Harbin... It's Cold

Sorry for not posting this sooner. I'll just cover by saying that I've been battling frostbite for the past few days.

Harbin is cold. Really, really cold. I went in hearing all the hype of how terrifyingly freezing it's supposed to be, and prepared myself accordingly. I even grew a massive beard the likes of which hadn't been seen since the days after Al Gore lost the election in 2000.

The funniest part of this is that when we actually made it to the icy northern city of Harbin, it was in the middle of a heatwave. So by all accounts, it was pretty nice there.

Still miserably cold.

Thank god for wonders of facial hair. I have no idea how Corey survived.

So why bother going to a place as miserable as the link between China and Siberia?

The answer is the magnificent ice festival, which is truly one of the more remarkable things I've ever seen. They build gigantic replicas of buildings out of ice, and it really is impressive.

Before we get to the ice festival, the city itself isn't too bad. Its Russian ties have left Harbin with some nice architecture, including an old Church, and even a Synagogue or two.







After checking out the "city", we crossed a nice and thoroughly frozen river to get to the snow festival - the scrawny, less hyped up, little brother of the Ice Festival.





Still, despite the lack of press, the smaller sibling proved to be a scrappy fighter indeed, boasting some pretty impressive snow work. It had hundreds of snow sculptures, some designed by international teams, and proved once and for all that American made snowmen... suck.



















We got up nice and early the next day to make sure that we had time to hit the Harbin Tiger Park. Much like the Dalian Zoo, visitors can pay for their bloodlust and get a find variety of animals to be fed to the tigers - just on a much, much larger scale.



It was awesome.









The next stop was the Japanese Germ Warfare Museum, which really helped get to the heart of exactly why the Chinese hate them so damn much.

But finally, it was time for the Ice Festival... words won't really do it justice, and the pictures will just come close.

If you really wanna experience it properly, you should take your laptop outside, blow these pictures to as big as they get, and then while it's freezing cold, run a cold hose over yourself.

Still though, you probably won't enjoy it as much, so you might as well just hop on the next flight to Harbin.

Or check these pictures out. Indoors. That works too...




















Stay warm,
Shawn