Icy North

Hello from Mudanjiang in the deep freeze of China- Heilongjiang Province!

I came to Harbin from Beijing last Friday to a -20 Celsius reception. People have been scaring me a lot about this place saying you'll freeze your ass off but if you wear enough clothes, it's grand. Right now I have 2 pairs of long johns under my jeans and on top i have two pairs of long john tops, a T-shirt and a jumper! Feet and hands get a bit chilly from time to time and your head too unless you wear a hat! I did notice that your ears start to get really sore after a minute or 2 if you don't wear a hat. I also noticed that your snot sort of freezes in your nose! We were lucky I'd be a real killer!

So, I saw the Ice Lantern Festival in Harbin, which was cool. They have a park full of buildings and sculptures made from Ice, some of which have lights inside, which look really cool at night. They also have an icy walkway, for people to test their ice-walking and falling over skills. Very amusing!

The next day we went to the Sun Island Park snow sculpture place. To get there, you had to cross the frozen Songhua river. This was a first for me, since I never saw a frozen river before! It was cool. At the riverbank, they had made an Ice rink and hockey rink and some bobsled slides and some other icy activities! They really know how to make money but of ice here!

We got a horse and carriage over to the Island and went into the park. Sculptures were really cool, ranging from Russian churches to Japanese palaces as well a characters from Chinese folklore and religion. Amazing stuff!

Got the train to Mudanjiang, where my friend here is from. just chilling out, as it is a quiet enough place. However, they do have stuff on their frozen Mudan river and we tried some icy antics yesterday!Wow, I think I am getting used to the cold. I'll probably melt when I get to Hong Kong on Friday!