Winter in China - Beijing and Harbin and a bunch of flights on TG, CA & SQ

[calvinoeh]

What were the temperatures like in Harbin? I had wanted to go 3 years ago but was talked out of it by my sis-in-law.

It was ~-20C while I was there. That's freaking cold akin to sticking your face in the freezer! It was definitely worth it though - unique experience. Would I go back anytime soon - probably not. Off to the beach or some place warm next time round!

[calvinoeh]

Ibis Harbin

We decided to stay at Ibis Harbin primarily because the hotel was really cheap (~$20USD/night) for a room thanks to the Accor supersale rate. The normal going rate is about ~$50 USD per night and the check-in agent helping us even made a comment on how cheap our rate was. We would have paid more to stay at the Sofitel which had additional facilities but the location seemed too inconvenient as it was out of the city. The Ibis was located right smack in the city which provide easy access to plenty of shopping, restaurants and other attractions like Zhou Yang Street, Zhao Ling park and the river.

Read more....

[calvinoeh]

Exploring Harbin

The main reason for visiting Harbin especially in the winter was to see the yearly world famous ice and snow festival. Random ice and snow sculptures can be seen through out the city with three parks hosting their own exhibitions. The smaller but closer to the city is at Zhaolin park. We skipped this as it was rather small and we caught glimpses from outside. We spent half a day each at Sun Island Park which primarily has snow sculptures and another evening at Ice & Snow World which is famous for their lighted ice sculptures. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures first but will post up more details on this two exhibitions in upcoming posts.

Before sharing other highlights of Harbin, I do need to talk about the weather. We had clear blue skies and the sun was out while we were in Harbin but the average temperature was an ungodly -25C!. Stealing from Bourdain, -25C feels like our face was stuck to a piece of ice - it's cold and it hurts! We had to completely wrap ourselves up and any part that was uncovered would start to hurt after being exposed to the cold for a couple of minutes. Talking to the locals, it was warmer than expected when we were in Harbin. Is gets even colder? Yikes!

My advice would be to invest in some good winter clothing. With beanie to over the head, good down jacket, thermals, scarf, thick wool socks, snow boots in addition to my "normal"wear of a sweater and jeans, I did pretty okay and was able to stay outside in the freezing temperature most of the time. Some of my other family members who didn't too well in the cold just simply wore more layers.


Read more...

[calvinoeh]

Sun Island Park

Sun Island lies on the north bank of the Song Hua river. It's about a twenty minute cab ride away from Harbin city which should cost no more than 20-30 reminbi. You could also get to Sun Island by taking the cable car across the river or walk across it during winter (more than that later).

The primary attraction at Sun Island are the intricate and sometimes huge snow sculptures on display. The park is only open during the day time and cost 240 reminbi per person. As with other places in China, the park is huge and we spent close to 4 hours exploring the park and the various snow sculptures.

Read more...

[calvinoeh]

Harbin Ice & Snow World

The famous ice sculptures that people visit Harbin to see is found at Ice & Snow World. Similar to Sun Island Park, it's located across the Song Hua River and is a 15 minute cab ride away. Ice & Snow World is the most expensive of the three parks costing 300 Reminbi per person. There also are various organized tours to Ice & Snow World offered by most hotels in Harbin that costs the same as an entrance ticket but includes transportation to and from the park. Unless you are concerned about transportation because of language, I would not recommend using the tours as they only spend about two hours at the park.







Ice & Snow World is recommended to be visited at night to see the colorful lights from the numerous sculptures that are lighted even though it is actually open for the whole day. They usually turn on the lights to the sculptures around four in the evening when it is about to get dark. We got to the park way early by two in the afternoon with the cab driver who took us was questioning our sanity for getting there so early.

Read more »

[calvinoeh]

Harbin to Shanghai via Beijing on Air China

We were thankful we got to Harbin airport in one piece. The cab driver taking us to Harbin airport was probably a retired race car driver. He was speeding the whole way to the airport and there was even a moment when we both gasped for air when he squeezed the cab between a truck and car on the two lane highway.

Check in at Harbin airport was also chaotic due to lack of signage. Air China, which we were flying on, outsourced their check-in and similar to Beijing, there was no Star Alliance Gold signs. We learned from the experience in Beijing and just tried checking in at the generic First Class counters.

We were flying to Singapore via Beijing and Shanghai and the agent could only check the luggage through to Shanghai. He made a few phone calls and made up some excuse that the luggage tags only allow routing to two destinations which we knew was bogus. Our bags were already on the scales and he quickly tagged them and push them down the chute trying to get rid of us as fast as possible. We were now worried on whether we would be able to check our bags through to Singapore in time since we only had about an hour and fifteen minute layover in Shanghai.

We made our way through security and then to "First Class" Lounge that was operated by the Harbin airport. We got access thanks to my *G status even though we were flying in economy for the flight to Beijing. The lounge itself was not anything spectacular but was better than having to hang around outside. I enjoyed my last couple Harbin beers while trying to surf the web and check email on the very slow internet access.








Read more..

[calvinoeh]

Shanghai to Singapore on SQ

We were parked at a pretty far gate and took at least 15 minutes walking at a fast pace before we got to luggage claims. We had an hour or so to go before our Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore and was worried we might not make it. Thankfully the bags came out pretty quick even without any priority tags and we managed to make our way to a deserted Singapore Airlines check-in counters.





Singapore Airlines uses the Shanghai Airlines lounge in Shanghai. It's also used by a number of other airlines but the lounge was pretty empty when we were there. After working a slight sweat from the long hike, we took a much needed shower.


Read more...

[calvinoeh]

Conclusion

This trip report ended up being longer than I expected..

As usual, this trip would not have been possible without the miles. Too bad BMI Diamond Club will be gone pretty soon as this would have made a pretty good yearly redemption. Booking for so many people on the same trip using miles ain't fun. Loving a challenge, we're now looking to see if we can plan another trip but with First Class experience instead. Visiting the FCT in Frankfurt together would be a ton of fun!

Freezing our butts off especially at Ice & Snow World was totally worth it. The memory of those ice sculptures will be cherished in time to come.

The only slight miscalculation of the trip was were the number of days we spent in Harbin. If I could re-plan the trip, I'll just have stayed in Harbin for 2 nights and used up the stopover somewhere else in China on the way back home.

I thoroughly enjoyed the sights and food in Beijing and would love to go back again. I wasn't expecting the huge and properly kept parks. I would love to visit another less touristy part of the Great Wall.

From the flight experience, Singapore Airlines continue to be Singapore Airlines. The experience with Thai Airways and Air China were mixed. The massage offered by Thai in Bangkok for premium passengers is still a highlight although the food was just okay. I would not want to fly Air China on any of their older cabins but would like to try their newer business and first cabins that they fly on certain routes like to Europe and the US.

Finally, an unexpected gain on this trip was also the appreciation of the weather in Penang. Lydia has almost stopped complaining about the heat and humidity in Penang after experiencing of living in super cold weather. Wearing that many layers of clothes to protect oneself from the cold is troublesome and annoying.

Next up, Bali...