-I found out I was leaving at 5pm so had some time to go on the walking tour in the afternoon. We went over to Tianzifang (see Wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianzifang). It was a really cute artsy area full of little cafes and lots of shops. My favorite was the toilet themed cafe where you sit on toilet seats and there are urinals hung on the wall. I bought a Shanghai t-shirt for my future t-shirt quilt but couldn't buy anything else out of fear my bag was already overweight. Blythe, Elizabeth and I stopped at McDonald's on the way back for some McFlurries and fries. I also have no clue if Qiqihar has McDonalds (future me, who is writing this, now knows that it doesn't).
An entrance to Tianzifang:
Lockets for sale:
I want this:
I found the horses head in China:
Puzzlessssss. I wanted to buy them all but have no room in my suitcase:
A lady sleeping at the vegetable market we found:
-Once back I had a few hours to do some last minute packing and skyping. At 5pm me and five other people in my group- Jennifer, Michael, Bob, Wesley, and Kai, met in the lobby for our departure. We were all hired by the same company but placed in different areas around Heilongjiang Province. I am the only one in Qiqihar. We made it to the airport and successfully checked in. I had to pay around $30 for my overweight bag. The baggage allowance is only 20kg here (44lbs), so it wasn't too heavy! Just 15lbs overweight! I blame my peanut butter.
-We checked in and made it through to the domestic terminal. Since it was domestic all of the food was Asian. We had some dumplings in a little restaurant, which resulted in a sneaky picture taking by a man nearby. Westerners eating food! Oh my god! We then played this 'contact' game which I had never done before. It was a lot of fun. Our flight was delayed a little bit but not too long. I read my book and slept on most of it.
-We landed three hours later at Harbin Airport. You could tell from the bathrooms that we were now in real China (squatters anyone?). Two girls from the company, Sabrina and Fiona, met us at the gate. They said they knew it was us from out passport photos, that and us being the only four lost looking foreigners in the airport. We had to wait for Wesley and Michael who were on a different flight for some reason. We took the most surreal bus ride into Harbin. First our bags were chained together and locked on the bottom of the bus. Then they kept playing the equivalent of Chinese disney music. The lyrics were all in English, but it was that kind of music. I lost it when the Shakira song came on in Chinese. Bob was right there with me, deliriously cracking up at the absurdity of the situation.
-Once we made it into the city, then squeezed ourselves and our bags into three taxis, we finally made it to the hotel. Because we were so late to check in I was going to have to share a room with the two ladies from the company. I was a little uneasy about doing that so ended up sharing a room with Bob. Probably one of the strangest nights of my life, sharing a room with a guy I met three or four days ago. Of course the strap on my big suitcase broke (Beijing purchase, it was bound to happen) which made lugging it up the stairs pretty difficult. Then once I finally made it into bed I couldn't sleep at all and seemed to spend what was left of the night staring at the ceiling.
No comments:
Post a Comment