Harbin - animals galore!

---

It has been an animal-packed few days! As promised yesterday, we saw sea lions, beluga whales and much much more at Polarland! The fun bits came, however, in the Chinese-ness of the visitors. We went to watch the sea lion show but it was absolutely packed with Chinese school children! The show was clever, although a little noisy in true Chinese style.

After the show, we had a look around the place and saw allsorts of other winter animals, including arctic foxes, polar bears and sharks! It was a little on the small side but lovely to see nonetheless. We had a quiet evening in the hotel with a big darts match between the boys in the family!

This morning, we had hoped to wake up to a snowy world - the one thing that has been missing for us - but it was not to be. We have had snow flurries all day so far and the day has been much chillier than the rest! The feels like temperature has been -22 degrees celsius! We took a ride out to the Tiger Safari Park, which we had been told we really had to visit and it was amazing how many tigers we saw. Sadly, they were not exactly well treated and we were feeling a bit sorry for them all. There must have been about 100 tigers throughout the park, as well as a few unusual big cats like a couple of white tigers, a white lion, leopard and jaguars. It wasn't a long visit and we were happy to find a Starbucks for hot chocolate!

A rather random lunch at a Russian restaurant was a bit disappointing but interesting and we are now warming up before we head off to the big event - the 13th Annual Ice and Snow Exhibition. It is definitely going to be a chilly one as we don't set off until 5.30pm and are supposed to be staying until 9pm! We are busy storing heat and energy....for now.

---