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Published: March 8th 2013
Our longest train journey yet started from Irkutsk on the weekly train to Beijing via Harbin. The train was one of the newer ones and this time we had a cabin all to ourselves for two days or so. Settling in we realised there was little to do except check out the scenery or read. I decided to catch up on sleep and let Dave get his fill of scenery. When I woke, Dave let me know that there had been plenty of trees and then as the sun rose we were given a lovely view over lake Baikal which the train followed around the southern end, As I had slept for a couple of hours we were nearing the last sight of the lake. From here the train turned east to skirt Mongolia before headings towards Zabaikalsk-Manzhouli (The Russian-Chinese border). After a good nights sleep we were informed by our provodnik that we would arrive at the Russian border town of Zabaikalsk to change the train bogies at around midday. We were told we needed to leave the train while this happened and that it would take about 4 hours to do but we could leave our luggage in the
train.
Getting to Zabaikalsk we alighted in the platform and the provodnik gestured the direction to the town. We headed off in the direction of the town but soon found a cafe full of Russian border guards to have lunch in. We sat there long enough to enjoy a cup of tea and watched our train leave the station without us. Very disconcerting. Getting cold and bored we headed to the warm waiting room back at the station to wait for the train to reappear and to read a book or two.
Eventually the train was pulled back in to the platform and we got back in to sit in our warm cabin.
Strangely, despite the propensity earlier for the train to be in the high 20’s/30°C temperature range, it was now a pleasant 21°C and settled back down in relative comfort to wait for the Russian immigration and customs officials to board the train and process us.
It was during this that I had my first border issue. Jo and a few others know that I always seem to get pulled aside or some other issue whenever I go through a border with the unsmiling
Playing with some gummi animals
Dave was attacking my poor little kangarooofficials checking passports. Let me just say – it’s not my fault! Usually I’m smiling too much which must irritate them or something. This time after checking that Dave looked like his passport photo, I got to stand in front of a young female border official for what seemed like hours but was probably, in retrospect, about 15 minutes. After several “second opinions” with colleagues one guy suggested I smile a little bit but try to keep from showing my teeth. Needless to say I wasn’t in the mood for smiling at that point in time but I complied. He pointed out to the young lady that I was definitely the one in the picture and they continued on along the carriage collecting passports for the border control process. At this point the customs people took over and we had a very friendly dog come in and sniff around. At this point they started dismantling ceiling panels and looking under the bunks. I guess they were trying to see if there was any illegal smuggling going on that they hadn’t got a cut of yet. There were no problems in our cabin but next door a family of Chinese people
The Chinese border town of Manzhouli
The Russian side - nothing to see.
Chinese Side - Neon, Neon, Neon! had several loud arguments. About half an hour later the border officials returned but for some reason the girl again decided I didn’t look like the picture and took a good couple of minutes to hand me back my passport.
Eventually the whole train was processed and we proceeded over the border to Manzhouli in China. This time the Chinese immigration official spoke English and even engaged in some banter (crazy right!) our passports were collected again (with no problems on my end I must point out) and our luggage was searched by customs. The Chinese family next door were escorted off the train to our bemusement and very shortly our passports were handed back and we continued on our way around midnight.
A few hours later we woke up and found ourselves in some of the flattest countryside we’d seen for a little while. We were crossing a massive plain/oil field north of Harbin. Everywhere we looked we could see oil derricks of all sizes in the fields surrounding the train.
At about midday we arrived in Harbin and exited the train. Walking through the massive station complex we exited the building to be harassed by
cabbies trying to get our business. Eventually we gave in and decided to just get in the nearest cab as it was warmer than standing around outside. Realising we had no Chinese money we finally managed to get the driver to understand that we needed to get to an ATM on our way to the hotel. At this point we hadn’t really gotten our bearings yet and were happy to pay him about 150 yuan for the privilege. We later found out we’d paid him about ten times what it should have been. At least we had gotten to our hotel in relative comfort amid lots and lots of honking and crazy driving without getting killed.
Our hotel room was an oasis of calm with an amazing hot shower that we had been dreaming about for days. Dropping everything we headed out to the CITS office we had been told to get our Harbin‑Beijing tickets from. While we asking the girls at reception for help a really nice young Chinese guy decided to give us a hand with everything even going so far as to write down the destination in Chinese characters and helping us hail a cab before
he headed back to work at a nearby bank.
The CITS office was a little bit away from the hotel but still not a problem to get to although from outside it looked like a fairly forbidding office building to navigate to get there. Inside the corridors were dark and fairly empty. We headed up the elevator to the correct floor and found a collection of offices (about 10 or so) and we needed a specific office (8) to get our tickets from. A floor plan showed us roughly where it was in relation to the lift so we walked around trying to find it. We soon realised it was the only one there without the room number above the door. Helpful hey? Inside we had a specific contact person to see but as they all looked up and saw westerners entering the room they knew what we were looking floor as I guess we were the only ones coming to the office that day. After signing for the tickets we headed back to the hotel and nearby Zhongyang dajie which we wandered around admiring the ice sculptures.
Dave spotted a restaurant from the guidebook, Bi Feng Tang,
and we decided we might as well eat there as were getting pretty hungry. All filled up we headed towards Stalin Park which was right next to the frozen river which had more ice sculptures before heading out onto the rivers surface to watch some people playing around on sledges.
On our way back we detoured to an underground market where we blissfully wandered around thawing out after the cold outside. Soon we realised we really couldn’t handle looking at anymore tatt we headed back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.
It must have been the fact we were on some comfortable beds finally but it was really difficult to wake up the next morning so sometime in the afternoon we rose and headed out into the city to get lunch (Is there an equivalent to brunch in the afternoon?). We made our cheapest find in the bottom of a shopping mall and finally had some of the local specialty of Harbin sausage.
Outside we finally caved and decided to try a couple of the fruit skewers dipped n sugar that were found in stands all over the place. It was a little bit too
much for us to handle though as we found the fruit was frozen (possibly from sitting in outside temperatures) and the sugar stuck our teeth together. The softer fruit (kiwi, dragonfruit) wasn’t so bad but the haws (red fruit from hawthorns) were really solid and bloody hard. Abandoning them we headed into a nearby shopping centre/market to browse/warm up.
Back at the hotel we took found Facebook completely blocked by the great firewall of China and decided to use Skype to contact my parents and Jo and Francis. It was unbelievably slow even though we were using a wired connection, leading us to believe the firewall was affecting our call. We guessed it was possibly greatly reducing bandwidth and maybe even censoring us mid-speech.
After our quick catch-up we headed back outside into the cold night to get a cab to the Harbin Ice Festival. Our cabbie took us to a little ticket office so we could avoid the queues at the Ice Festival. Once inside the entrance we were amazed at the sheer scale of everything. The structures were formed from large blocks of ice with multicoloured fluorescent tubes embedded in them.
The buildings could all
be walked on/climbed upon and several structures had massive ice slides to play on. One even had a digital thermometer embedded in it which confirmed our opinion that it was bloody cold at -24°C!
We got so cold wandering around staring at everything we ventured into one of the tiny and expensive cafes in search of a hot coffee to warm our hands/thaw us out. The sound of giggling near us slowly brought us back to reality and I realised it was a couple of young Chinese girls probably about 9 or 10 in the corner. Eventually they overcame their shyness and we found that they wanted to practice their English on us. Cue a very limited discussion as none of us knew what the other was talking about.
Back out in the Ice Festival we looked over some more sculptures and slid down some slides before realising they were starting to turn the lights off around us. We hurried over to the exit and onto one of the local buses for the trip back to the city centre.
The next day we headed to the Siberian Tiger Park after checking out of the hotel. Confident we
could find a cab back we told our driver not to wait for us. At the Tiger Park we paid for our entrance tickets and noticed another lists of fees for chickens, lambs, cattle, etc next to it. We soon realised you could buy a farm animal to feed to the tigers as we proceeded “safari style” through the park. Queuing up to get on the “safari” bus (a minivan with wire mesh on the windows) we got chatting to four American lads who were studying in Beijing. These guys had chipped in together to buy a lamb to feed to the tigers.
Boarding the bus, the people who had bought animals handed their receipts to the guide who picked up a radio and called through quantities for our bus to the park attendants. We took off through several gates and into the park. At strategic points the bus stopped and live chickens were thrown out for the tigers to pounce on and devour. Eventually we got to an area where the lamb was released. A tilt truck trundled up and started tilting as two tigers appeared nearby. The lamb hadn’t even gotten off the truck before the tigers
pounced and started fighting over it. Each had an end but couldn’t get purchase on the snow to take off with their prize.
Eventually we reached the end of the bus part and headed into a walking tour section where we saw more tigers, lions, jaguars, a liger and leopards. We headed through taking pictures of the huge animals.
Out the other side we didn’t see any convenient cabs so headed out to the main road where we soon flagged one down. Back in the city we collected our luggage and headed off to the station, walking, much to the horror of the reception staff at the hotel. To be fair they did have a point as much of the pavement in Harbin was covered in a sheet of ice.
Encountering no problems we arrived at the station with time to spare and headed through the scanners to get into the station. To our surprise we were pulled aside by the security guys who explained that Dave had a large folding knife in his bag that was not allowed on the train. Realising it was Sunday (and reasonably late) we figured there was probably no post office
open to post it to Australia. We walked around until we found a large hotel with a flash lobby figuring they probably had postal service for their guests.
As we walked into the lobby we were surrounded by a welcoming committee asking if we were members. Sadly, this was not the case (I mean, we had backpacks and were looking quite scruffy) and a junior member of staff was dispatched to deal with us. Using his iPhone to translate, we eventually managed to make him understand what we wanted and exchanged the relevant information, leaving him with some cash to post it to us.
That settled we passed through security and into the station. We wandered over to the shops and bought some food for dinner before heading into the waiting lounge where we slowly froze while waiting for our train to arrive.
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