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Well, I can definitely say that this trip was the most boring and annoying trip I have made in China. Probably Heilongjiang province is just not the best province to travel to and in.

On Wednesday night, I took the night train from Harbin to Heihe, a town north of Harbin and border town with Russia. I arrived around 7 in the morning and bought my bus ticket for the next day to Wudalianchi, because that was the main reason of my travelling. Then, I took a taxi to bring me to the only place in the LP which was written in Chinese. A taxi driver said he would bring me there for 5 yuan. I thought okay, but later I noticed that it wasn’t a legal taxi. Not really smart to get in, of course. Because he brought me to a hotel, which I obviously didn’t want. Then finally he brought me to the spot I requested and then suddenly he changed the price to 10 yuan. So there I stood, in the middle of nowhere, really annoyed, but being on my own, I could not do so much as to resist in the beginning but paying in the end. And of course he knew that too. It’s not about the price (1 euro), but about the principle!

Well, the weather was very good; cold but sun shine and a blue sky. I watched Russia, which looked exactly the same as China and walked the boulevard to get to a bit more crowded place (I was at some kind of shopping center, which was still deserted early in the morning). The boulevard was nice and I quickly found the morning market, which is always nice. And then.... I didn’t know what to do. Somehow, I expected that I would find some nice things there, but actually it was a really boring place. I tried an internet cafe to find some things to do, but I didn’t find anything. So when I walked the city again, some girl approached me asking me something in Russian. Because she didn’t speak English and she didn’t try to talk to me in Chinese (which happened the whole time actually, weird). So I asked her about a hotel and it turned out (as I expected) she was from a hotel. So she brought me there and I took the room. I watched some Russian MTV and slept some more.

I went out for lunch, found a good restaurant, walked around (still nothing to see), but found old men playing some kind of game (hard to explain) I only recognized from Alice in Wonderland. After that, I watched some more TV (I know, actually toooo boring), went out for diner in the same restaurant again and called it an early night in front of the TV. Luckily English movies and TV programmes are dubbed, but without removing the English voices in the back, so I could still follow it. However, on the way to my hotel room, I bought four items in a small shop, which is very normal, except for the fact that he tried to rip me off completely. He started in Russian, and when I told him to talk in Chinese, he didn’t do that, but he showed me the price on his calculator. A ridiculously high price! I was actually so shocked and surprised that I just gazed at him for a minute... I really had to bargain for the stuff... That was really weird and I have no idea how easy Russians are to be fooled, but after having lived for more than 2 months in China, I have some idea about the prices! They were of course laughing and wanted to know where I came from. So now probably they think that dealing with Dutch people is not the same as with Russians.

The next day, I took a taxi to the bus station. This taxi didn’t want to drive on the meter, but I persisted and finally he turned the meter on. Then I got on the bus to Wudalianchi. The bus ride was very nice, I saw some nice landscapes and the weather was great again. Arriving in Wudalianchi, I didn’t understand the buses and stuff, so I called one of my Chinese classmates and she was a great help that day. I decided to arrange a taxi to go to two places for a fixed price. I showed him the paper with the two places I wanted to go. The first stop, Laohei Shan was the best preserved volcanic crater in China. I walked to the top and personally I was not at all impressed by the crater. It was just a hole in the mountain, not deep, not symmetrical, not filled, not anything, just boring. Of course, I compare it with the real thing (Iceland), but even if you forget about that it was just underwhelming. Then, when I returned, the taxi driver made me call my friend again and it turned out that (without having looked on my paper again) he said he didn’t realize where I wanted to go next and that I had to pay him more money to take me there!!! Asshole, because of course it was a complete lie. But then again, what do you do??? So I said to take me to the bus station again. The whole volcanic area wasn’t what I had expected anyway and I didn’t feel like staying with such an asshole on my own.

So I waited for the bus to Bei’an to leave. Arriving there, it turned out that there were no busses or trains to Harbin anymore that day. So an old man, working for the train station brought me to this small hotel and I stayed there for the night. Also Bei’an is a really boring place and a bit grim. Nothing to do, I went to read some more in my book and went on the internet, because there was a computer in my hotel room (for the rest it was really basic and the next day I found out that what I expected at arrival was indeed true; they do not change the sheets every night).

The next day, I arrived at 7 am at the bus station to buy my ticket for the 8:30 bus to Harbin. They had told me the evening before that that was the first bus, but I could not buy my ticket at that time. However, the bus was full, so the first opportunity was at 12:30. So again, I was stuck in this ultraboring place. Luckily, I could stay in my hotel room again for a few hours, where I did some practical internet research.

When I was finally in the bus, the bad luck was not over yet. Because there was some kind of an argument (I didn’t understand it), the bus left one hour later than planned. Halfway, there was a very Chinese traffic jam in a small town where the ‘high way’ went though. Obviously the jam was caused by people who only think about themselves instead of thinking ahead and therefore pushing their vehicle along the way in between other vehicles (typically Chinese behaviour in traffic). So that was another 30 minutes delay.

When I finally arrived in Harbin at 7 pm, I was really glad, so I got into a taxi. And well, AGAIN, the taxi driver did not want to run the meter!!!! I was so pissed that I got out and walked to the train station where all the taxis are regulated. And AGAIN, standing in the line, some people tried to convince me that the taxis were no good and that they could bring me for more than double of the price. The weird thing is that this didn’t happen to me before in Harbin... and I’d thought that when I would arrived at home, that things would change, but I just think my karma or whatever wasn’t right.... When I finally arrived at the campus, I was really relieved that I could leave the boring and annoying trip behind me! I would never recommend the places to anybody, because the bus rides where the nicest of the whole trip and I don’t think that’s a good sign! Taxi drivers in Heilongjiang (except normally in Harbin) score a very very low mark, because also in Qiqihar they had collectively lied to us about the bus...

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