Harbin snow and ice festival

Harbin is in the top 10 cities of China the advert on the flight stated but didn’t specify top 10 of what?

About 2 hours flight north of Beijing takes you over mountains (first hour) then vast fields and rivers.  In the spring Haerbin is a massive producer of fruit and veg for the rest of China but in the winter it becomes a frozen landscape. Flying over it looks like the worlds gone into monochrome.

Three of us (me, Chris and Gabriella) left Beijing early Sat morning -it was -4 and grotty air quality, 2 hours later it was -17 and clear blue skies.   The coldest we saw was -27 which was cold enough for me but I think we were lucky as the week before had been -35 at one point.

And cold was the reason we’d come as every year Harbin hosts an international Ice and Snow sculpture contest worthy of thousands of visitors each day. 

                                           

Some guesses then as to what Harbin is in the top 10 of…..

-   Places you’re likely to fall over in.  The entire city is frozen so you’re either walking across lake, over ice (often black ice for added fun) or snow.  For someone who can fall over on carpet it made movement quite challenging.  And accompanied with flailing arms and a ‘whhjooooooo’ noise.

-       -      Miserable restaurateurs.  China doesn’t trouble itself with customer service; it’s quite normal for your waiter to walk off mid-sentence, to start shouting to their mates over your head, to huff and roll their eyes if you ask for anything from the menu etc.   Couple that with a surly Russian attitude and you’ve got the vibe of Harbin.  It’s close to the Russian border (relatively anyway – still a good few hours travel but in this province that makes it a neighbour) so the influence is clear. Not only in the food, the language and the occasional orthodox church but also in the impressively miserable staff in the restaurants.  Thank god they’re serving such delights as cold pickled vegetables with tongue or the whole experience of dining out could take on quite a sour note.

-          -    Snow sculptures.  These were really impressive. A whole park full of sculptures, some big, some really really big but all incredibly impressive.  Harbin is a typically built up, polluted, traffic-congested Chinese city so to take a cab to Sun Island and escape it all for a few hours was great.  Chris and Gabriella did some sledging down the ice-ramps in the castle while I admired more art such as ‘3 pigs on a motorbike’,  ‘dragon stuck in a pipe’ and ‘frogs and peanuts’.   Nothing is not diverse.

-        -     Ice sculptures.  The ice contest happens in early Jan and then the exhibits get pushed into one side of the ice park where they are largely overshadowed by the giant structures sponsored by car manufacturers and beer makers.  They are stunning and require up close viewing even in extremely cold conditions but the whole experience was marred for us by the ugly castles and giant sheer walls being lit up with neon flashing lights against a thumping base soundtrack.  Like being stuck somewhere between the waltzers and an ugly ice Disney park.    Clearly big is better than artful so there are a lot of monsters to crane your neck at, each one housing a fast food outlet, a sledging ride or a skating rink.   From the 1000’s of people queuing in -25 to go on the slopes it’s clearly a crowd-pleaser but a bit too Blackpool for my liking.

-         -   Hot coke with ginger.  Yep. That’s a thing.  A horrible sugary teeth-melting thing.

-          -   War Museum.  We enjoyed the neon ice-monsters so much we took at 50 minute cab out of town to the war museum. Keeping it light as always.   Based on the site of Unit 731, this was a very impressive exhibition detailing the human experimentation done on Chinese and Russian citizens by the Japanese in the 1940’s.  The aim was to develop ways of spreading disease through water supplies, animals, insects, hot air balloons etc. so the exhibition pulled no punches in showing the impact of several horrific diseases on humans, and the tests that had been carried out to make sure the variants being spread were most harmful.   After 3 hours of learning we jumped in a cab and headed back to the city.   ‘That was a little bit depressing’ was Gabriella’s summary of the morning.  Ain't no party like a Scarth-Cogs party….

48 hours in Harbin is plenty.  We were over layering-on and layering-off of clothes each time we moved from indoors to outdoors, we’d seen everything there is to see. And plenty of stuff that wasn’t really worth seeing.  The temperature changes are so extreme that moving indoors and getting warm brings about instant sleep so after a couple of days of it we were ready to return to Beijing where we didn’t have to wrap our faces into tunnel vision and there was a slight chance I could walk more than 20 minutes without falling over.  (Note: while I Bambi’d around the whole weekend despite my snowboots, Gabrilla wore heeled boots and carried a designer handbag throughout)

As we came into land the air steward announced the temperate in Beijing was -2.  Pffff. We laugh in the face of such weather…

Cambodia

Although it’s been a year of flying around, it’s mostly been business travel and when we looked back we found that since April we’ve been in limbo trying to move to China so didn’t take more than a long weekend.  This was our first proper trip away to explore, and to escape Beijing (work, pollution, cold, general lack of friendliness….).  Beyond excited!

In typical BJ style, our flights were cancelled the day before but after much stress and getting a 5am taxi we were re-booked and on our way out.  Phnom Penh via Hong Kong. 

This was an Intrepid tour (the company, not a reflection of our bravery) – we know people who’ve used them before and understood them to be half-way between independent travel and a tour group.  Slightly apprehensive that a) it’d feel like cheating b) it’d be miserable to be herded around c) we risk of being stuck with knobbers for 2 weeks but the advantages of having someone work out everything for us was too big given the 14 hour days, 6 days a week we’ve been putting in lately.

Turned out to be a good choice. Sometimes I regretted not having total freedom to pick where we stayed but the time it takes to get it right vs the amount of horrors involving blocked loo’s/rats etc. meant on balance I think it was right for this trip.  The people, with the exception of 2 idiots , were great and spending Christmas and NY with a bunch of strangers worked out very well. 

Anyway, unlike previous trips where I spend as much time reading up as I do travelling, this one was more:

Knowledge of Cambodia   - 2/10   Dead Kennedy’s song and John Cravens NewsRound.  Turns out C hadn’t even heard of the first. 

Research of temperatures – 1/10  Did some reckoning which turned out to be c10 degrees too low.

Vaccinations in advance – 0/10    Totally forgot we still need that. Oh well, not like we’ll be hanging out in malarial, dengue , rice-growing, pig-breeding areas…..

Phnom Penh

Because we expected our flights to be cancelled we’d planned to get to Phnom Penh a day early so spent the first day being incredibly hot (33 degrees people!  Who knew??  Everyone with a weather app obvs but for some reason we hadn’t bothered checking) having a poke around the delights of the capital:

Royal Palace – much like other Asian Palaces only smaller, and the King actually still lives here.  About the King – he’s a 64 yr old, ex ballet dancer who hasn’t married yet (the ‘yet’ is always smirked at by the informant) and at whim chucks all visitors out the palace as he wants to go outside. I like to think it’s for a quick pirouette around the silver pagoda. We were lucky that we had an uninterrupted visit but we don’t hang around to Ooooh over bling so were done in an hour.

The mountain – at 27 feet high this requires some serious preparation so with our best flip flops on we did it with only 2 breaks to acclimatise.  On top is a very old temple and a lot of people selling birds.  I quite like this as scams go. You pay to set free some birds, see them fly away and walk off with a sense of righteousness.  Only the birds get fed by the man who owns them so they fly back after a little wing-stretch, get some seed and wait to be liberated again. 

The Killing Fields – one of too many execution and burial grounds all over the country thanks to the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. Horrific and suitably galling but so important to see. Cambodia lost its family structures due to Pol Pot’s masochism and no one we spoke to was exempt from having missing relatives. Highly likely to be have been executed but perhaps scattered to other towns/villages. Education and communication are still very low here so the idea of being able to trace long lost illiterate relatives living without electricity let alone the internet is not a reality.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide museum -  although there is plenty of evidence of the torture, this isn’t the most shocking element of it.  Pol Pot (mentored by everyone’s favourite dictator Mao), tricked the inhabitants of the capital into fleeing to avoid US bomb-strikes which left him with an empty, unpoliced, unobserved city to behave how he wished.  Pictures of the city as a ghost city gave a great backdrop as to how thousands of people were subjected to the worst acts without the wider country knowing.  Post torture they went straight to the killing fields so never got to be seen or heard by any one.  Before torture they were photographed and the walls of the building are now plastered with pictures of terrified faces.  Completing devastating but we’re of the opinion you need to know this stuff.  

We re-grouped after this and took a boat ride along the river to see the sunset.  Bit more subdued than we started the day. 

Despite all the horror, Cambodians seem to be very friendly, happy and optimistic.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been somewhere where kids are still amused to see white people and fire their stock questions at you.

Next stop Battambang,  a town where very little happens and as such a bamboo train becomes a highlight.

Not so much a train as a wooden table on tracks whooshing through the countryside to connect villages to each other.  Good fun though.  If a ‘train’ comes in the opposite direction one of you has to concede, take your train apart, let them past, re-build and set off again.   Highlights: 

- looking up and seeing the biggest spider I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen the infamous bird eaters) in a web above us.  Having told the others about it at the turning point I was somewhat freaked out by its absence on the way back and did several bag-checks in the hostel that night.

- only realising 20 mins in that while we set off with 3 westerners sat on the train, we had somehow picked up a small Cambodian child on route. Good skills stowaway. 

We spent Christmas Day here – hired bikes and went out to see some local things for local people.  Rice paper making, rice wine making, sticky bamboo rice making, and then to ruin the theme and challenge our hangovers, fish-paste making.   As if the smell of a fish market weren’t enough (not fresh fish either – the paste is made from the old sh1t to save wasting any) it was located next to the rubbish tip.  Happy Christmas one and all!

The real reason for anyone going to Battambang is because it’s where you catch the boat to pretty much anywhere in-land.  Cambodia has a lake upon which roughly 30% of the population live.  Either bankside or on floating houses (which form floating villages with floating schools, shops and basketball courts) etc.  A 7 hr boat journey gets you to Siem Reap.  Also gets you quite sunburnt and a very numb bum. 

Siem Reap is what young Cambodians (and post-genocide the population is 65% young) are impressed by: shopping, eating and partying. After the relative innocence of the other towns the neon, bars, clubs etc. (although all done in Asian style. Think more bamboo roofs and cheap local beer than Manumission) felt like a bit of a sensory assault but with Angkor Wat on the doorstep you can’t blame a city for building up its chances of getting tourist dollars. 

Angkor Wat is undoubtedly stunning with some of the temples holding more appeal than others. We spent 2 days exploring sites, the favourites being either Banteay Srey with it’s multiple carved faces in any façade or Ta Prohm where the jungle has taken over.  And where tomb raider was filmed which is what we assume inspired this man to do this pose. 

Let’s hope so anyway. 

Next stop was a home-stay in a village called Preikuk.  Just the one night and it was surprisingly well catered for.  To have tourists, even as a home-stay experience, they have to have a loo (with walls and a door) and our family also had a generator so we had lights at night.  We were spoilt really.

As befits simple village life there was f’all to do and to prove this we were treated to a high-octane adrenalin junkie’s dream – a ride on an ox-cart.  We went up the road, down a dirt track to the paddy fields, back up a track and then down the road again. This epic tour took almost an hour.  Our driver had 2 teeth and looked like a very old walnut in a hat. Apparently he was in his 50’s.  Tough life in the sticks. 

The sun set at 5.45, we all went to bed at about 8.30  (having answered the family’s questions about our age, weight and salary) and were up for sunrise when the first rooster saw fit to make it’s tuneless cackle. We slept in one big room with a roof but it got surprisingly cold and the bucket shower in the morning was challenging.  I think it was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months but when I mentioned this chirpily over breakfast (3 in 1 coffee?  Yes please!) I was met with dead eyed mildly suppressed hatred by the others who it appeared did not share my views.

7 hour bus journey back South was broken up by a pit-stop in Spider Town.  So called due to the huge spider market there that people flock to for all their spider need.   The spider in question is the tarantula which kids hunt for down by the cashew nut plants (or the ‘NEVER EVER GO THERE FIELD’ as I would call it), sell to the vendors who keep them in large buckets (WITH NO LIDS) so you can buy a kilo fresh or already cooked.  Apparently most people pride themselves on cooking them better than the stall owners so buy them live and take them home to do themselves. THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES. 

You can also buy crickets, worms, cockroaches etc. but they are not as desirable a beer-snack or the town would be called ‘minimal protein source from anything we can catch town’.    

Next destination Kampot, famous for pepper apparently.  Annihilated by the Khmer Rouge due to the association with the French bourgeoisie the region is slowly building itself back up and while not the most thrilling place to be, has beautiful countryside surrounded by mountains (real ones – even higher than 27ft), a big river and salt flats.  It reminded me a bit of when we went to see Cuba’s largest waterfall which turned out to be very small indeed but was still the pride of the local man pointing it out to us. Context is everything. 

The salt flats were fields that industrious farmers irrigated and added salt water to.  Or do, at salt making time.  We went out of season so in effect saw some small fields.   Then we went to see the caves. Sorry cave.  I wondered if my flip flops were the correct choice of footwear but needn’t have worried.   Then the tour of the pepper plantation where we were given pepper tea to drink before sampling (eating like sweets) different types of pepper corns. They ranged from ‘OMG that’s hot’  to ‘OMG that’s really hot’.  Some of them we got to eat of the vine too.  Unsurprisingly unpleasant.  

NYE we watched the sunset from a boat then headed back to our bamboo bungalows for a riverside meal and traditional binge drinking contest.   One of the idiots amazed us all by doing an impromptu Irish dance and it looked like maybe he might not be a tool, but then his whiney/winey girlfriend passed out and had to be taken to bed so we never found out.  That just left Germans, Brits, Aussies, Irish and Cambodians to have a dance-off til the early hours.  Cue Chris forgetting multiple knee/shoulder/ankle surgeries and breakdancing like a man possessed by an equally disillusioned much younger man. 

3 hours South to  Sihanoukville – white sandy beaches and beach bars.  Some lovely, others not so much.  We took a boat out to a little island and spent the day snorkelling, sunbathing and generally messing around.  2 days of that and it was all over bar the trip back to the capital and final meal together.   

You could probably do the highlights of Cambodia in one week and move on to Laos or Vietnam but I’m really glad we took longer to see more of it.  The fondest memories are of local guides cutting their teeth with us as tourists (the story of a naked man up a tree will be forever etched into all of our memories I’m sure), of the salt-less salt flats and the time kicking around with new friends.    But all good things….  Back to BJ for red alert air pollution and minus 4 degrees temperatures.