The first adventure in 2010…Harbin, China. Harbin is located in the far north region of China near the vast sub-Siberian plains. We have had Harbin on our list of places to visit for the last few years. A couple of reasons have kept us from Harbin. One it is very cold, -30c/-22f. Two, you need to go in January to see the Ice Festival. It has always been hard to commit to a trip after just arriving back from Christmas. However, this is the year of travel, so we booked the tickets. We arrived back from our Christmas adventure on Thursday, December 31. The following Friday, January 8, the bags were repacked to go to the ice land. We went from temperatures of 38c/100f in Cambodia to -30c/-22f in Harbin!

One advantages of living in China is the store, Decathlon. It is my favorite. It carries every sporting good item/clothing under the sun. The prices are cheap and the quality is good. The clothes are a French brand made in China, of course. I am sure if you bought the same clothes in France, the would be three times as much. After stocking up on all our winter gear, the family was set to go. We were traveling with the Humes family: John, Mary, Kelly & Erin. Two other families were planning to go with us, but they bailed.

We had an 11:50am flight out which was nice as we didn’t have to do the usual 5:30am wake-up to be on an 8:00am flight. We boarded the flight on time take-off. Wow! However, that was short lived as we began the runway sitting time. After over an hour, they brought out the food cart…not a good sign that we would be leaving anytime soon!! We finally left after our 2+ hour of sitting on the runway. This is China and flights never seem to leave on time. When I was back in America, I didn’t complain because it is usually is do to weather or something that can be explained. Here it is just late!! We arrived at Harbin at 4:30 instead of 2:30.

It took over an hour to get to our hotel due to traffic. We decided to grab a quick dinner before going out to the first event, the Ice Festival. The hotel offered buffet service. Elle was free and Emmy was half price which made the decision easy. Elle was free all weekend for the food at the hotel. The best part of the buffet was the desserts which included cotton candy, ice cream and a chocolate fountain. The favorite was the cotton candy and you could request whatever color you wanted.

To “gear up” we had about 4 layers of pants and 5 layers of shirts prior to getting to the outer ski layer on each girl. They couldn’t move!! We got to the Ice Festival around 7:30. Elle was free for the event and the other kids were half price.

The first stop was the ice slide, of course.

I don’t have my usual too many photos to sort through for this trip. Jim was the cameraman – the battery and the flash were freezing due to the cold. We had picked an extra cold weekend with temperatures below -30c/-22f. Elle had a running nose and I was her tissue girl. My hand would be freezing by the time I had her nose blown and I had on glove liners so my bare hands were never exposed. We all had the heat packs in our gloves and shoes. It was so cold you could not feel the heat from the pads.

The lights and the ice buildings are amazing. We walked around for 2 hours. The temperature kept dropping and it was the adults that were ready to go. There was a slide that the children wanted to go down but it had a long line of people waiting. As this was that last slide prior to leaving, we got in line….we waited and waited and waited. Then, the line suddenly moved very fast. As it turned out, at 10:00pm the workers left who carried the plastics sleds up to slide down this long “great wall” slide. No plastics sled – no sliding, so we walked down the great wall.

Back at the hotel we had hot chocolate and to thawed out. Our hair had frost on it, our eyelashes have frost. It was colder than I could have imaged. Good thing I over dressed everyone!!

The next morning after breakfast we went to the Tiger Park. The Tiger Park breeds the endangered Manchurian Tiger. However, these tigers are never going back to the “wild”. The park takes you on buses into the tiger area where you can purchase a live chicken, pheasant, lamb or cow to feed to the tigers. When a pheasant is released, the tiger’s give a chase. Some of the pheasants did fly fast to escape to freedom. The live chickens are placed on the outside of the “food vehicle” on the roof – no sport, as the tigers leap on the roof and swallow whole.

After watching the tigers from the bus, we the head over to the area to walk around above the tigers. At one point, a lady comes out with fresh meat. For 10rmb ($1.50), you can buy meat to feed the tigers. They give you tongs to drop the meat between the fences. Of course, Elle wanted to do this.

The lady had two live chickens, so we decided to buy them for 50rmb/$7 each. Before we knew it, the lady was attaching this live chicken to a long pole by the foot. She gave it to John/Kelly to hang over the fence. The tiger jumps to get the chicken – swallowed whole. Only in China!! After feeding the tigers, it was time to go back to the hotel.

We had buffet lunch for our free and half-er girls. Back upstairs to put on a few more layers. I never got a single complaint from the girls about being cold. However, there were more than a few complaints about the layers! We had trouble getting a taxi so the day was getting away from us. The sun goes down at 4:00. It was almost 4:00 when we arrived at the Sun Island snow sculptors. It would have been nice to be there a bit early because the temperatures drop fast when the sun goes down. We enjoyed seeing the amazing and massive snow sculptors. The girls went on a dog sled ride. We were there for only an hour as the park closed at 5:00.

At the hotel, we had booked a private igloo for dinner. This was a highlight of the trip for me. The hotel has four igloos and an ice bar to serve hot pot. The girls loved playing the “Piano” in the ice bar.

The temperatures in the igloo were still -10c/14f, but with all the steam of the hot pot, it didn’t seem that cold. Everyone enjoyed the food and the fun of eating in an igloo.

The last morning, we were going to walk to the small venue of snow sculptors at a nearby park along the river. The girls and boys got a little sidetrack playing on the frozen river – estimated to be 2-3 meters thick ice!

We started to walk towards the park, but time was running out. We went back to the hotel for lunch and packing. By the time we got back to the hotel, the eyelashes, eyebrows and hair were frosted white.

Due to taking our time enjoying our lunch, we left for the airport 30 minutes late. Of course, since we were rushed on time, we had troubles checking in. The Humes checked in at the counter next to us. They checked in fast and headed to the gate to get through security. In our family, Jim does the checking-in and I do the kid duty. After taking too long, Jim informed me the lady checked in John, Mary and ME AND JIM! – not their kids. Therefore, she was having problems checking us in. So, John had boarding pass for all four adults, but not HIS kids. It took about 15 minutes to sort it out for the four of us to get checked-in. We took off running for security because now John had to fix his lack of boarding passes – and we finally caught up with him after security – glad they check the names to ID’s so closely! Of course, all the running was for nothing, our flight was delayed. John had plenty of time to get the boarding passes. Another extra hour plus of airport sitting!