Monday, February 06, 2006
THANK YOU AUNTIE MO !!!!! 
Over January i have been seriously comtemplating my time in japan and writing the blog in my head - and let me tell you it was a blinding blog entry !!!
unfortunately i then went off on holiday AGAIN and have now forgotton all about Toyko. to avoid this situation again, although i don't plan on going away soon (but you never know !!!) I thought i'd better tell you all about this holiday as soon as possible.
and what can i say ...
my body went from -21 degrees C to 46 degrees C in under a week and totally out of choice !!!
i really must start by shouting out a huge, great big THANKS to my aunt Mo - let me explain. up in north east china there is a smallish city called HARBIN and every year it has an ice festival (one of the top ice festivals in the world) - this means that people come from all over the world and carve amazing ice sculptures. i have wanted to see this festival for most of the time i've been in china and every spring festival i think about it, but i can never justify it because its so expensive to get to beijing and then on to harbin and harbin gets so cold (-15 to -30 on average days) that you only want to stay for a couple of days. the whole trip just seemed to expensive - add to that the fact that spring festival is an impossible time to buy train tickets and so i would have to fly and it has always been out of my price range. enter Mo and her very generous christmas present of money in the bank !!! and the fact that rachel and jamyang are now living in beijing (god i love free accomodation !!!) and that rachel was actually up for the idea of freezing her tits off with me !
and you find me friday 27th jan flying up to beijing after having hurriedly purchased two new pairs of thermals - i very nicely gave all my thermals to my mum for her tibet trip because i wasn't going to still be in china this winter - remember that !!!
Spring festival is the name givcen to the holiday that covers chinese new year - it actually starts a few days before and continues until 15 days after the new year. the actual new years eve was saturday 28th. so we went out for dinner with a bunch of jamyang and rachel's friends, including Dan the kiwi i spent last spring festival with in Aba, bought up mass of fire works, got terribly drunk and then let them all off !!! now i know that sounds more like an advert for A&E instead of "fireworks are safe and fun" - it was all done very professionally !!!
infact i was really luckly because this year, after a 12 year NO FIREWORKS ruling for Beijing the ban was lifted for the whole city. what thuis actually means is that for about a week before new year's night and at least a week afterwards (i can vouch for that part) from 8am to i guess 3am every day there are fireworks going off ALL THE TIME !!!! in the daytime these are mostly loud bangers (the type that set off the car alarms) and endless streams of fire crackers !!!
at night though the lights come out !! some explode upwards, some outwards and always there are some you can hold !!
i truely believe that no one in the world does fireworks like the chinese - and you know how everything at home says MADE IN CHINA well these babies don't make it home!! either the chinese keep the best fireworks for themselves or the amount of explosives in them is too much for european laws - you decide !!!
we had lots of fun - did you get that !
we had sunday to recover and then rach and i got a night train sun night off to harbin - good old jamyang had queued for 3 hours in the freezing cold for 2 days to get us the tickets - thank you sweetie xxx
the landscape we saw from the train actually reminded me of the romney marsh and winters in england - it was very flat and sparce and sprinkled with snow so that the plowed ridges could still be seen through the snow cover.
got into harbin early afternoon, dumped our gear at the hostel and headed straight out. because its up north the night comes very quickly - the shift from dusk to dark seems to happen in a few minutes and so after a very brief time wandering we headed off to the nearest park and expected ice sculptures. actually wandering is not the right word, we walked around 'shopping street', a street we were supposed to visit and then both realised that we couldn't feel our feet anymore and need to find heat VERY quickly and so shot off to the nearest restuarant to eat dinner and thaw out. and this is how our days went. we would be walking around happily and then one of us would say 'toes have gone, must find heat' and we'd shoot off to a restuarant or snow hole to eat and drink and warm up !!! i was really surprised that the rest of my body did so well - the probablem with the toes was that they didn't just go numb, they then started throbbing with pain which steadily increases - yeh nice !! 
i guess two pairs of socks just wasn't enough - the reast of my body was good though - that had two sets of thermals top and bottoms, trousers and top, 2 coats, two scarves, ear muffs and a hat and two face masks - what really surprised me was how cold my chin got - why has no one told me that i have a huge chin that must stick out further than any other part of my body because it found every breeze and frooze faster that my toes !!!
actually the first night wasn't too bad at all - we felt so tough when we got back to the hostel, we were like 'oh, well if that's it, this is ok, no probs !!!' i know, i know, comments like that just bring on bad weather - and yes the second day was -15 to -21 and oh my god !!! we felt it !!!!
the park though - really, really amazing !!!! giant blocks of ice used as bricks to build, well buildings !! and slides wwwweeeeeeee !!!!
the lights are inside the ice and glow through - cool eh ! and yes it is a slide and we did slide down it !!!
so there were lots of large structures with coloured lights inside.
but there were also smaller sculptures and an arena full or ice sculptures, each made by teams from different countries - some really good !!
you know what its like when it snows, it doesn't matter how old you are, you realise that a huge silly grin has spread across your face and all you can think about is getting out in it and snow balls and snow angels - well this was just the same, even though there was no snow, just solid frozen ice but the grin was the same. what made it really good and the same on the next night was that there's really fun music blasting out all the time and so we just danced, walzed, gigged and cancaned around the park.
the next day was jam packed as we found that in true chinese style - promising to do something on the telephone when you're still in beijing and actually doing it are two completely diifferent things and so we didn't have train tickets back and the two days we would have wanted to leave were both already booked solid so we had to get a day train the next day - meaning we had to pack everything the next day - yes the cold day !!! so we shot out of the hostel at 9am and headed out to find ourselves some architecture !!!!
during this holiday i was talking to rachel about the fact that i'd just written my year review and how surprised i was that i'd forgotton so much and she'd been thinking about it as well since i'd asked her to help jog my memory. so we went over every year we'd been here and all the holidays - spring festival, may, summer, oct, christmas and tried to remember what we did for each !!
and we came to two conclusions
1: we have made the most of our holidasys !!! everyone of them, every year !
2: our chosen holiday spots within china and all been the most UNchinese parts of china !!
harbin is just the latest example !
after lunch we went down to the river to watch the mad people who choose to cut a hole in the ice and swim in the river !!!!
swim is not really the right word - they get in, swim five meters and get back out again, but some of them do it a couple of times and considering i' finding it cold just standing on the ice watching i don't want to take anything away from them - but i'll stick to a heated pool if you don't mind !!
that's it for now i'm afraid - off to work !!, prob more on thurs xx
thanks to kal and a magic web address i can now look at my own blog - sorry it looks so shit, i'll work on that xx
Over January i have been seriously comtemplating my time in japan and writing the blog in my head - and let me tell you it was a blinding blog entry !!!
unfortunately i then went off on holiday AGAIN and have now forgotton all about Toyko. to avoid this situation again, although i don't plan on going away soon (but you never know !!!) I thought i'd better tell you all about this holiday as soon as possible.
and what can i say ...
my body went from -21 degrees C to 46 degrees C in under a week and totally out of choice !!!
i really must start by shouting out a huge, great big THANKS to my aunt Mo - let me explain. up in north east china there is a smallish city called HARBIN and every year it has an ice festival (one of the top ice festivals in the world) - this means that people come from all over the world and carve amazing ice sculptures. i have wanted to see this festival for most of the time i've been in china and every spring festival i think about it, but i can never justify it because its so expensive to get to beijing and then on to harbin and harbin gets so cold (-15 to -30 on average days) that you only want to stay for a couple of days. the whole trip just seemed to expensive - add to that the fact that spring festival is an impossible time to buy train tickets and so i would have to fly and it has always been out of my price range. enter Mo and her very generous christmas present of money in the bank !!! and the fact that rachel and jamyang are now living in beijing (god i love free accomodation !!!) and that rachel was actually up for the idea of freezing her tits off with me !
and you find me friday 27th jan flying up to beijing after having hurriedly purchased two new pairs of thermals - i very nicely gave all my thermals to my mum for her tibet trip because i wasn't going to still be in china this winter - remember that !!! Spring festival is the name givcen to the holiday that covers chinese new year - it actually starts a few days before and continues until 15 days after the new year. the actual new years eve was saturday 28th. so we went out for dinner with a bunch of jamyang and rachel's friends, including Dan the kiwi i spent last spring festival with in Aba, bought up mass of fire works, got terribly drunk and then let them all off !!! now i know that sounds more like an advert for A&E instead of "fireworks are safe and fun" - it was all done very professionally !!!
infact i was really luckly because this year, after a 12 year NO FIREWORKS ruling for Beijing the ban was lifted for the whole city. what thuis actually means is that for about a week before new year's night and at least a week afterwards (i can vouch for that part) from 8am to i guess 3am every day there are fireworks going off ALL THE TIME !!!! in the daytime these are mostly loud bangers (the type that set off the car alarms) and endless streams of fire crackers !!!
at night though the lights come out !! some explode upwards, some outwards and always there are some you can hold !!
i truely believe that no one in the world does fireworks like the chinese - and you know how everything at home says MADE IN CHINA well these babies don't make it home!! either the chinese keep the best fireworks for themselves or the amount of explosives in them is too much for european laws - you decide !!!
we had lots of fun - did you get that !
we had sunday to recover and then rach and i got a night train sun night off to harbin - good old jamyang had queued for 3 hours in the freezing cold for 2 days to get us the tickets - thank you sweetie xxx
the landscape we saw from the train actually reminded me of the romney marsh and winters in england - it was very flat and sparce and sprinkled with snow so that the plowed ridges could still be seen through the snow cover.
got into harbin early afternoon, dumped our gear at the hostel and headed straight out. because its up north the night comes very quickly - the shift from dusk to dark seems to happen in a few minutes and so after a very brief time wandering we headed off to the nearest park and expected ice sculptures. actually wandering is not the right word, we walked around 'shopping street', a street we were supposed to visit and then both realised that we couldn't feel our feet anymore and need to find heat VERY quickly and so shot off to the nearest restuarant to eat dinner and thaw out. and this is how our days went. we would be walking around happily and then one of us would say 'toes have gone, must find heat' and we'd shoot off to a restuarant or snow hole to eat and drink and warm up !!! i was really surprised that the rest of my body did so well - the probablem with the toes was that they didn't just go numb, they then started throbbing with pain which steadily increases - yeh nice !! 
i guess two pairs of socks just wasn't enough - the reast of my body was good though - that had two sets of thermals top and bottoms, trousers and top, 2 coats, two scarves, ear muffs and a hat and two face masks - what really surprised me was how cold my chin got - why has no one told me that i have a huge chin that must stick out further than any other part of my body because it found every breeze and frooze faster that my toes !!!actually the first night wasn't too bad at all - we felt so tough when we got back to the hostel, we were like 'oh, well if that's it, this is ok, no probs !!!' i know, i know, comments like that just bring on bad weather - and yes the second day was -15 to -21 and oh my god !!! we felt it !!!!
the park though - really, really amazing !!!! giant blocks of ice used as bricks to build, well buildings !! and slides wwwweeeeeeee !!!!
the lights are inside the ice and glow through - cool eh ! and yes it is a slide and we did slide down it !!!so there were lots of large structures with coloured lights inside.
but there were also smaller sculptures and an arena full or ice sculptures, each made by teams from different countries - some really good !!you know what its like when it snows, it doesn't matter how old you are, you realise that a huge silly grin has spread across your face and all you can think about is getting out in it and snow balls and snow angels - well this was just the same, even though there was no snow, just solid frozen ice but the grin was the same. what made it really good and the same on the next night was that there's really fun music blasting out all the time and so we just danced, walzed, gigged and cancaned around the park.
the next day was jam packed as we found that in true chinese style - promising to do something on the telephone when you're still in beijing and actually doing it are two completely diifferent things and so we didn't have train tickets back and the two days we would have wanted to leave were both already booked solid so we had to get a day train the next day - meaning we had to pack everything the next day - yes the cold day !!! so we shot out of the hostel at 9am and headed out to find ourselves some architecture !!!!
during this holiday i was talking to rachel about the fact that i'd just written my year review and how surprised i was that i'd forgotton so much and she'd been thinking about it as well since i'd asked her to help jog my memory. so we went over every year we'd been here and all the holidays - spring festival, may, summer, oct, christmas and tried to remember what we did for each !!
and we came to two conclusions
1: we have made the most of our holidasys !!! everyone of them, every year !
2: our chosen holiday spots within china and all been the most UNchinese parts of china !!
harbin is just the latest example ! after lunch we went down to the river to watch the mad people who choose to cut a hole in the ice and swim in the river !!!!
swim is not really the right word - they get in, swim five meters and get back out again, but some of them do it a couple of times and considering i' finding it cold just standing on the ice watching i don't want to take anything away from them - but i'll stick to a heated pool if you don't mind !!
that's it for now i'm afraid - off to work !!, prob more on thurs xx
thanks to kal and a magic web address i can now look at my own blog - sorry it looks so shit, i'll work on that xx
