We were frozen to the bone so I took them indoors to get hot drinks and cheesecake. Once again, the Chinese asked us to take pictures with them.

That marked the end of our trip. We arrived back in Beijing at 2:40am. I had to pay 200 RMB for a taxi, but I guess that is fair for 3am. It was snowing in Beijing. Next time, we are traveling to somewhere WARM!