Suifenhe

What a strange little city! Suifenhe is China, however, all street signs are in Russian, the local Chinese all speak Russian and all products can be bought with the Russian Rouble. The city apparently grows by another skyscraper every few months and is a shoppers' paradise. You can buy anything you want there and that is exactly what all the Russian tourists do. Bus loads of them cross the border at all hours of the day and night taking with them just the clothes on their backs, ( you don't want to exceed the 35kg luggage limit when coming back). A usual tour consists of a 2-3 day stop of shopping madness, stocking up on everything from clothes, home entertainment, white goods, car accessories, and etc..., then jamming all the products into massive canvas bags and shoving them back on the bus. I saw basses drive by where only canvas bags, stacked to the roofs, could be seen through the windows, I have no idea where the passengers could have been.

Anastasia and I didn't do half badly ourselves, stocking up on all of our Winter and Autumn supplies. Just in the nic of time, as yesterday, it dropped to a mild 4 degrees. The seasons here contrast greatly and so do the clothes one must wear. You have Winter, Summer and Autumn/Spring clothing.

For most Australians this concept is quite foreign, so to the issue of crossing by land a border. The border crossing itself was rather interesting. In a part of the world where English is a distant after thought, you could imagine the dilemmas that occurred. Stay tuned for the border crossing entry for a full account.