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Published: January 9th 2012
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01-01-2012
This is our last kind of day in India. Generally we aren't counting it as a day as such as we have the stress and hassle of getting to the airport, lugging our 35 kilos of baggage around and basically have no plans to do anything exciting. We were lucky enough to drop the bags at the tourist centre whilst we plodded about Connaught Place to bide the time we had left. The flight was in the evening so everything was pretty much relaxed. We just managed to squeeze on the metro in the afternoon so were not looking forward to a repeat trying to get to the airport link later in the evening. Luckily we got a cab drop to the airport metro link as a final gesture from the tourist office. The China Southern flight to Guangzhou was a bit of a squeeze, most literally as I was forced into an upright sit the whole 5 hours due to Mr. long legs on one side and an over stretching pair of Indian legs on the other.
On the road again
02-01-2012
The changeover went smoothly from Guangzhou to the Harbin flight, I added another 2 1/2 hours to my watch, sat down (enjoyed a shed load more of room than before) and tucked into my oddly coloured airline dinner. Oddly coloured, odd tasting, I just put it down to being Chinese tastes. A short bus trip took us into the centre of Harbin as we oggled the skyscrapers pushed up against the frozen condensation on the windows. We managed once again to get completely ripped off by the first taxi we bumped into. Not only did he take us to the wrong hotel (even though we had put in much effort to get the address in chinese) he decided to shout about it when we complained about how much we had to pay. Oh well, this is China and I suppose we are destined to have the taxi rip-off christening in each country we turn up in. To be honest you can't miss the enormous bags on our backs, easy targets!
After getting the directions to the right hotel form the front desk we payed a measely 9 rupees to get dropped off at the right one (exchange rate is 8.5 to the euro at the mo but its easier just to divide by ten and work in pounds). After alot of confusion and lost in translation at the front desk of our hotel we bundled our belongings into the pristine white room and, even though very hungry, fell straight asleep. We mangaged to conjure up some energy to take us out into the cold (at the time a mere -18 degrees celcius) and find some dinner.
Not too far down our street we found a restaurant which looked quite cozy. The tables were boothes and had a big hotplate/ovendish in the middle on which everything was cooked. Out of enthousiasm of the visit of Russians the cook was pushed out of the kitchen (amongst many giggles from the waiting staff) to explain the picture menu to us. After making clear we weren't Russian he managed to crack out the 3 main differences, beef, pork and chicken. After our veg and chicken overdose in India we were in for some beef for sure! A shy girl stood at the table waiting for the oil to warm up so she could start cooking the meat, I think the idea here was that you cooked it yourselves but the boss seemed intent that someone help us. The meal was really good and we were absolutely stuffed full of beef, noodles and a couple of beers, the bill chimed to a mere 70 yen, not a bad effort! One of the waiters was trying out a couple of english words (also equipped with shy quirkyness and smile) and handed over a note 'I hope to the the next time see you again'.
That was it for our efforts today, the worthlessness of flight sleep knocked us out pretty much straight away once we got back to the hotel.
Becca x
Ice sliding, Chivas Ragel and Italy face on the side
03-01-2012
Walking down the main pedestrianised high street a pastry shop caught both our eyes so hungry for brekky we went inside what has become Bex's favourite place in the whole of China so far. "Bomele" which Bex reckons sounds really Dutch as well sells sweet pastries with savoury fillings, cakes, muffins, biscuits, bread and sarnies but the former of all those became our favourite poison. It is a bit weird at first eating essentially a bacon and egg butty housed in a sweet pastry with icing dribbled over it, but you get used to it after 1 bite. Absolutely GENIUS.
Then we went down the tourist info centre to find a decent map cos the lonely planet has crap ones and coming out had a brief conversation with the first British people we've met all journey. We heard a broad Glaswegian accent shouting down 'Colder out here!!' from up the stairs, we thought Peter must have somehow knew we were English speaking at the time, but later came to realise that it wouldn't have mattered what we looked like, or what language we could have spoken. Soon after we met them again in the Russian Cafe 1914 and joined their table. Spent an hour or so chatting to Peter and Lara over some 'Russian Sausage' and a few beers, turned out Lara is an auctioneer in Glasgow and her boss is that friendly Scottish woman with short black hair you've probably seen before on 'Bargain Hunt', you know, the one where Timothy Wannacott is a pompous twat (don't pretend you don't watch it!).
Then we all headed off outside to go and see the massive frozen Songhua River where you could slide about on the ice on just about anything you can imagine, ranging from the lowly rubber ring to an almighty rusty school chair with sticks!! Inbetweeners included skates, horses, go-carts and even tanks. We all had a couple of goes on the rubber ring slope, after Peter had done a good job convincing the girls. Lara was convinced she was gonna fly off the ring but we all survived and even had a quality time doing it. We all walked around on the river for about an hour while the sun set and then decided to go and have a beer in one of the most interestingly decorated bars we have EVER seen and probably will never see the like of again.
US BUCKS BAR also known as STAR UCKS previously known as Starbucks was covered from floor to ceiling in photos of the owner wearing hundreds of different costumes (most of which were military or cowboy style), whilst sporting an arsenal of different rifles and automatic weapons, but always looking extremely... cool. He sometimes had a dressed up Russian bond villain floozy at his side for added cool but most were just of him. Inbetween the badly miss-spelt food and drink options in the menu were 5 full pages devoted to him. The bar logo/sign outside... Yes, him as well. Just by our table hanging from the wall were blow up male and female gimps with inflating tubes coming from obvious places, while the toilet was covered in a mixture of naked beach girls and naked elephant-sized women. A very bizarre weeing view.
Peter absolutely loved him and inquired to find out, to his misfortune, that the owner was away and would not be visiting the bar that night. The so called American bar, although expensive, did manage to provide us with some lovely Scottish whiskey and some Mexican beer. So with the russian sausage we'd eaten and the Chinese sausage we took home all in all we had a very multi-cultural gastronomic experience of a day.
Duncan.
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