Day 8, and the second last day of the trip!
Our agenda for the day was to go to Guogeli street, and then the Qiuling building there. Qiuling is one of their famous brands, selling red sausages and what not. From dad’s intel, the street was an estimated 2km from our hotel. Yeah, we decided to forgo the taxi and walk there. Needless to say we walked a lot that day.
Breakfast was noodles from a roadside shop. It was delicious.
Walking…
Walking… it took us like, over an hour to reach.
The random stuff we saw on the way.
Some weird deco in the middle of the road.
Nicely decorated bridge.
Railway tracks.
Clean, white snow.
Like I said, ice is their fav building block. A wall of ice right beside the road.
We reached this crowded street after walking for a long time. At first we thought we had reached…
Stuff made of ice are EVERYWHERE.
Turns out this place was their railway station. No wonder there were so many people hurrying past with luggages and all.
Still someways to go!
After finding out the directions… it’s back to walking.
After lots more walking, we finally got to the start of Guogeli street.
A magnificent looking building. But it’s a hospital and not our destination.
We passed by a starbucks. My mum loves starbucks, so we made a mandatary coffee stop.
A cute chart explaining the types of coffee.
Pretty paintings on the walls.
Finally! Our target!
We stood at the intersection for some time so I snapped a couple of photos. The main shopping place moved from their main building to somewhere else though. And they had signboards and salespeople in the underpass directing visitors to the new location. There was a queue to buy the sausages, not very long though. We bought a bunch to eat ourselves, and as souvenirs for relatives.
Afterwards we walked along the street for a while…
And it started snowing, more heavily this time. It snowed the day before too, but really tiny flakes.
I must say that it snowed during the night many times. Like in the morning you can see the building top covered with snow. But the snow on the streets have already been cleared away, save for those in those tree planting areas, like some of the photos I took earlier. The rest of the snow on the streets have all been swept alway. Really efficient!
More snow. I took a video too…
Another slightly more successful attempt at taking a photo of the snowflake. We stood there like idiots trying to take photos of snowflakes. And with my furry coat…
See? It was trapping loads of snowflakes. So I ended up having to stand still while my sis and mum snapped away. And then apparently a big snowflake landed on my pony tail too…
We visited a shopping mall. Dad tried on some clothes… but I think he didn’t buy any in the end. Mum/sis managed to get… I can’t remember… 1 or 2 cashmere sweaters. They can share their clothes so… It was on offer and really cheap.
We passed by a bbq place after that and decided to have lunch there. It was really cheap, newly opened so there was a special offer.
Buffet style.
The selection available was huge.
Was too busy eating to take much photos, but there were loads of meat and the meat was good. There was seafood too! And loads of cakes and dessert.
That’s outside the shop. A really pretty sofa.
Original price 68 yuan. Special offer of 48 yuan. There’s a time limit of 2 hours though.
Another banner showing their selection of food.
Another deco.
We managed to hop on a van/taxi that took us back to Zhongyang street after that.
Here we are, back at Zhongyang street… that’s some advertisement of a shop, and that is made of plastic.
As with this.
A plague introducing the various buildings along Zhongyang street.
Holiday Inn spotted in the distance XD
We went back to the underground street that we had gone… the day before. Spotted a bread talk shop there. It’s a Singapore bread shop that started expanding in China several years ago… and it certainly is doing well there! We saw shops in Shanghai, before last time…. I saw one in Chongqing… and now Harbin too.
Some random ice flooring area in Zhongyang street. No idea what it’s for.
We bought a hot ginger ale cola after that.
Coca cola again.
A stick of dates in rock sugar, and a HUGE stick of hawthorn. Like really mega sized. The stick was so long, huge and heavy.
We walked along that same street again, and did some shopping.
Here’s a mirror that I bought as souvenir. Photo taken back in sg of course. It’s a nice motif of the Sophia church.
Mum wanted to have coffee before heading back to the hotel… so we went to this café.
Some expresso shot thing… idk. I don’t know much about coffee…
Another coffee drink. This one’s called spiderman.
Cute hello kitty wine bottle decors at the side of the table. This place was like… a bar? With people singing live on a small stage… and screens and projectors beside every table showing snippets of random movies. Yes the whole place was pretty dark.
We ordered a steak to share for dinner… It wasn’t very good… pretty tough.
They have nice decors though.
Ah here you can see the stage at the top left of the photo, the screen beside each table, and the row of wines in the centre of the walkway. Got no idea why they have a bunch of hello kitty plushies in the middle. Felt pretty out of place.
We made our way back to the hotel after that.
Not before passing by this place yet again… well because we have to take this side road to get back to our hotel.
As I passed by the arch I noticed a curious thing…
People stuck coins to the side of the arch hahaha! Cos well you know, it’s ice! You just need some body heat to melt it!
And that was all for our Harbin trip. That last day just sucked for me though… I’m not even sure exactly what happened. For one, I was having a diarrhoea since the morning. Maybe it was because my inner wear had somehow rode upwards, leaving my tummy feeling constantly cold… and then the bbq made ti worst because we used the same chopsticks for raw and cooked food… or maybe it was the coffee on empty stomach… and maybe cos I didn’t eat enough for dinner (we had some random snacks, and ice cream, then the steak, but the steak kinda came after the coffee). After surviving through the street unscathed for so long… it had to be it on the last day. I was just puking and vomiting back in the hotel. And I barely managed to squeeze my clothes into the zip lock bag… after that my poor sis did all the rest of the packing ><
We transited in Chengdu airport. It was a different terminal and a pretty long walk between the terminals. Again, sis and dad were hauling most of the luggage >< While I was worried about literally shitting in my pants. The flight was ok, at least there wasn’t much turbulence to add to my worries… at least not when I was awake. I didn’t manage to eat anything though… and barely ate for a couple of days after that. Thank goodness I applied for more leave! Well granted I could have gotten an MC, but I didn’t really need to go to the doctors. And I had to clear my leave or it’ll get wasted anyway… By the time we reached sg it was already 1am on the 30th. The taxi queue was ridiculous long, and we had so many pieces of luggage we doubt it would fit into a single taxi. We waited in queue for the maxicab instead… which took ridiculously long to arrive. Over an hour wait. And dad had work the next morning. I was just deadbeat.
Oh wells. Sadly I just had to fall sick at the end.
Still, overall it was a really enjoyable trip. Got to visit Beijing, refreshed my memory… saw loads of snow and ice…
I’ve been to China quite a few times over the years.
The first trip as really long ago, to Beijing and Tianjing. We went with a tour group, but extended the trip so that we could visit the China Weiqi Association.
Then we went to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Suzhou. Again, on tour… Hangzhou and Suzhou were really just touch and go though.
After that we went on a tour to Korean, and they ‘gifted’ a trip to Shanghai. So we visited Shanghai for a second time.
Thereafter would be my trip during uni, were I went to visit my friend in her hometown in Chongqing, and then we went to the Shanghai World Expo together.
Of course, finally there was this trip. So in total, I’ve been to China 5 times now… Beijing twice and Shanghai thrice. I must say that China has changed a lot over the years. On our first trip, there were still plenty of toilets with no doors. No doors in the toilet cubicles. Now? All doored. And there must have been some sort of directive, water saving measures or something… because no matter which toilet we went to, be in Beijing or Harbin… ALL the toilets had automatic taps. Seriously, ALL. The rest of the toilet can be really old, with doors that’s still those half sized doors in squatting toilets… but the taps are sensor taps. Doesn’t make sense at all unless they had some related laws. The food has changed a lot too. Not salty and oily anymore.
If you ask me if I’d like to go back to Beijing though… I think not. I’ve seen most of what they have to offer… and shopping wise, it’s just… sad. Development on Wang Fu Jing street seemed to have stopped years ago. True they have loads of new malls, but fashion wise Shanghai is still the place to go. It IS the fashion centre of China after all. But Harbin was really interesting too. It’s the new up and coming city in Northern China, and I do feel that way when I visit. Look at all the luxury brands there. I saw none of that in Wang Fu Jing street, and that’s supposed to be the most premier shopping street in Beijing! Apart from the luxury brands, there were so many other shops selling a wide variety of clothing in Harbin. Much more interesting variety in Harbin IMO. The development in Harbin is certainly worth watching.
Of course… if I were to visit China again, I’d rather go to somewhere I’ve not been before. Qingdao perhaps? Heard there’s loads of seafood there. Or Yunnan. With the fantastic views… Guilin too. And I’ve never been to Fujian before, even though that’s where my paternal grandmother came from. We still have relatives there, and we still do occasionally keep in touch… ok not me, but my parents and uncles. And they are doing well too, all having their own business and making way more money than we are…. hmm.
Right. That’s all from me on my holiday trip! Ah there’s still a few photos and videos here and there to upload… next time! :P
