Dongbei
I will provide some brief info on the towns in Dongbei that we visited, as well as some info that may be of use to other planning a trip to the area. As for the hotels, these are ones that we stayed or introduced to, listed for your info and do not reflect our endorsements.
I have previously mentioned Heihe (黑河) – from there we traveled to Russian Far East. For those who want to know, the best hotel is Heihe International Hotel (黑河国际饭店; Tel: +86-8276189; RMB288 for lower floor) that is located right on the water-front and so very convenient if you want to jalan jalan on the long waterfront. It claims to be 4-stars but I would say the standard is more of 3-star. Since it is the best, it is often full and reservation is suggested. However, there are many alternatives, including the JingJiang Guoji Xiu Xian Hotel (Tel: +86-6778777) RMB140/nite nett. This has no relation to the real JingJiang despite using a logo that resembles the real JJ – that’s China for you) but it is conveniently located between water front and Buxingjie步行街. There is also a hotel on Buxingjie called HuaYuan华源 at RMB140/nite nett. All hotels have internet access For more tourist info on HH, please see:
www.hhlyw.com but only in Chinese and Russian though.
Also, the damage for the MM introduced by the massage centre mentioned in earlier post was 130 s/t and she asked for another 10 for taxi fare.
Fuyuan 抚远口岸
The signage 东方第一港(First Port in Far East) greeted us on our arrival in the sleepy border town of FY after the 1.5hr boat ride from Khabarovsk. The Immigration Officers came on board first, and they heard that there are two foreigners on board other than the Russians – they asked to see EZ and my passports and happy that we are “overseas Chinese” who can speak Chinese. Obviously, we are rare commodity but glad that we then became the “honorary” Chinese since the Chinese gives the Russians a piece of their own medicines – the Chinese will disembark before the Russians. But I must say the Chinese are more organized – asking the Russians to wait onboard while the Chinese clear the immigration & custom first. And FY is the only customs check point in China that I have had my laptop turned on to check for any naughty files. When I commented about the same to the SYT Customs officer, she admitted that life is boring and she just wanted to turn them on for fun although she went through all the folders religiously. Luckily she found no naughty files on mine, but found a TV serial on EZ’s and they chatted away about it. Maybe she thinks foreigners should have porno clips on their laptops.
The best hotel is the Fuyuan GuoJi Daxia Hotel 抚远国际大厦– but there was a VVIP in town, with the whole area around it blocked off on the day we arrived – so, unable to stay there. Another hotel near to Guoji is the Fulinmen福临门 but the staff was honest to tell us its internet access was erratic at best, although we heard this is the case for the whole town. We ended up staying at a cheaper hotel with bath house called KaiLai (凯莱花园宾馆; Tel: +86-454-2188888; rate RMB138/nite; no internet access.) The huge but basic hotel room has no shower facilities in the attached bath room, but you can go for unlimited bath in the bath house. This hotel is conveniently located directly across from the long-distance bus terminal. We checked the “Resting Area” out and had our foot massage for RMB10 each – but there is no extra service here, much to GT’s disbelief and disappointment.
It was kind of late after we finished our dinner and the only nocturnal activity we found are BBS-like joints with the tell-tale pink lights. We visited three near GuoJi, each with 2-5 MMs. There was actually one SYT that I would like to take language lessons from, but they do not allow take-out and dine-in would cost 100 s/t. We did not see the rooms, but I think they are pretty basic although the MMs appear to be staying in the allocated rooms.
But the cost of living is very affordable – the dinner for four with plenty of beer cost us RMB110 and the sumptuous buffet (Chinese style) breakfast at the restaurant next door cost RMB10/each.
BTW, since the town works on Beijing time, it geographical position means it has long day with the sun rises around 4:00am during the summer – maybe that’s why the restaurant next door started to sell breakfast at 4:00am!
Jiamusi 佳木斯
We traveled from FY to JMS by bus – the six hrs journey cost RMB98each, with one 10-mins lunch stop – reasonably comfortable although the very spoilt GT complained about the long journey.
We arrived like four blind bats – none of us has even checked the internet for info since internet access was unavailable in FY. But we took a taxi driver who turned out to be reasonably honest and had him take us to a hotel that is centrally located and preferably where we can find MMs. He took us to JinShi 金世饭店 (RMB189/nite nett; Tel: 86-454-6065555) that is a 3-star hotel centrally located on XiLin Road (西林路) since it is in the city centre and within walking distance to the river front, and the bustling bazaar malam is right in front of the hotel. And more importantly, we subsequently found out the main concentration of the BBS-look-alikes (in the form of ZY, BaoJianFan etc with all the tell-tale signs) is near to the hotel – on and near the Yonghe Alley (永和胡同) near the Changcheng Hotel(长城饭店). And of course, there is no lack of bath-houses (洗浴) like all the towns in Dongbei. All the older apartments in China do not have bath rooms – thus, such bath houses are extremely common – and with the 改革开放, many of them have evolved into providing “value-added” services that cheongsters enjoy.
However, things were rather low profile during our visit due to the ongoing YD, and in one joint that we visited the MMs actually were behind a locked door within the shop. The taxi driver did tell us many joints will not allowed their MMs to go out due to the YD, and this proves to be true when we visited some of the joints. One mummy was bordering on being rude when she asked us to quickly make up our minds to have the MMs at the site or get lost – her exact words: 快选,不要就拉倒
– so much for service - needless to say, EZ and me decided with our retreating feet. The rate (from my failing memory) is RMB100 (or was it 130?) at site and 150 delivered to hotel. Although JMS is the place where many of the Dongbei MMs in big cities such as Beijing & Shanghai came from, we didn’t really see many with look that knocked the sock out of us – maybe all the prettier ones have gone to larger cities for better pay.
… to be continued (Harbin, Changcun & Shenyang)…