Great Wall!

Taking a well earned break

They didn't mention this in the brochure!

Amazzzzzzzzzzing!

We booked a tour to the Great Wall of China which consisted of a 4 hour bus ride full of all the other ‘whiteys’ in Beijing, ending up at the Wall in one of the quieter parts with fewer tourists. First of all we got a cable car up to the wall and immediately you get this view of the wall that spans as far as the eye can see, it was awesome. The idea was to walk 10km to another part of the wall, Simitai, taking in all the views and climbing up all the dodgy parts of the wall! All of a sudden we were joined by some Mongolian women who were offering to take our photos and claiming that we were ‘beautiful lady’ and we knew that they weren’t exactly out to take in the views. The followed us like leeches for the first 10 minutes, helping us up and down the steps, and then we realised that they were trying to sell us crappy souvenirs that they produced from their bags. We said we weren’t interested and before you can say egg fried rice they had disappeared! The yanks didn’t quite get wise to them and they were pursued for a good hour to be offered an ‘I walked the great wall’ t shirt! The walk was really really tough, most bits were badly maintained and some bits had just…fallen away! We made it though and it was definitely worth it for the views that we got to see of the wall!