We landed in Harbin China at 2 am and decided to not spend the night at airport like the time before.

It was not a nice place to be in my own opinion. We had 15 hours to wait for our flight and while dealing with customs at the airport we noticed this nice looking girl clinging to us and didn't know why. She finally spoke to my wife in Russian and told her that she was traveling alone and a bit nervous about it and wanted to stay with us, which was not problem except for the fact that we did not plan on staying in the airport. I had very limited local currency so it was going to be difficult trying to make it happen. Anna spoke some Chinese also and after explaining that we were happy to have her as our guest but that would mean trusting us enough to accompany us to a hotel and also helping us make that happen. She nervously agreed. This is the photo taken after everything was said and done and we were taking off to Guangzhou.

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Once outside the airport we were bombarded my willing taxi drivers making promises to help us get to a hotel and a lot of negotiating.
Everyone wanted to get involved in our affair and made us very nervous. We finally allowed one man to help us who loaded all of our suitcases into a small car that would not allow us to get inside, this made me extremely nervous and they called for a larger vehicle. I told them the amount of money I was willing to spend and they were fine with the amount I proposed. Once we were loaded into a larger vehicle we nervously departed to the hotel we requested. I did not take a photo of their car because I was uneasy about doing something wrong.

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This is the guy we finally allowed to help us, you can see the uneasy look on Anna's face.

"What did I get myself into here?"

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We drove down some pretty dark and spooky streets in a very smoky van, and passed the hotel we were supposed to be staying in.

"Oh crap, what did I just get these girls into?"

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I asked Anna to qustion the driver why we were passing up our Hotel and he told us we were going to a better place. Oh no! I am imaging the news in America talking about us and how we were taken hostage for money and wouldn't be allowed to leave the country until we paid up! I decided to remain calm and think positive and tell the girls that everything would be ok, I could feel the tension building in the car as we drove down a dirt road and a check point, are they taking us to a prison camp?! So we drove into a small town of some sort that was fast asleep and finally turned into a place and my heart stopped.

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We nervously exited the car upon the drivers request and went into the "hotel". It smelled of dampness and cigarettes but looked decent. Anna was talking to the people at the hotel and when I asked her what was going on she said they wanted more money. She negotiated for 10 minutes or so and I was getting very tired, It turned out she was negotiating over what ended up being about $10 and I told her I don't really care. My only concern was that it included a ride back to the airport because I wouldn't have enough money to get us there and it would have been an impossible journey to walk with all our luggage, she said that it did and they kept wanting to talk and talk and talk, I told them we are very tired and just wanted to sleep and we could figure everything out in the morning.

The room was not nice, the beds were like plywood and the shower contained a toilet and a sink with about enough soggy soap left for us each to wash our hands once. I finally sat down to use my phone and realized I left my backpack in the taxi!!! My wife's immigration documents included. My heart was pounding and I ran downstairs in my underwear and was happy beyond belief to see the taxi sitting where it stopped and my backpack where I had left it. What a nightmare that could have been.
We made ourselves as comfortable as possible and unpacked some things to eat, Anna's grandma made Пирожки (Pirozhki) and we all laughed when my wife unpacked the same exact thing that her mom made us for our journey.


To make a long story short we woke up from a "not so good" sleep and made it to the airport, I had no more Yen and could not manage to procure any, I tried buying a cup of coffee at the burger king in the airport with American dollars and they would not take them, I upped my offer to $100 for 3 cups of coffee and they still would not accept it. We shared the one bottle of water that Anna got from the airplane like survivors on a deserted island and waited another 5 hours before barely making our flight, Anna was still nervous to be alone so we tried staying with her as long as possible and at the last minute the security check people let us go to the front of the line and if not for that and us running to the gate we would have been figuring out which hotel to stay in again!

We were happy to get on the plane and anxious to get to Guangzhou and vowed to exchange some currency and enjoy the beautiful airport they have. Never a dull moment while internationally traveling.