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Harbin - who would of thought there would be a place colder than Banff! Harbin is nth of China which has some Russian influence being near the border of Russia. We arrived around lunch time then arranged to go & see the snow sculpture festival. This was amazing, massive sculptures all through the park. During looking around for an hour & a half we had to stop at the coffee hut as Tans toes were frozen. We stayed till sunset then headed to the snow & Ice festival. Driving towards it was beautiful, massive ice buildings lit in all colours. We walked around & on top of the ice buildings. Many had slides which we tried out. There was a mini skiing field with t bars, tube & toboggan snow slides, reindeer rides, horse & carriage rides - it truly is a kids winter wonderland!!! After looking around at everything we thought we'd check out the loud music coming from inside where it would be much warmer. It was an Italian magician & dance show. It was actually quite entertaining so we watched a few of the shows before heading out to the freezing cold again. The nxt day we visited the Manchurian tiger park. We hopped on the mini bus & entered the tiger zone. I thought there would be just a few tigers but there were heaps & they come up to the bus & rub against the glass. A 4 wheel drive would stop nearby & throw snacks on top of the roof for the tigers to eat - live chickens! The tigers would jump onto the car to get the chickens poor b*****s! Each way the chicken would go there was a bunch of tigers waiting. After the bus ride we saw some ligers, white tigers, jaguars, cheeters & a poor lion who I'm sure is used to +20s weather rather than -20s but he seemed to be surviving. It was a wild life conservation tiger breeding program & from the number of tigers we saw I'm pretty sure they are breeding them very well, they looked quite healthy too. I think it would be great to see in the summer.
That evening we decided to try Chinese again, this time Cantonese and it was quite nice, not like the Chinese we had in Beijing. After Scotty complained about our room as it was on a smoking floor and the Chinese know how to
Smoke, I'm sure they sleep with a cigi in their mouth as we could not breathe and had to sleep with our window open and the heater on full, we got upgraded to a better room and managed to get a good nights sleep with no respiratory issues! It's back to beijing this morning for a day and finally off to Vietnam the morning after. We are looking forward to weather above 0 and also just being able to relax and eat good food and drink cheap beer & cocktails :)
Xie Jian
Scotty and Tan
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Vanessa and jonathan Hi guys loved your pics looks like a dream come true love jonathan and vanessa