12-03-10 - Siem Reap - Tonie Sap Floating Village

I had a bit of a later start today, as we decided to go out last night and hit the town with incredibly cheap booze on offer.

So, enjoyed a nice sleep in with no time pressures, as the our next scheduled group activity wasn't till 2.30pm.

I had a few hours to spare, so I decided to go back out to Angkor Wat and get myself a Balloon ride near the main temple site. It's not really a ride, more so a giant balloon with a round viewing ring that they release up into the sky for 10 minutes, then winch you back.

Caught a Tuk Tuk into town so I could change the rest of my Thailand money to US dollar. Exchange rate at the ANZ Royal bank wasn't great, but it got the job done. By the looks of the logo it's the ANZ bank of back home doing a joint venture.

The Tuk Tuk ride out to the balloon site was pretty good, as yesterday we took the same route, but in the comfort of an air conditioned bus. The road is almost dead straight and you eventually hit the moat of Angkor Wat on the right side. Went around to the main bridge and turned up the road, heading to the balloon site and time for some no doubt fantastic photo opportunities!

Unloaded myself to be greeted by a lady to tell me that the balloon was not open right now, as it was too windy. Gutted, I got back into the Tuk Tuk and headed back into town. The ride back was pretty interesting, as the driver picked a back road through the jungle that wasn't straight, or wide.

Lunch was good, roasted cashew with chicken and then I caught the Tuk Tuk back to the Hotel to meet up with the rest of the group.

At 2.30 we were ready to go, with all 8 of us piling into the two Tuk Tuks. The plan was to head to Tonie Sap, a giant freshwater lake that greatly increases in size during the wet season, in some places going from 3 metres deep to 14 metres deep. What happens is that during the wet season, the Mekong River has so much water put through the system, it actually backs up and flows backwards, into the Tonie Sap. Areas that are forests in the dry season are then flooded and this has created a system where fish absolutely thrive, generating massive fish catches that runs the local economy. The flip side is of course this system is under threat, as up stream China is creating more dams and climate change could seriously effect the system.

Foreign investment is easy to see on the way there, as there are wells, houses and other facilities that were established with foreign investment and/or aid and has signs up telling you who or what gave the money that built it. We traveled first through the edges of the town, a mix of houses, both very old and new, workshops and shops that had 2 litre bottles filled with fuel out the front for convenience. Slowly, this gave way to rice fields, some dry, some burnt out and some with rice growing. Houses on stilts lined the raised road, as this is all part of the lake system, and will flood when the lake does.

We eventually arrived at what would be the start of our boat journey to the lake proper. With foreign monetary assistance, a massive channel has been dug from the lake to create a place where the water is deep enough to have easy access for the boats all year round, with the earth from channel stacked up to make the road, so you have good access and facilities to the lake, no mater what the season is.

It took us some time to get out of the channel and I was starting to wonder if this was going to be it, in the dry season.

As we got closer to the lake, we were boarded by pirates! Well, not real pirates, but small boats with an adult driving it, and small children jumping aboard to sell drinks, food or souvenirs. Sometime they would just pull up aside the boat and hawk their wares, sometimes they would just beg for money, and one time a little girl demanded 1 dollar from us. When we told her no, so reached into a large sack and pulled out a massive snake and draped that around herself. Then it was 1 dollar for photograph…

Our guide assured us that none of these people were Cambodian, and they were all Vietnamese, whether that was true, or just his national pride speaking, I do not know.

Pirates aside, the channel finally opened up and we were able to see the true extend of the lake at last. It's huge, you can't see the other sides in any direction and it's very muddy and shallow. We were told it will go crystal clear in the wet season and many metres deep.

In front of us was a veritable flotilla of floating houses, floating community halls and even a floating basketball court. Dogs guarded their small house, children were in the water washing their hair and the pirates started to launch toddlers in large cooking pots to beg for money from us.

But, ah, enough of that.

We passed through the core of the 'village' and disembarked at one of the tourist 'fish farms'. It was floating tourist deck with souvenirs, cold drinks and a higher viewing deck. They had fish farm pens off to the side, one with catfish you could feed and the other with a few crocodiles. A small museum was also here, which had information about the lake and the fish they capture there.

This floating platform, as well as many of the houses, was kept afloat by packs of bamboo tied together and placed under the houses in large 'logs'. Houses that were not constructed this way used empty drums or purpose built tanks. Most of the houses were constructed of wood. If you needed to move your house, you would have to tow it out, as none of them had a motor, well, none that I could see.

The sun was getting low, so we boarded our boat and headed back to the channel and eventually met up with our Tuk Tuks for the ride to a 'guest house' where we watched the sun go down from our hammocks.

13/01/10 - Harbin - City and Religious Sights

Last day in Harbin! Last chance for a real chance of frostbite.

Though on occasions I may have come close.

Anyways, through the Hotel I booked a railway ticket for a 'soft sleeper' to Beijing that night. Checkout is at midday, but I took the hit and paid the half day late fee so I could stay in my room till 6pm. The train didn't leave till 9 or so at night, so I had time yet to explore.

On a similar theme of 'What have I not seen that's in the Lonely Planet book' from yesterday, I had a few landmarks near the city centre that needed looking at, so today was all about trying to find and view them. Mostly religious buildings of the Jewish and Islamic faith, now seemingly disused for worship today.

I managed to get off the bus in a different, but correct place and the first thing to draw my attention was the many interesting buildings in the area.

Well, no actually. The first scene that I was keen in looking more at (photographing) was the collection of man holes in the streets that were pouring out steam. Well, I hope it was steam.

Oh, that and what must have been a baby photography place, which instead of the usual pictures of babies with sunflowers, had pictures of babies holding guns and swords over movie poster backgrounds.

Getting my bearings, I explored the cityscape, finding the odd interesting piece of local city life, whether it be the corner food vendors or the lady who dumps her hot water on the sidewalk/street, which was developing into a very 'interesting' patch of solid ice.

The first of the sights I came to was an old Jewish Synagogue, now converted into a hostel and shops. After that I found a Islamic temple, but it was currently closed.

Not sure if I mentioned it, but Harbin used to have over 20,000 jewish people, who came during the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, most fleeing persecution in Russia, if I remember correctly. Now all that's left are their places or worship and the European flavour of a lot of the older buildings.

The last place I wanted to see proved to be trickier to find, as I now believe the location for it on the Lonely Planet map was incorrect. On the upside, by pure chance, I did find the 'Kangaroo Internet Hotel', a high rise that was painted in earthy tones and featured a Kangaroo in its logo.

The 'New Jewish Synagogue' was my last destination, and at last I had found it. This Synagogue as been converted into the Harbin Architecture Art Gallery on the ground floor, with the two floors above converted into a museum detailing the history of the Jewish people when they inhabited Harbin in numbers.

The art gallery featured photography of Harbin, most from the summer time, and had a few models of various buildings scattered through out. At the end of the room was four paintings, that were done in a style I have not seen before. Basically, the artist would carve out the design for the picture in the wood, then paint over that for an effect that would really pop out the edge details.

At first, I was disappointed that I could not access upstairs to view the museum, as I could see various exhibits from the main hall area that cut through the floors. I thought this, as all the lights where off, but as I was motioned up, it turns out they only turn on the lights if a visitor is present. As soon as I had left the first floor, all the lights there were turned off there.

The museum was well presented, with english captions throughout, and dealt with the jewish people who came to call Harbin home for a while. The first floor of the museum detailed the paths the people took to reach Harbin, mostly via the newly constructed railway. It then delved into the cultural and economic influences that they contributed to the city and the surround area, if not country.

There are rooms housing mock ups of how the jewish people lived back in the day, with the first room showing how a businessman's officer would look, another showing a mother teaching a child the piano, and the last one featured a bedroom scene, with children playing on the bed and their mother watching on, knitting. Each room had artworks, religious items and household items all on display, and all seemed to be preserved originals.

The stairs up to the next floor featured walls with photos and captions of world famous jewish people, or as the caption put it, 'The Jew of world famous.'

On the top floor, over half was devoted to famous jewish people who have their origins in Harbin, like ex Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. Towards the end, there was photos from the local graveyard of people standing next to their ancestors and finally, an area that had a large jewish star on the roof and around that, photos with captions, of famous people to have visited the museum, jewish or not.

The stairs down to the exit was devoted to photos of Albert Einstein and eventually I made my way out, finding a taxi and headed back to the hotel to prepare to leave Harbin that night.

On a side note, the one thing I have yet to figure out is where did all the Jewish people go. The Museum made a strong case the bulk of them left for Israel over time, and other destination counties got a mention. But that doesn't seem to be the full story, as there was no reason given to why they left Harbin after establishing a sizeable community there. May have to look this up one day.

12/01/10 - Harbin - Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base

With only a day and a half to go in Harbin, I decided to cover the last remaining location listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook, the Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base.

Or what's left of it, as they torched most of it to try and destroy the evidence at the end of World War 2.

Had no idea how to get there, so the forever helpful concierge managed to relay to the driver where I wanted to go.

While I did get dropped off in the general area, it turns out the building I was dropped off in front was a office building, and quite a few office workers were puzzled about why some huge guy with a camera taking photos was coming through their building. Luckily I was saved via the chinese text in the Lonely Planet book and pointed in the correct way to go, quite a distance down the street.

The entry was at the last remaining sentry box at the south gate, which you needed to collect a ticket out of for entry. Passing through the gate, the last remaining building on site houses a museum about what happened on this site, as well as in the surrounding country.

Terrible things happened here. They basically experimented on people for biological warfare purposes, injecting germs, viruses and bacteria and then either seeing how long it would take for a person to die, or let the illness take effect, then cut a person open to and take out the organs while they were alive for study.

Tests were also conducted to find out the limits of how a human can cope with say, no oxygen or hypothermia.

Look up 'Unit 731' or just 731 on wikipedia or the like for a more detailed run down.

As for the exhibit itself, it's well presented, there are english captions throughout and there are guides there that speak multiple languages. Many relics of that era are on display, such as weapons, germ canisters and surgical equipment with dioramas depicting various horrors as well.

At the end of the museum is a room dedicated to showing how the truth has been uncovered in the intervening years, with interviews with repentant Japanese soldiers, archaeological digs as well as the many books and documentaries that have been produced to spread the word.

The exit was around the back of the building, which led you to the back lot, which was a bit featureless as it was covered in snow, but there were still holes here and there with brickwork foundations showing where buildings had been, before they had been blown up or levelled.

After some time of walking around the back, I eventually made my way to the exit and onto the street. I could just see down the street a lot of cars and activity so I made my way in that direction.

It was a multilevel grocery store, which was handy, as I wanted to get the hotel staff something for their help, but I'm still a bit uneasy about tips. I must have been the only foreigner in that store for a while, as I attracted a crowd of lookers, pointers and the odd 'hello' followed by giggles. Interesting!

In the end I settled on an expensive tin of chocolates and made my way out. I waited ages for an 'official' taxi to come by, before giving up and going for one of the unofficial ones. It was a little van that had iced up windows that were heavily tinted so I had no idea where I was, or where I was going. I think the drivers where a husband and wife team and they were nice enough, eventually dropping me off a block past the hotel, which was good enough for me!

11/01/10 - Harbin - Sun Island

Now, so far I've seen the buildings made out of ice and the park that has the 'Disneyland' and ice sculptures, but I had not found where the snow sculptures are, and I've seen news reports about the sculptures on the internet and via an email from Mum.

Today I finally found them. But, I am getting ahead of myself.

Feeling bolder after yesterday's success, I caught the bus like an old pro into town and got off near the park with the Disney stuff, much like yesterday. I made my way to the Flood Control Monument and once there, was rewarded with a expansive view of the frozen river, with ice skating, dog sledding, horse and buggies a better view of the ice slides from the night before. On the right you had the railway bridge in the distance and on the left you have the Cable Car that takes you over the river, and much further along you have the traffic bridge.

My main aim was to just enjoy the sights and make my way to the Cable Car, which got much bigger the closer I got. Close by, a man was digging a hole in the ice and pulling out a bucket of water to give to the horses. A little further along kids were pedalling some sort of reverse tricycle on the ice, with a couple of poor, bored looking dogs having a rest, still hooked up to a sled. In the distance on the river there was horse drawn buggies, cars and a few people just walking across the frozen expanse to the other side.

Eventually, I came to the main building of the cable car, climbed up, paid the ticket and boarded. Just me in the cabin, which was good, as I was being very careful moving about the cabin trying to put my camera through a few little open windows, while desperate not to rock it too much.

Rising, the first thing to catch my eye was the docks, with boats tied up along side and frozen in place by the ice. It looked like most of the boats there were either ferries or touristy ones, the more industrial ones must have been elsewhere, or headed south for the winter.

Still not even to the first tower, I could get a really good view of the ice festival activities on the river and the city itself behind me. People are being reduced to ants, or nothing at all and the sun makes it easier to pick out where the snow has been cleared off the ice to allow skating, or the like.

First tower, the dread sets in as you go click clack over the wheels holding the cable in place. It's bloody high and the next tower is barely in view.

Looking up river, I can barely make out the traffic bridge, but looking that way it's really quite pretty. The sun is directly that way, and the ever present ice haze diffuses the light everywhere, while reducing how far you can see. The river itself is covered with little tracks everywhere as people have recently walked across it and left fresh prints in the snow. My picture of this scene is one of my favourites so far.

I can make out the other side of the river now and I see it, a massive snow sculpture in the distance that tells me I am on the right track for the rest of the snow sculptures. I pass the second tower, and it's all down from here.

I don't know if it was being so high, the open windows or the fact it was just plain cold, but my brain was only half working, and the commentary for a video I shot up there came off sounding rather stupid. Ah well.

Safely getting off the cable car, I was on Sun Island, which seems to be the main recreational park for tourists and locals alike, especially in the summer time, looking at the various promotional posters.

It's pretty tourist friendly, with maps of the island and facilities with english titles to complement the chinese and russian ones.

On the way to where I hoped the snow sculptures would be, I passed a mock russian tourist village that also featured a sign out the front with pictures of people putting their heads in crocodiles, bikini mud wrestling, showgirls and a photo of a woman in 'typical' russian military uniform with gun drawn. It was open, and though all of the above looked interesting (you know, the folksy old russian village aspect) I was fast running out of light and continued past it.

I was a bit bummed this entrance to the park featured a massive Chip 'n' Dale (Disney Characters) snow sculpture that you walked through, impressive as it was, but just yeah, having corporate Disney stuff everywhere was wearing thin, though kids would have be going nuts with joy.

Like with the other two ice festival venues, you need to purchase a ticket to enter, and once paid, I was in.

The path in was lined with snow sculptures, which I'd assume are all for competitions, or at the very least, needed to share a theme for this area. I finally came across some snow sculpted buildings, which you could climb on and over, one was half a sphere with stairs up the side, another was a traditional chinese looking building, and one of the larger ones was rectangle shaped, with a bar in it, with snow bottles, stools, the bar itself and so on.

I saw my first food/drink shop too, and like all of the ones on the island, they are hidden under a whole lot of snow, with windows and door hole carved out, and the rest just stylised to how ever they see fit.

Walking further in, in the middle of a pedestrian round-a-bout was a massive hedge that was shaped to be a phoenix, with fake trees with LED lights as leaves around it, and a snow wall around those. The next round-a-bout featured a large snow sculpture of a dancing woman, with robes flowing from her.

I could have continued straight down the path as I had been, but something caught my eye at this round-a-bout. I had seen signs for the 'Naive Bear Paradise' and only now could I see what it was.

It's basically a amusement park with carousel, various other rides and a mini roller coaster. It was all shut and coated in snow, with some rides covered, and others just left to the elements. Spread through out where cartoon styled bear statues doing cartoony bear things. It was all cheerful and kid friendly, but felt a bit sinister to me. I got plenty of photos, plus it was here I noticed my beanie, face mask and hood were icing up for the first time from my breath.

It's cold here, not sure if I have mentioned that before.

As I made my way back to the last round-a-bout, I made a startling discovery. Some person in their wisdom thought it would be a good idea to mix nice rough stone slabs on the foot paths with shiny, SLIPPERY, edge ones. I almost went arse up a dozen times due to these polished edge stones.

Must look nice in summer.

Walking a bit more, I was finally in the centre of the Island park, as noted with the tourist information centre that is perched over the now frozen lake. This was quite a busy area, with trucks and loaders dumping off snow, very large snow sculptures where under construction on the lake itself and on land, the competition snow sculptures featured simple square blocks for the beginning, an area which had participants from various countries furiously carving their snow blocks and a little further on, completed competition snow sculptures, with small description and team nationality of those who carved it.

Watching the snow sculptors at work was interesting, for most of the work they just used a shovel like implement to hack off the snow to get the rough shape they required. Some had drawn basic outlines of the end creation as a guide, some just seemed to be doing it freehand, though I'd imagine a lot of pre-planning went into these creations.

It was about this time the lights came on, coloured lights for the various completed sculptures and portable lights for the works in progress. I left the sculptors to their carving and went to check out the finished works.

The coloured lights really added an extra 'zing' to the look of the sculptures, and it's a shame that this didn't carry across well to the photos I took. A lot of them were hollow, or snaked into themselves, and again, this doesn't come across well in my photos. Bummed out I am now, but ah well, next time!

I reckon my favourite one there was the large robot one, which I think was to represent the future and clean living.

That or the upcoming domination of our future robot overlords.

A little in the distance was the massive snow sculpture I spotted while in the cable car. I had first seen it in a internet news article, where it was the scene of a mass wedding, which I think is semi-traditional now for the area.

It indeed is massive. With lights on board and many large powerful spotlights shining on it from the front, at ground level. On the outside of it, were stylised people with their arms up, with flying Pegasus' surrounding a large round chinese temple with large flowers under that. Tough to describe, I've got close up shots of it, but unfortunately my full shot of it all got blurred out.

To the left of that was a long wall, that had posters built into it, describing Sun Island in all the seasons, the attractions as well as proclaiming that it's a AAAAA official rated tourist attraction. Sun Island looks pretty good in the summer, and they even have a squirrel park! Maybe even the bear amusement park is operating!

Backtracking, I went back through the snow sculptures, looking at the ones I missed the first time round and settled in for a while watching the snow sculptors at work. For the most part, the just fairly savagely hack at the snow blocks, it must be rather compacted and they even use their large 'shovel' tool for finer work. I couldn't say how big a team is, but I'd guess 4, with a few of the more adventurous ones on top of the snow hacking away from under them. Again, my photos tell a better story than I can tell.

It was good to spend time there, I could see the sculpts beginning to take shape, or refined further and, what the.

Turns out 6pm is closing time and all the lights go out. That was fun.

Still, it wasn't too bad, the ice haze just reflected plenty of light from the city over the river, so I had no trouble really seeing. I just had to work out what was the correct exit, which wasn't difficult, I just picked the one with the biggest car park.

Actually, now I think of it, just before lights out, taxis started to come on the paths in the park, I thought it was odd, but now it makes sense.

Anyways, turns out the way I picked for out, was the main grand entrance to the park. At the exit, before the bridge, there are two massive snow sculptures on either side of the road, that were basically murals depicting the history of China on one side, and the present accomplishments on the other. Very impressive, both in what was shown, and the scale of the sculpture itself.

Walking over the bridge, I caught up with a whole lot of police, which was nice and eventually I passed through the main gates could easily the Harbin Polar Land, as it was just on the other side of the car park. After a little while, a taxi came by and I made my way back to the hotel.

Thoughts. I really should have came earlier to the park, as the better photos of the snow sculptures I got in better light, or pure direct light from spotlights. The snow sculptures that had the coloured lights totally just didn't work out when I looked at the shots later. Unlike the ice sculptures, and the ice buildings, I think daytime is the best time to view the snow sculptures.

Though, it did bugger me up the 6pm lights off, meant I couldn't backtrack as I had planned and take more shots while fiddling with the camera settings.

I had a good day, regardless. Little frightened while on the cable car, but the views were completely worth it and I am sure it was the coldest day I've been through.

10/01/10 - Harbin - Flood Control Monument and Zhongyang Dajie

The cold weather finally caught up with me today as I had developed one nasty cold that had me spluttering, sneezing and hacking up interesting things all morning and afternoon.

After the second long hot shower of the day, and being unable to find a poor taxi driver to understand me, I worked out which bus to take into the city centre (via the ever helpful hotel staff). Pretty standard ride, though I did eventually pull my hood over my face to stop freaking people out when they got on the bus and caught sight of me. The windows of this bus were VERY thickly covered in ice on the inside, so I had no idea where I was, or when to get off, and only managed to get off in a good enough place when I saw the bright glow of the Disney ice sculptures through the front of the bus.

My destination was a park I saw when previously I passed it in a taxi heading back from the Zhaolin Park (where the ice sculptures and disney stuff was). So I knew how to get there from the park, where handily the bus had dropped me off near.

Turns out what I saw was not a park at all, but actually the Flood Control Monument, which you see as the logo on every single official taxi in the city. Oh, and on the some of the banners that are advertising what I think is a subway system that is under construction.

From the plaque 'It was constructed in 1958 in memory of the case that Harbin people defeated super flood and built permanent river bank in 1957. It is an important landmark of Harbin.'

Lonely Planet mentions it is also to honour the people who died in previous floods. But nothing official was on display to this end.

The monument is a large, tall pedestal with carvings depicting various scenes, topped with statues of heroic looking workers. The area at large is ringed with a columned semi circle that had a swishing colour changing light bar going back and forth, with spotlights on top trained at the pedestal.

Off to the side is the increasingly familiar blue 'thing' mascot for the Shanghai 2010 World Expo and behind it was huge ice slides that would go out and end on top of the ice covered river.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. Okay, all over town I've seen vendors selling this fruit, or berry, on sticks covered in toffee that I have been meaning to try. On the way to the monument, I spotted a vendor with heaps of them and thought to try my luck.

First thing, since they're out in the cold, they're completely frozen solid. There was about six on my stick, and I ate four before I threw the rest away. Terrible! Like not ripe apples and bananas being not ripe and terrible. Or sour, as my chinese friend gave me a better way of describing it. She also informed me the snack is pronounced as Tang Hu Lu. The fruit is Hawkthorn.

But anyways, gotta try out the local flavours, I mean, we foist Vegemite on unsuspecting people.

Okay, back to the monument area. Off to the right there was a ice sculpture of sorts. By the looks there were some small trees in this little patch, and someone has poured a little water over the branches over time. So you have this effect of tree branches, coated in a thick layer of ice, and in the middle where the ice is the most thickest, someone has carved out some chinese styled buildings.

This is all on the river's edge and according the Lonely Planet, this area is known as Stalin Park and extends for quite some distance either way, along the riverbank. It's quite a nice area with a straight path covered over in trees for as far as I could see in either direction.

After exploring the ice slide areas a little, even had a old lady try to get me to ride a horse drawn sled to 'somewhere', I eventually made way for Zhongyang Dajie area, the cobblestone street that is off limits to cars and serves as the main shopping area, as well as having most of the older European style buildings, in the city. It's on the same street as the Flood Control Monument, so looking down from it you can see the crowd, the colours and the flood lights in various places, but you certainly can't see where it ends.

It is absolutely a shopping area, with boutiques, brand name stores and even a Walmart off to the side. There's colourfully lit ice sculptures all the way through it and the buildings themselves are lit up, whether it be soft lighting or neon signage.

Took me quite some time to work my way through it all, and eventually I came to the end where taxis show up every now and then, so after a little wait I got back to the Hotel.

I don't think I can mention it enough, but Harbin is cold. Like dangerously cold. Only go out at night if you are either well equipped for it, or in my case, have handy shops or shopping centres you can go into to warm up in.

Oh, today was when I found out about pit toilets. They are the pits. Imagine that!

09/01/10 - Harbin - Siberian Tiger Park

Want to see fear on a taxi driver's face? Be a foreigner with basic to no local language skills and want to go to a place well on the other side of a city, in a remote location. Via pointing at the handy map and concierge being helpful as ever, we were off!

After getting lost a few times, no, really, the poor driver had to get directions from various people and turn around a few times, we made it to the destination, Harbin's Siberian Tiger Park.

While purchasing a ticket for the bus ride through the park, I noticed that you could buy various live animals, from chickens to cows to be feed for your entertainment to the Tigers. A domestic duck was 100 yuan, or about $15 dollars and a cow was 1,500 yuan, or about $238.

I did not have 1,500 yuan on me. Bugger.

But I did get to see what happens when you release a bird to 30 tigers, via someone else's purchase, but more on that later.

Ticket in hand, I made way to the waiting building which had various tourist trinkets in one area, and a tiger 'exhibit' in the other, with skeleton and skeleton with bits of tendons etc still attached to it, preserved in fluid.

English use! Ah, Americans! They had worked out whom to pay to get your photo taken while holding a baby tiger on your lap. I was tempted, but the poor little bugger looked a bit shellshocked at being manhandled so much, plus I still couldn't work out where to pay for the experience.

Eventually, my ticket number came up and we were herded onto a bus to be taken through the park. Now, as I later found out, there were two types of buses on the park, one sort had metal mesh inside so you could have the windows open and stick your cameras out. The other sort had no mesh, and the windows remained shut.

So, the windows on the bus were completely covered in ice from the inside and we spent the first 5 minutes of the tour furiously trying to scrape off the ice, or use your hands to warm it up to water and wipe it off. This was a battle you had to fight for the entire tour, and given ice also started to form on the outside, it wasn't the best view.

Still, when the image of a tiger came through your blurry little view hole, it was just about worth it. The parklands themselves are fenced in, and compartmentalised quite a bit so while the tigers do get some space, you do see the bulk of the moving ones just pacing up and down the fences.

Oddly, no doubt to increase the appeal for what they have, there was even some who had their own field out in the snow. I wouldn't know if they can insulate themselves against the cold, but it just seemed wrong.

Near the end of the bus tour, we stopped and I think one of the cars that roam the enclosures must have released a live something. As the tigers started roaring and everyone ran to the front of the minibus to see what was going. If you were seated from the middle of the bus back, you'd have no chance of seeing what happened as some of the more 'pro gear' camera guys were very pushy. I was near the very back.

Still, bus tour ended we were directed to a series of elevated walkways, that wound around some pens housing tigers, as well as a lion, a cheetah, a jaguar and a panther. Needless to say, still bummed about the small spaces for these animals and the cold they had to be in.

The walkways were fully caged and you were given the opportunity to buy some meat to feed to the tigers that happened to be close. Fully stretched up a tiger could just touch the meat and so we all got shots of the tiger doing so, though through heavy fencing.

Most people continued on through the walkways as they wound around and to the exit. However I went up some stairs to the platforms where it wasn't caged and you could then way out to a platform over one of the larger fields full of tigers. I spent ages up there, got some really good shots and the tigers had much more space to play with. I saw other tour buses go through and eventually a bus came up with a armoured car behind it.

The tigers were suddenly interested and crowded the car, the guy opened his door to shoo them off and then released a duck into their midst. The duck must have had it's wings clipped but it made a good go of flying off, almost making it to the roof of the tour bus, with about 30 tigers just pawing at it and the bus. Now that would have been exciting to be inside!

Eventually it just could not make it and fell back into the pack of tigers and a tiger emerged victorious with a meal.

A little later another duck was released and this one had less time to live as the tigers got it much quicker, with again, a single one running off with a meal. On the other side of the platform was another field and a busload there got to see a bird released, this one made it all the way to the tree line, close to the platform, before it succumbed.

I must have been up there for a hour, it was the best way to see the tigers with out a doubt. The buses would probably be a better way during the summer time, as I imagine the park comes alive then too.

Plus you can see out of them then.

Back into the car park area, there was a globe of the earth showing where the park was, two themed parks where one had a 'fun' tiger kids theme, and the other was a more somber themed one, more educational I'd imagine.

A video screen was playing showing a documentary with subtitles about the park, and it was only as I was about to leave did the end credits show who produced it. It was a Foreign Correspondent from 2007 produced by our very own ABC.

It can be found here http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/video_archive_2007.htm I think.

All up the park was so-so, the animals are magnificent and were great to see, but like with most zoos, you're half thrilled to see them, half bummed out they're there. But as per the Lonely Planet book mentions, the park is doing a good job at breeding these rare tigers, so maybe it's for the best until things improve in the wild.

Worth a visit for sure.

09/01/10 - Harbin Polar Land

I left the tigers to their birds and caught a taxi to Harbin Polar Land, a building that houses all sorts of Arctic and Antarctic creatures, with a few in between. Outside there were snow and ice sculptures, plus a ice slide and ice houses with little tables and chairs made out of ice inside.

The first creatures you see after entering are fish, of all things, with the added bonus of being able to bottle feed the Koi, those large orange and white ornamental fish you typically see in Japanese movies and the like. There are also a whole pond of them at the Singapore Flyer too.

And yeah, as in use a baby bottle to feed them, instead of the more typical throw stuff at them.

Other tanks housed Elephant Sharks, various catfish, sturgeon, various stingrays and something you should look up, a 'Mandarin duck underwater' correctly called a Limulus, a sort of living fossil, like those hard shelled crab-like creatures you see from ocean fossils from the Jurassic era etc.

After that I walked down a corridor lined with portholes that had chinese descriptions of famous ocean explorers, the only one I managed to easily recognise was Captain Cook. At the end of this corridor was a large aquarium, suspended in it was a large love heart outline made out of fake flowers with fish swimming all around it. Quite a few couples had photos taken in front of it in the short time I was there.

More small aquariums with tropical fish and coral, one had a whole mess of Moray Eels curling around each other and yet another was a cylinder aquarium with a rotating 'chandelier' of shells that housed poisonious fish, such as the Lionfish, in it.

It was at this point I got the hurry on via a helpful employee, moving everyone through the rest of the building to where they had the last seal show of the day.

The show was pretty good, the seals where well trained and got fed well for their efforts. Did a good mix of humour and showmanship. Other than that, it was a seal show, with all that entails. The music was VERY recognisable from movies, even the podium was a character from a recent kid's CG movie. As with everything, it was indoors and the crowd was kept in the dark. But so people could see a little, they had painted icicles on the support columns. These then glowed via the nearby ultra violet lights (those purple ones that makes your white clothes glow) and looked like they really were made out of ice, it was a neat effect.

After the show finished and I battled the crowds some, I went back to where I left off at the fish aquariums. Standard aquarium fish were there with the most interesting being a few starfish affixed to a viewing window, next to sucker fish that were doing the same, so you can see how they affix themselves.

The next area had a shallow 'pond' you could watch seals just swimming in, with a helpful cartoon sign to remind you that seals will munch on your fingers should you give them the opportunity.

From there was the penguin room which. like the Singapore penguin exhibit, had a tank where you could watch the penguins on or below the water, or the ground behind that. Apparently they recently celebrated the first chick born there too.

Arctic foxes and their pups featured next, with the foxes in a small glass enclosure and the pups in a similar glass enclosure, that featured a large hamster wheel for one to run in. The foxes just circled their glass cage, it was depressing.

Going by the advertising, the polar bears are the headline act for the park, but their area was drained and under renovation when I was there. I could just see one at the back of the enclosure in a little cage. It looks like they do not get much room either.

The areas for the Arctic foxes and the polar bears were a bit depressing, but they had nothing on the tank allocated to the two Beluga's or White Whales. They had just enough room to circle over and over, not on top of the water, as there was not enough room, but like viewing a wheel of a car.

It made sense why this was so when the show started, as it gave the audience an easy close contained way to view the whales, as they performed graceful tricks with the trainer who was with them. You could choose to watch the show from above or below the water, with large LCD screens on either floor so you would not miss the action. To finish out the show they blew air rings from their blowhole, that expanded as they went up.

From there it was jellyfish of all sorts in large plastic tubes with various multicoloured lights on them, then through to the large aquarium featuring sharks, turtles, cod and various other large fish. Projected on the opposite wall was a fish screensaver that I don't think I've seen for like 10 years. A blank wall would have been preferable.

Running the gambit of souvenirs shops and eateries, I ended up outside where after a bit of worry, I managed to hail a cab and get back to the hotel.

All up, this place was depressing. While it's not run down, the animals look healthy and it's clean. It's just the lack of space for the animals. I can understand they want to give the audience the best possible view of the animals, or the lack of funds perhaps, but it was just so depressing that the animals should have had bigger enclosures. I know that's my opinion from what I've seen back home but I just came away from this place bummed out.

Kids would love it much more, as perhaps they won't be bothered by it.

08/01/10 - Harbin - Haerbin Architecture Arts Centre and Zhaolin Park‏

Today it was off off to Zhaolin Park, home of the proper ice sculptures and the Disney 'theme' ice park. I left early for the park so I could see what sights and shops were in the surrounding area before it got dark.

On the taxi ride over, we went past the very russian looking building that I've seen in advertising all around town, mostly on the banners for the subway which I believe is under construction. Luckily, said building was only 3 blocks away from the park when the taxi dropped me off, so I back tracked to it.

The building that caught my question once was know as the Church of St Sophia, a Russian Orthodox church that now houses the Haerbin Architecture Arts Centre, a museum of sorts that houses photos of the early life and buildings of Harbin.

The museum shares Harbin Architecture Art Square with Brick Porch (might have been an ex bus station) and Tower Porch (imagine if you will a typical gothic church, but just have the outline of it and make it out of steel) and surrounded by buildings from a similar era, but not style. Built in 1907 the museum seemed to be holding together well, worn as it is, and the added inclusion of snow caps in place just added to the attractiveness of it.

You need a ticket to get into the Museum, so I made my way over and right next to the ticketing booth was a vendor selling bird food for the pigeons that had gathered on that side of the building. They were very tame and happily clambered up onto the children's arms as they offered the seed up.

The museum itself wasn't to bad, but I kept finding myself drawn to the architecture of the building, whether it be the non-restored interior, with flaking mortar on the roof and walls, murals half worn away surrounding chandlers and the odd worn cross. Old light fittings that were embedded into the mortar had crumbled out in place, and there might have even been bullet holes in another place, though that's just a fanciful guess.

Exiting the ex-church, I wandered around the square some more, before I noticed a department store that looked like it had food counters from the outside. Those food counters turned out to be jewellery, and the place as pretty big, not Singapore shopping big and certainly not as densely packed as that Indian shopping centre near Wade's place in Singapore. That place was nuts.

But this was my first chinese inner city retail experience, so I explored for a while just looking at the typical city wares, annoyed that there was no 'big bastard' stores, but to be honest, most of the shops were very small and as such was their range. I got many a curious look from the store staff and customers and when I got out of there, it was getting dark and I was hungry, as I didn't find any food at all inside either. The only food place I could see outside was KFC, so in I went, pointed at a very handy menu on the counter and had the food, which, is very much like what we get back home, except the chips were more like the McDonald's variety.

From there I walked a block or two to the cobblestone street of Zhongyang Dajie after viewing a very old looking and majestic building from a distance.

Said building was new looking and was just a shopping front.

But, it did allow me to find the main shopping district of Harbin, which is closed off to traffic and has most of the older buildings of the city in it. I will explore this more later. I went up a few blocks in this shopping district then went right to get back to the park and to find the entrance for the ice sculptures.

The huge ferris wheel with neon signage on it assured me that I was heading in the right direction and eventually I came to one of the entries to the park. The section I entered into was all Disney, which a standard castle to the right of me that housed slides, to a large version of the castle from the movie Aladdin to my left, which also featured slides. Moving further along was snow sculptures of various disney princesses.

I finally saw some proper ice sculptures for the competition they have each year, though they were closed off and had guys individually lighting each one for a gaggle of photographers. I'd assume it's for the media, or the judges, so I tried to get a few photos of the more impressive ice sculptures before just being shooed on by a minder.

Mickey Park contained a ice area that had motorised dodgem cars that used ice blades for steering that people could just ram into each other. Hell long line on that one. At the end of the 'park' there was another castle with ice slides, no theme, just general disney character's images on posters on it.

Winnie-the-poh had his own village sculpted out of snow, but the characters were just painted fibreglass.

I believe I was getting close to what would be regarded as the front of the park now, as the paths where all lined with ice sculptures that I am fairly sure they craft from the same sized block of ice for the competition. There were some pretty good ones on display along the paths, and I even later found some kangaroo ones. These ice carvings were intricate, but still solid with no easy to break bits, a plus when they're this close to the main path.

Zhaolin Park must be quite nice during the warmer times of the year, as it's pretty well forested and has moats and lakes that now serve as place to place most of the large slides, be it ice or snow with a tube to go down on. There are chinese pergolas that currently house spotlights and even a bird 'sanctuary' with the cages for the birds styles as over large bird cages you would see in cartoons, some even had a bird or two in them, which can't be fantastic for them, but oh well. Also in force was the fake trees with the LED lights as leaves, again very visually striking.

The Pixar section is what I came across next, with various fibreglass characters from Toy Story you could pose with, or characters from 'Cars' sculpted in snow. Bit bummed I could not get a decent picture of me with the Toy Story gang, either too close or my breath fogged the camera.

Camera tip, when you go inside and it gets condensation all over it, don't immediately go outside with it not in its bag, or you are going to end up with a camera that is coated in solid ice. I learnt that one going in and out of the Disney store, which didn't actually have many people in it.

Minnie Mouse had her own snow built cottage, Chip and Dale had a snow sculpted tree house and Donald Duck has his own steamboat, though for all intents it looked like the steamboat from 'Steamboat Willie', the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. I was now at the official 'front' of the park I thought, as that entrance was giant ice mickey ears that you would pass through into a courtyard with high ice walls an posters of various disney characters on.

Circling around, there were more ice sculptures and a large area that featured various fixed rides, such as the mini roller coaster.

By now I'd looped back to my original starting entrance, so I made way to where they had the photographers at the roped off area featuring the more detailed ice sculptures. The area was still roped off, but the main lights were on and I had a good view of what was to see now, even if I had to juggle thing changing to my long range lens.

The detail, the fragility and the beauty of these sculptures really shone through. They were all excellent with different styles and settings and they were a cut above what I had seen already. With the flood lights on, I could much easily see them now, though they lacked the coloured lighting that possibly makes them more appealing.

Watchful of the minders, I got as close as I could and got some good pictures. It was only 7pm but the cold was starting to bite so I made my way out via another entry point to the park, this time at the 'top', hailed a taxi and got back to the Hotel for the night.

Oh! In case I didn't mention it earlier, the business cards of the place you are staying are REALLY handy to have a stash of to give to taxi drivers if you don't know the language.

This was a good day where nothing really went wrong. Hurray!

07/01/10 - Harbin Ice Festival‏

Well, it was time to get my real chinese experience holiday going after a rough start in the previous two days.

The ever helpful concierge stood out on the road in the snow and cold to hail me a taxi for at least 20 minutes before one finally came in. Before I went he asked me why I was going to the ice festival so early. So early would be about 1pm or so from memory, maybe earlier. I thought it would be best to get a good start at it, but as I later found out, the show really only kicks off once night falls.

Regardless, with the help of the concierge and a map a hawker sold to me at the train station courtyard, I got a taxi to the Harbin Ice Festival, which houses all the ice constructions, as I've since learnt, the Disney themed park and Ice carved sculptures are in Zhaolin Park and the snow sculptures are on Sun Island. Helpful hit if you ever decide to make the trip yourself as the information available isn't that clear.

Regardless! 100 yuan later and with it being very overcast and snowing, I was here, at the entrance to the Ice Festival.

And I will mention this over and over, it was cold. Snowed all day and night, and I was worried sick about the snow buildup on my camera, but since it is so cold, it never seemed to melt and I could just brush it right off. The condensation when you go inside a building on the other hand, is something to be wary of with electronics, as that just draws the water right to it.

Anyways, I should probably talk about the event itself.

It was another 100 yuan to enter and this left me short of cash, but I wasn't worried, as surely there would be an ATM on site, or I could use my credit card.

How silly I was. There was nothing, it's all cash, including the ticketing office for entry. This lack of cash would come into play later in this story.

The entrance itself is massive, this year it was in a temple style wall with the left side being the entrance and the right side where all the cars would park behind.

Anyways! Ticket in hand, eyes wide open (figuratively, did I mention the wind, cold and snow? Yes? Good.) and camera at the ready I trudged in. When I entered, I think there would have been 30 people or so in the park, not including staff. Still, I just pointed in a direction of what I found interesting and started taking photos and reading the descriptions where I could.

Straight up there was a massive chinese styled palace, with a ice sculpted chariot with horses running out of it, and flags from around the world in front of it.

Off to the left there was a maze that was two interconnecting love hearts, so lovers could enter at either end and romantically meet up in the middle. Given the maze was about waist height, if you didn't meet up with your sweet heart halfway through, perhaps indeed it wasn't meant to be. Keeping to the left of the grounds, there was a giant chess board, a massive snow sculpture of chinese styled lions running and even the colosseum with chinese scripture all over it.

Ah, I could describe it all, but better to go over to my flickr webpage and just look at them yourself.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/burnsrado/sets/

There were activities there that were free as far as I knew, such as riding a converted bike on the ice, or sitting on a small sled, either which you propelled yourself along with metal poles with spikes on the ends and either steer with said poles, or some of the sleds had a steering mechanism you would operate with your feet. There was also a large bell you could ring by slamming a decent size log into it and of course there were quite a few outside vendors selling cold food, basic winter wear, photographs of yourself or even the chance to hold a winter fox pup. There was also food places around that were basically glass buildings you could go to to escape the cold. As a dummy with lack of chinese, I really wished they had their menus or food items on display so I could just hopefully point at said item. Not that it really mattered, as after two hot drinks I was just about out of cash.

There were plenty of sights and things to see and photograph, but one that was not officially part of the grounds caught my eye. At the back you could overlook a field that was completely lined with a large red brick wall. It seemed vacant, though off to one corner was a large drill rig. Oh, and off to the other side further into the distance it looked to be an artificial hill so people could ski down it, complete with chairlifts. And across the road is the VERY cool looking Heilongjiang Science and Technology Museum, which consist of a massive glass sphere with an equally large building behind it with a graceful sloping roof. It looked right out of a Bond movie as some sort of satellite control or nuclear control facility. I was most impressed and I want it as a future lair.

Moving along that side of the park with the brick wall, there were two massive snow sculptures of two seated figures of buddhist mythos with a place in front for the faithful to pray.

I passed the time by getting onto the various ice constructions that had slides and coating myself in snow and ice as I screamed on down them. Towards the back there was a large 'snowfield' you could get a tube ride down that was proving popular with the few that was in the park. While most sat in the tubes and went down, I went head first laid down, and besides a face full of snow, I got a few cheers from the crowd up top. Next to this slope was a flying fox setup that was not operational until the night, but when it was going it was fun to watch the people scream on down it and slam into the padding on the wall at the end.

There was also a tie in to the Soccer World Cup later this year, with an ice sculpture of the trophy as well as a huge soccer ball inflatable building with the local sponsor of the World Cup, Harbin Beer's logos all over it. Inside there was a large block of ice with said beer bottles sticking out of it, a stage that would later feature a girl dancing act and a projector that would project a screen onto the globe itself from the inside. Close to the dome was another ice construction which as a huge beer bottle with the label for Harbin Beer wrapped around it. In front of this was a guy who must have been a famous sports person (I'd guess soccer) in China, as he had a crowd of on lookers and a lot of photographers taking photos as he tried to keep a can of Harbin Beer aloft by kicking it repeatedly.

I've read in past years there was been themes for this event, but I could not detect any at this years, which had a range of buildings such as the Great Wall, the sphinx, the colosseum, various temples from around asia and the above mentioned world cup stuff.

By the time darkness came, I had well and truly explored the grounds and visitors were starting to come in, outdoor vendors were starting to really show off their wares and the horse drawn sleds were out in force all over the park. The lights, both internal and externally slowly came on, one after the other and it slowly got to be more colourful after the white wash of most of the day. It started to get dark around 4pm and really got to night at about 4.30pm or so.

Now that it was dark, it meant one thing, I had to go over everything again and take more photos!

And colourful it was.

There were fake trees plastic leaves and the 'flowers' were LED lights that lit up, to great effect. The snow sculptures all had external lights, mostly just plain white lights to highlight the snow I'd assume. The ice buildings mostly had internal lights, whether it by the typically fluorescent lights you'd see at home, to the smaller LED lights to the lighting system I could not quite make out that could change colour at will. It was all to excellent effect regardless and since it was snowing the air itself glowed with the surrounding lights.

The park was really thick with visitors by then with many taking snapshots (Be it camera phone all the way up to the very high end cameras that cost more than my trip to date), many posing, and most amusingly, the news reporters and the camera operators, which would heard a group at random to walk in front of a camera, or to look interested at a block of ice. There might have even been a local politician in the mix with one of the crowds.

The many slides were very popular, though a few of the longer ones had places were you'd screech to a halt mid way, if you didn't have the foresight to get some cardboard to sit on, or in some more keen people, other blocks of ice.

I'm not sure what time I got out of there, but it was late, even when you take into account what time night began. I made my way to the taxi ranks and realised I didn't have any money to pay the Taxi for the ride home. I could have sworn I saw an ATM machine or a credit card reader in an earlier taxi, so I tried to communicate with the drivers that I could pay via card. That didn't work and I was saved by two young ladies explaining that I can get money out to pay the driver. We all piled into a cab as their place was on the way to mine, and when the driver pulled up outside a bank I rushed in and got money out and rushed back out.

Eventually I got back to the hotel, paid the taxi driver who was quite understanding about the whole affair (at least I hope so) and got inside to the foyer.

Then it hit me, where was my waist bag that my cards, room card and passport was in. Oh Sh*t. I just about collapsed in the foyer ripping apart my bags and clothes looking for it, but it was no longer on me. I thought it was a brilliant and safe move to keep my cards in said waist bag so they would not get stolen or go missing. And in my rush to get a card and use the atm everything else had dropped away.

The front desk guys did an excellent job in calming me the hell down and after a hour or two, my passport and cards were located by a security guard inside the bank I got the money out of. So it was into a taxi for me and the on duty concierge as we went late at night to get it back.

Moral of the story, have plenty of god damn cash on you in China. (well here at least) I now keep quite a bit on me, and at least 200 yuan just stuffed into my outside pockets for easy reach so I don't have to go digging ever again. Oh, other moral, don't get flustered and don't loose your god damn passport.

Other than that, it was a great day. Again, check out the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/burnsrado/sets/ or I can always make these posts about 5 times as long trying to do justice to what I saw.

06/01/10 - Harbin Shops‏

Woke up around about 3pm after the stress and no sleep on the plane of the previous day.

A little demoralised, I set my targets low of finding some shops to get some food at.

The concierges here are great, they stood out in the cold to get me a taxi and explain to the driver what I wanted. The taxi dropped me off a few kilometres up the main road the hotel was on and the shopping complex had a mini mart and a KFC-like restaurant, named Dico's. Luckily for me, they had the menu on little cards, so I could just point at what I wanted.

Food was pretty good, then I went for a look in the main supermarket, which seemed to have most things. Picked up a beanie while I was there, plus some sugary goodness and made my way out. Even found a few Australian products on the shelves. Mostly juices.

It was dark by the time I got out, and the lines for the taxis and the buses were rather long. So I decided to walk back, as it wasn't too far and I needed to see if I could.

And indeed I could, though everything is rather slippery, so you have to walk in a shuffling manner and I only went arse up once.

The roads are constantly swept by people dodging traffic and stacking the black snow in little clumps either in the middle or edge of the road. A truck will come along later and another batch of people will shovel the black snow into the truck.

There are places to cross the road, but people seem to do it anywhere, often getting caught in between traffic. It's not too bad, as the traffic tends to move slowly as it's snowy and slippery as is.

I got back to the hotel, consumed some sugary goodness and hit the bed.

05/01/10 - Singapore to Harbin‏

The penny really dropped today, but before that.

I flew out of Singapore in one hell of an old airliner. The entire cabin shook and swayed as we took off and the drop down TV's were of the old cathode ray type and none of them where clear or even correct colour. I think I may have gotten a hour sleep somewhere there, but at least the food was good.

We landed at Shanghai airport at around 6am or so. I had about 2 hours stop over there and most of this time was spent walking to the other terminal and getting through security.

The flight to Harbin I had two hyperactive men besides me, whom I am guessing were on their first flight, and found it very amusing to be sitting next to me with my shorts on. Even the hostess warned me on the way in Harbin was very cold.

The flight there was fairly straight forward, the airplane made two major turns about mid-way, to avoid North Korea I would guess. There was thick cloud cover all the way and when it finally broke we must have been somewhere over the coast, with large numbers of large ships everywhere. Food was being served at the time, so I couldn't get my camera from the overhead compartment. Boo!

Getting closer to Harbin, it was either mountains or large expanses with the occasional village to break up the bleakness. From above, it really looked like the view from above when Emerald got flooded a few years ago, even the colours looked close.

We finally landed in Harbin and while it was an enclosed walkway, it was indeed cold, though I had my jacket. There was a change room available right after luggage claims and I got into my suit as such. Though I didn't put on thermals or change socks, as I thought it would be easy to get to the hotel, and wasn't concerned about the cold too much. That was a mistake.

I found out my phone doesn't work in China, neither does the phone's GPS, even though I was told it would. It's now a glorified alarm clock.

Through some translation via one of the chinese ladies at the airport, I managed to get into a bus for the ride into the city. There are no road markings viewable through winter, and the roads are multilane here, so you have cars, trucks and buses just weaving in and out of each other, honking their horns to let people know they are there, passing with in centimetres of each other.

I'll condense the next bits. I basically ended up lost at a train station I didn't know where it was, with no phone, no working pay phones, no cabbie could read the english address of the hotel and I had dubious private taxi dudes approaching me at every turn. And I was cold, freezing out of my mind.

Eventually after walking around in circles at the station's outside park, looking for buses or other information, I went to the biggest hotel I could see to try my luck. Using my iPod to translate, I managed to get myself into an internet bar upstairs and look up the address of the hotel. I took photos of it with my camera, the chinese address and chinese map. As the english maps were not even remotely correct. Exiting there I made my way to the taxi line up, waited for about a hour in the cold, stamping around to keep heated and eventually got to the hotel.

I was overstressed and hungry and really thought about getting a plane home after this day. Room service dropped off some fruit which I ate, then I went to bed, exhausted.

I never want to be this cold, this hungry or this worried ever again.

04/01/10 - Singapore - Singapore Science Centre‏

Well, today was my last day in Singapore before I had to fly out that night, and my plan was to see Singapore's Parliament and the Asian Cultural Museum. But that changed when I found out Singapore has a science centre much like our Questacon. I found out in a roundabout way through a few photo blogs of Singapore, and at the time it had a Star Wars exhibit. No such luck this time, but they did have the 'Body Worlds' Exhibit, which is where human bodies are plasticised and put on display, usually stripping off layers of skin, muscle and bone. I completely ran out of time to see this as the science centre as a whole sucked me in.

Anyways, getting ahead of myself.

I spent the morning trying to track down a little thank you to Wade. Uncharted: Drakes Revenge, a Playstation 3 game that I've raved about that recently had a very highly regarded sequel. I must have went to (seemed like) hundreds of stores and could only find one copy of the American edition, that I was unsure of it would work. But I did spot another stellar title of Mass Effect for the PC, which I promptly got.

On the way to one shopping centre, I passed by the Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts building, a 1930's era building that once was home to the police, serving as quarters, garage and administration. Today quite striking, with the mix of the old building itself, and all the window frames and shutters being brightly coloured. Walking through to the courtyard you pass by panels displaying the history of the site and end up looking at a nice water fountain. Behind this building was one of the entrances to Fort Canning Park, which had some well done murals around this entrance. To the right of the entrance there was some bronze figures dedicated to Singapore's Fire Brigades.

When finally I was done with the shops, I headed out to the Jurong East MRT station, which was the closest to the Singapore Science Centre. You could walk for about 10 minutes to it, or take the bus. The bus had air conditioning and dropped me right off outside.

The Singapore Science Centre starts with the displays straight away, with a huge animatronic T-Rex outside, the very pathways themselves being based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, a water park on the left side of the entrance that shows the various properties of fluids in motions and various physics examples for kids to play all over on the right. Entering, the first wing I went through was all about illusions, optical or otherwise. Passing through this I came to the central hub of the centre, housing a Tesla Coil with minimal protection around it. Perfect!
In this main hub room, there was many cool things to view, whether it be a Jacob's Ladder, a machine that you can generate smoke rings with, a disc that houses fluid that when you spin it produces very pretty turbulent flow patterns and a booth that houses a fountain that spray large water drops down, that if you adjust the strobe light, it can be made to look like the water is going up.

I was there in time for the Tesla Coil demonstration and the lady doing the talk got extra points from me by mentioning the Tesla Coils in the computer game, 'Red Alert'. Though, I don't think this one one is THAT lethal, just a little lethal for sure. For first demonstration was just a simple fire up of the Tesla coil, which brilliant arcs that I got one of my best pictures of. The second firing they changed the top wire to a single rod, and the bolt just arced up and out from the one side. The third firing, children were giving fluorescent bulbs and were to hold them up. They lit up as the coil did, to the oohs of the kids.

The final test went off with a bang, literally. Balloons were placed close to the Tesla Coil, filled with guess what, Hydrogen! They arced up the Tesla Coil and the balloons went off with a satisfying fireball to conclude the demonstration.

From there I went off into one of the spoke halls from the hub, which seemed to be all about electronics and visual stimuli. The first thing that drew my attention was a machine where you would type in anything you want, and letter by letter a 'sheet' of water would spell out what you typed as it dropped down from the top. From there, you could play a game in 3D using provided glasses, shoot robots using hand gestures and even play a shoot-em-up style game on a large video table, shooting by flicking your fingers and grabbing power-ups by well, grabbing them with your hand. Another table would see what you placed on it, and do draw around it. If you put something long and thin on it, it would make that a train track with a locomotive and carriages going along them. Throwing my phone on the table made flowers sprout out along the edge of it.
Yet another table was a dirt car racing game, where two people would using standard controllers to get their cars to an exit portal. The cool thing here, was a third person could move their arms over the display, and depending on how far you had your arm over the table, it would make higher mountains to block their way. I could make moving waves with my arms to deform the racing landscape.

A disc shaped table had a projection of the world on it, perhaps using google earth for reference. It was very cool. To zoom in our out, you would grab the edge and spin it left or right. If you want to move around, you would tilt the entire table in the direction you wanted to move. This is the future ladies and gentlemen.

I was looking at the science fiction displays when the call for the lightning show came up. I rushed with the crowd to the appropriate hall and waited for a few minutes for the show to begin. The first demonstration was a Jacob's ladder, followed by a demonstration on whether lightning like pointy or rounded objects to strike. It prefers pointy, but since the pointy's surface area is limited, it will go to the rounded if the pointy gets overloaded. The last demonstration had a large plastic disc placed between to the electrode and the earth. The question was, would it go around the disc, or would it go through. I had my thoughts on both being possibly correct, but when the lightning arced around the plastic disc in multiple areas like a old style carriage wheel, there was only one option.

Following the show, I hung around in this hall, viewing exhibits like little fans that turn by the heat waves from a light to displays on the different types of batteries. Upstairs from this hall was a exhibit on Virus's and Bacteria. It was well done, with scale models of the virus's when compared to a human hair, to a 3D presentation about how you can get the virus infects a cell. They focused on about 10 different virus's that are relevant today, such as H1N1, HIV and Hepatitis. The information was well presented and informing, I did get the impression the exhibit went out of its way to educate people about how HIV is not transmitted, to make people a little less fearful of someone who is infected. Things like a kiss won't transmit it, etc.
From there it was straight into how the human body works, with displays as well as various contraptions you could get on to test yourself. I managed to get the best balance time on the board there with a time of 2 seconds!

It was fast approaching closing time so I made a run for the Sight and Sound exhibition hall. One of the very first things to draw my eye was this machine that had metal filings on top in a thick layer. What you would do is to select a song and powerful magnets underneath would work like a visual equaliser to move the filings around in time with the music.
I want one.

Another video table had different shaped blocks on it, and you could adjust where the blocks were, or how many on the table to get 'music' to play with visuals being displayed on the table as well. There was also a perspective room, where one person would be in one corner, another person in the other and they would look like giant and midget from a certain perspective.

Closing time got me, so I got out of there and figuring a taxi would be the quickest way to get to where I was going next, I got one. Well, damn, Singapore as it turns out has a rush hour.
I got off at the Orchid area, to head to the Ion Orchid mall to get some flavoured popcorn for Athene, one because I ate a bit of hers, and two, it was the best thank you gift I could think of. What a nightmare. Took me forever to find the place, tucked in as it was in a corner, and that was only after I had given up and made my way to the MRT, to only find the shopping centre continued on the other side as well.

My bloody phone was out of credit and they only way to charge it was online, so I had to find an internet cafe to log on and recharge it. The time without said phone working gave me some worries, as I was not completely sure which station I had to get off for dinner.

I was rather late for our last dinner with Wade, Athene, Jackson and I. We went to a street where there were a whole lot of open aired restaurants close together, and you could order from different ones for the one table. Most of the food was pretty good, the crab gave me a lot of trouble as I tried to break its shell with chopsticks, only to later find nutcrackers under the plate rim.

For dessert we went to an Indian place around the corner, where firstly had this dish they explained to be was cooked tissue paper. It was basically just a sweetish cooked thin bread or waffle rolled up into a 'dunces' cap. The second dish was the same stuff with ice cream stuffed into a log of it.

Said our goodbyes to Jackson we made our way back to the apartment and I got to packing as I was leaving Singapore in a few hours. When all was done, Wade escorted me to the airport where we promptly went to the wrong terminal. (I swear I read it was terminal 2 not 3.) I was last in line for the check ins and made it through security to the plane. I got a lot of odd looks from the passengers for wearing shorts and settling down, we took off at about 1 am.

Singapore is hot and sultry, so pack accordingly. The public transport system I found to be excellent, it's based off a card you can purchase in any train terminal, just make sure your credit is up to date on them.

By no means did I explore the island in full, but what I did see was clean, modern and very heavily based in English. It would have to be the most ideal place for an english speaking westerner to visit for a introduction to asia.

I'd like to thank Wade and Athene for their hospitality, good will and knowledge of Singapore. Wade picked up me up from the airport as I landed and even waited around as I got lost inside trying to get out. (Construction was to blame!)

They took me out to various restaurants, ordered food I wouldn't typically eat, well more so wouldn't even know about and taught me how to use chopsticks.

It was really good to catch up, talk trash and get up to mischief with them, and I hope to do so again.