Tanks on the streets of Beijing , The Great Wall and Fast Food Beijing style

Its been quite a week.
I'm just back from Beijing where Face book, all Blogs and the streets around my hotel were blocked. On October 1st the Communist Party of China celebrates its 60th anniversary and the Peoples Army will celebrate the occasion with the mother of all Parades. Last Sunday night was the rehearsal and all manner of security was in place not least of which was the fact I haven't been able to post to the blog.
I hate it when that happens.There were bigger guns on display but the nice young man in the uniform took a rather vehement view that snapping a picture of them wasn't a good idea.

Sunday afternoon I did a bit of a recce as my parents are coming to China in November and want to see the Great Wall of China. I've been there before but wanted to check out another section. You can see my earlier adventures here.

The drive to the wall takes about 2 white knuckle hours.

The Chinese are a scary bunch when they get behind the wheel.

The wall is an awesome sight no matter how many times you see it

Its one of the few man made structures visible from earth and was built at a time when much of the civilised world of today lived in mud huts.

Read about it here.

A friend of mine in Beijing uses a local guy as a driver and though he didn't speak any English, he got the idea that I wanted to see "something different".

First thing to note is given the state of driving in China, westerners are well advised not to enter the fray.

So, many people use a free lance guy or two as driver(s).

Nothing "big shot" about it.

OK?

OK.

As it turned out the "driver" figured I was the adventurous type and brought me to a section of the wall not frequented by tour buses. I'm not sure they don't wheel out the sign above when cars drop off lone tourists. In fact I'm not convinced the section I ended up clamouring all over is officially open to the public.

The route up to the wall started out promisingly enough.....

Oh dear.

Soon things became rather different.It was a long hard sweaty climb.

Finally it was time to climb up on the monument proper.

It was all worth the effort though I think I'll take my parents to a different staging point.

Not a tourist in sight.

I stood on a crumbling section with no one in sight and decided to climb a bit.Vertigo.

I did a rather undignified descent feet first sliding on my ass.

When I got back down there were all manner of folks (OK there were two) trying to sell me all manner of crap and faded postcards.

And home made FIREWORKS.

No that's not safe.

Good God.

Fast forward to last night.

I went to the night food market near the Grand Hyatt.

Chinese Fast Food Beijing style.

No comments necessary other than "yes, the first picture is of testicles on a stick".

That's it for tonight.

I'm off to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow.
Night to all.

Stay well

Love T

nightmarket, I hope you have a strong stomach

Around the corner from my hotel is a nightmarket selling all manner of creepy crawlies. This was not just a tourist attraction, but a bustling, busy hub of people snacking on a rather strange variety of finger food.
Testicles on a stick.

Lung soup




I cannot even begin to describe the smell...... It amazes me, and that's a symptom of my western conditioning, watching carefully made up, elegant Chinese ladies clamoring for a deep fried bug on a stick, or slaughterhouse scrapings soup.
Finally, after a queasy couple of hours, I ended the evening in the hotel bar.
After sitting and talking with a colleague for an hour or so, I paid the bill and got up to leave. As I did so, I felt a tug at my sleeve and found that Chinese entrepreneurship has arrived amongst the ladies practicing the world's oldest profession at the Hyatt.
Language need not be a barrier it seems.
I declined this particular cultural experience.


Hope all is well. I'm heading home tomorrow and hope to see my little girl over the weekend.
Terry