The Coolest Hotel on Earth

It’s one o’clock in the morning somewhere in the Arctic Circle and three girls are discussing what appears to be a very serious problem. Inside Cabin 19, it is very warm; outside, snow has stopped falling but the rooftops are now covered in white and the temperature has been swinging undecidedly between -3 and -1°C all day.

The question we are discussing is whether we would get our sleeping bags right now and go to our hotel next door, or go back to the bar and try to get drunk so we would sleep soundly, or stay put inside this warm cabin.

We all knew the answer, of course. We were just trying to postpone making the short walk from our cabin to our hotel next door.

When your hotel is the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, northern Sweden, it is understandable that before going to bed, you would formulate a strategy. When the river beside your hotel looks like a giant skating rink, it is but natural that the excitement you felt leading up to this moment would somehow melt, like taking a handful of snow and holding it close to the heater, and turn into apprehension. When your hotel room is -5°C (cold enough to keep ice cream from melting and to keep the roof of your room from caving in), it is expected that you try to make a deal with God before going to sleep.

"You didn’t travel more than halfway around the globe to turn back these last few steps. This is nothing," I kept telling myself earlier as I trudged through the snow from the hotel back to the cabin to reload my camera. Icehotel guests have the option to rent cabins where they could put their luggage and sleep during the day if they’re not out having an adventure. The 60 rooms at the Icehotel are open for all to see until evening, so no personal effects are left inside the rooms.

Earlier at the Absolut Bar, our group was having drinks. Some were in the smoking room behind the bar mixing with other guests from all over the world. The scene was surreal because the smoke seemed to hang permanently in the air, like somebody froze time while everything else was moving. Others were dancing (just a little, the heavy snow boots saw to that) to the kind of music that was hip 15 years ago.

We had arrived earlier that day in Kiruna, Sweden’s premier winter city, from Stockholm. All of us – journalists Arnel Patawaran, Pepper Teehankee, Bebeth Timbol, Tim Yap and me; Premier Wine & Spirits’ JP Santamarina and Chiqui Torres-Tan; and events organizers Eric Edralin and Mico Valenzuela – had been looking forward this trip, hosted by The Absolut Company (TAC) and Premier Wines and Spirits, the exclusive distributor of Absolut in the Philippines.

Scanning the faxed itinerary, my eyes stopped on one item.

An ice hotel.

The idea seems senseless until you realize the lengths people go through to experience something different and that for thousands of years, people in some parts of the Arctic Circle have lived in igloos, so why not a hotel?

Our group, with Absolut communications manager for Asia Linn Sandberg, was met at the Kiruna airport by Absolut’s Emma Kjellgren, and Ice Hotel owner Kerstin Nilsson (her name is pronounced Shastin).

There were so many practical things I wanted to ask Kerstin, like:

1) How many months does the Icehotel last?

2) Is it really made of ice? If you wanted halo-halo, can you chip away at the walls?

3) How cold is it really at the Icehotel?

4) What do you mean everything is made of ice?

5) How do you sleep and where will you pee?

6) Do people steal anything from the Icehotel?

7) Is there a coat rack at the hotel?

8) Why would anybody want to stay there?

Kerstin said we should reserve our questions until we got to the Icehotel. She was right. Until you see the hotel, you cannot possibly imagine how it works.

Later that afternoon, I finally had my answers.

1) Yes. For the past 11 years, they’ve been building the Icehotel every November, though work is continuous all year. The water they get from the Torne River is so pure that the ice blocks do not have a single bubble. The ice blocks are made and kept at the Icehotel Art Center, built like a hangar with a constant temperature of -8°C. The Icehotel usually stands till the end of April, though Kerstin says there was a year when it was up till May and another year when it melted in the early part of April.

How do they know when it’s time to stop taking in guests? They just know. Pretty soon, it all melts away, going back to the Torne River. Architect Arne Bergh and art director Mats Indseth share the same philosophical perspective: "From the river the ice came and to the river it shall return. All that remains is the memories." Though Mats (pronounced Matt) says some of the 25 artists/ice sculptors that work on the hotel feel bad when they see their creation starting to melt.

In June, the Icehotel turns into a "water hotel" of sorts. Winter sports – dog sledding and reindeer safari – give way to summer sports like river rafting, fishing and other wilderness adventures.

For people who’d like to still sleep in subzero temperature in the middle of the year, they can book a room at the Igloo Village inside the Art Center where there are six igloos in Greenland style.

2) Actually the Icehotel is made of both ice and snow or snice, which doesn’t melt as quickly as ice. It feels almost like hardened snow, though the floors inside are covered with fresh snow, so when it melts the floors become slippery.

3) Temperature inside ranges from -8 to -5°C. When we were there, it was minus 5. It’s the only hotel where if you want to feel warmer, you have to go outside. We were always checking the thermometer – must be because we never see the mercury going below 25 in Manila.

4) Well, yes, everything is made of ice, believe it or not. The bed is ice (with steel frames inside), so are the chairs, the walls, the table, the cocktail glasses, even the pews at the Ice Chapel are made of ice.

5) Rooms have no individual toilets. There are ordinary common toilets (not made of ice!) located near the reception desk (made of ice, naturally). The ice beds and chairs are covered with reindeer skin, which isn’t enough to keep you warm. There are thermal sleeping beds one can get from the "ordinary" reception (again, ordinary meaning not made of ice) right before going to bed. If you get your bag and put it in your room without using it right away, it will eventually become cold. The sleeping bag comes with a blanket and pillow. Getting into it is actually a challenge. You slip into it and zip it all the way to your head – from the inside! A hole for breathing can be tightened with a drawstring. So if you hear nature calling at, say, four in the morning, tell it to leave a message.

6) Guests better try not to steal anything if they want to keep their suitcase dry. Did we mention even the cocktail glasses are made of ice? By the way, there is an ice shop where you could buy the glasses or ice vases, which they’ll pack for you in a styrofoam container.

7) Nobody hangs his coat in the Icehotel. They keep them tightly on – gloves, mufflers, boots, coats, bonnets.

8) Ah, why, indeed, would anybody want to sleep at the Icehotel? Because it’s there, like Mt. Everest, waiting to be conquered. Last year, 11,000 guests stayed overnight and it welcomed 33,000 daytime guests.

So here we are. It’s past one in the morning. I mention the time because we were told earlier that at exactly seven, an Icehotel staffer bearing hot lingonberry juice (almost like Davao’s durian, they make everything with it: jam, juice, cake, ice cream, etc.) would wake us up.

We get to Room 402. Chiqui Tan, Bebeth Timbol take and I take off our boots and lay our overalls on the bed and put our sleeping bags over them. We struggle to get inside, all the time giggling and talking to ourselves.

Finally, we are all zipped up tightly. That’s when I feel like peeing.

Chiqui laughs and says, "You know what, we forgot to turn off the lights."

One of us either had to hop all the way to the light switch inside her bag or unzip the bag, turn off the lights, and zip herself back on.

"Chiqui, forget it."

After a few minutes, I could hear the girls breathing evenly, sound asleep. And ridiculous as it may seem, I begin to sweat in -5 temperature. I should have listened to Kerstin when she said the bag was built to be used to up to -30, and not put on two layers of thermal wear.

I can’t sleep. So I think about the day, how I drove through 17 kilometers of frozen lake with my snowmobile partner Pepper Teehankee behind me, cheering me on and yelling that he was born to be chauffeured. How we spun around frighteningly when our snowmobile got onto wet ice. How the landscape in this part of Sweden where Sami people create songs intended not to disturb the silence of nature looked so beautiful. How our dinner was long and wonderful and without hurry. How the Ice Chapel looked so peaceful at night with the white ice cross shimmering.

And, dear God, how I would give anything if you would just help me hold my bladder.