Long Qing Ice Festival

A few weeks ago (just before Thailand), Jane and I went with some people to a place called Yan Qing to go to an ice festival and also to take photos at an old, half-built amusement park.

It would prove to be an odd trip.

First thing was to get to the station to meet the person organising the trip. Easy enough, it was only a few stops away. The only problem, we had never met her before. Still that part was fine. Then with everyone in tow (turned out there were 8 of us), we made our way against the pedestrian traffic during rush hour, to the bus station. Fortunately Nic (the organising person) speaks great Mandarin and could sort out which bus to catch. Then we sit on the bus, which is fine cause I was expecting to have to stand, for about 70 minutes until we arrive at this town. It seems completely normal so far but the weirdness factor grows by how weird everyone else thinks we are. Apparently white people (much less groups of white people) don't come here much and when they do, they don't come on the bus. And they don't stay in the hotels because only one hotel was allowed to have us stay. It was nice enough, so we dropped our stuff and having organised some completely illegal cabs, we were on our way to the festival.

We arrived and it was starting to get cold. We asked the cab guys to wait (each time in this story when I say we'd done something that involved a Chinese person, please note that Nic did it and I did not participate in the exchange) so as soon as we arrived they left.
We started walking up and found a huge number of lanterns with no people. In fact there weren't really any people anywhere. Which is also weird.
We started walking up the road, past all the lanterns (see the photos at the end for more details!) and finally ended up at the ticket office. Tickets were 100 yuan which is quite a lot (for comparison, the pension is about 300 yuan a month) and sort of explained why there was no one around.

Still we went in and it was all light, lanterns, sculptures etc, but no ice (other than the frozen lake). Eventually we found some of what used to be ice sculptures but were clearly in the process of melting. Uh oh, have we made a huge mistake?

It turns out we had not made a huge mistake because inside this tent thing were the real ice sculptures. There were dragons and buddhas and temples and deer and all sorts of things. They freeze the ice around these lights so that when they build the stuff it can be lit up. It looks amazing but oh so cold. Having looked around for a while, we made our way out again, Nic called the "taxi" drivers who said "sorry but it's too late and we don't want to come out now." Hmm. Fortunately there was a guy with a van there who would take us all for less than the cost of the two cars, and he would wait while we finished taking photos of the lanterns.

At this point a few people (Jane included) were completely frozen and just got in the van. I wandered down with everyone else and we got to see a few lanterns before the security guard started turning them off. When asked why he was turning them off an hour before closing, he replied "there's no one here." Not sure what we were then.

After a completely insane trip back into town (the back seat of the van wasn't attached, we had 3 people sitting in the boot and the driver insisted on spitting out the window every 500m) we got to the hotel, dumped our camera gear and started looking for food. We couldn't find anywhere! We walked for a while but it was so cold we headed back to the KFC we passed, but then I remembered having seen a bunch of people eating in this basement place. Turns out it was the local noodle shop. My food was quite nice, there was soooo much of it and Jane's and mine together cost 14 yuan, which is just over $2. Score!

Then it was back to the hotel for a good nights sleep. We didn't get one though as our window faced the roundabout where everyone was beeping all night, along with the town clock that not only bonged the appropriate number of bongs each hour but then told you the time and date in Mandarin.

Anyway, here are the photos I took, I will get onto the tale of the abandoned amusement park. . .

Long Qing Ice Festival

Back from dive trip in Thailand

We're back from our trip out on the boat in Thailand. More to come later but here's the map of where we are:

View Larger Map

We started in Khao Lak (where all the pins are), headed east to the lower set of islands (the Similans) then up to Koh Bon, then Koh Tachai then almost to the top set where Richelieu rock is, then back down to Koh Bon, then in towards Khao Lak stopping at a wreck on the way.

Spring is springing!!

It's finally starting to warm up in Beijing. After almost 3 months of mostly below zero temperatures, freezing wind, frozen lakes and super low humidity, we're starting to get more than a couple of degrees above zero, which is fantastic!

Yesterday I went out without a jumper (although still with thermals, gloves, scarf, beanie and down jacket) which is great and it got up to 8 degrees in the middle of the day today. I went out without my beanie and it wasn't freezing!!

We're heading to Thailand for a week on Sunday, I'm really hoping that it warms up a bit more by the time we get back.

The long and complicated power process

I may have mentioned before, they don't send electricity bills here like they do at home. Basically there's an account system that you top up when it runs low and when it's running low they put a note on the door to let us know. Each apartment has a card that you can add credit to top up the meter with.
The problem is that I didn't notice the note for a couple of days! So I saw it this afternoon and realised that I might run out of power at any point.
The other problem is that last time we did this, the cleaner took the card with her and I didn't find out what happened to it! So I called the estate agent and (eventually) found that she didn't have it. I called the office and (eventually, after trying to let the office lady know that I didn't want another pass and I didn't want to leave a message for Jane) had to ride over there on the coldest day so far to pick up the card.
Once I got the card it was easy, I just had to take it to the payment office, give them some money, take the card back and add in the credit. Of course the meters don't have the apartment numbers on them (why would they?) so I also had to work out which one was the right one. It turns out that C(3) on the meter means 3-C on the card. Clearly.
So now I have electricity again :)

It's finally over!

So after a full week of what felt like endless fireworks, they finally seem to have stopped! During the week wasn't so bad, they only had a few during the day and they went for a few hours each night but the weekends have been shocking. I keep saying it feels like living in a war (at least my idea of a war zone), explosions and flashing lights everywhere. Some of the fireworks were nice ones but most of them were just loud.
Still it seems they are done for the moment. The actual holiday started last Sunday (so people had to work on the Saturday) then all through the week and people were supposed to go back to work today. There certainly aren't many people around so maybe they have gone back to work.
I'm just pleased it's finished, I am SO sick of fireworks. On some of the days they were starting just after 7am (in the morning!) and going fairly continually until 2 and 3am the following morning. That's 19 or 20 continual hours of fireworks. Since the place in the apartment blocks to let them off is just outside my window (and most people's really) it's hard to get away from them.

However I think it's done for the year, now stuff will reopen and we can get back to "normality"!

Chinese New Year

Hi All!
I haven't written anything on my blog lately, partly cause not that much has been happening but I've also fallen out of the habit so I will try to post a little more in the future.

It's currently the middle of Chinese New Year (called Spring Festival in China). This is one of the times of year where the Chinese get a whole week off that they usually use to visit their families. The news said they were expecting upwards of 3 billion trips (planes, trains, cars and buses) over this period and also explains why I'm not in the US. The tickets were going to cost me way too much so I ended up staying home.
The other thing about CNY are the fireworks. There was a sign in the lefts in the building saying that they are only permitted to let off fireworks between 7am and 12am (only 19 hours a day!) but they broke that in the first day!

As of Sunday, they started just after 7am and went until a bit after 3am the next morning, then started again around 8am or so. They have calmed down a little now (so they're not going constantly) but in the evenings it's still pretty regular. I'm not a huge fan of fireworks, probably even less of a fan now, but they have been nice to watch. I took a video at about 10:30pm the other night (people with no bandwidth like grandparents may not want to watch at home :)

That was from my apartment window looking out over the frozen lake in the middle of the complex.

It was also my birthday the other day which was nice. There are some people here that it was nice to see (hi Adam and Anita!!) but I was definitely missing Jane and everyone back in Aus. Usually we have a nice big birthday party with everyone who's around and I really missed that this year.

Pics from Paris

So I've been a bit busy (well sort of busy) lately and have finally managed to get through my photos from Paris.
I've got a lot though so I'm going to sort of string them out a bit, so people (assuming people are reading this!) don't get too bored of my idea of a nice architecture photo.

Walking around Paris

This album does have what is currently one of my favourite photos of all time (that I've take anyway) so see if you can spot which one!