Great Wall of China with my folks

The two people below are the reason for the little respite I enjoyed last week. I really love my parents and my job is such that I don't see them as often as I'd like.
When we get together we have real fun.
Really good belly laughs.
The kind you delight in because they're an expression of sheer happiness and the wonder of being with people you feel a part of.
We visited the Mutianyu section of the Wall.
It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Beijing and we did it in the delightful indulgence of the hotel Audi A6.
Not the most economical of methods but what the hell, they ARE my parents and I didn't need much more than that for an excuse to splurge.

The wall was built, maintained and rebuilt between the 5th and 16th centuries. Archaeological surveys put its length north of 8,000 kms.
To be precise: 6200 kms of actual wall and the rest mounds, rivers, fortifications and trenches. Pretty amazing given Europeans were just mastering the art of mud hut construction and working their way up to stockades made of sharpened sticks.
There are arguments back and forth regarding which section is the most beautiful but the mountains at Mutianyu to me are pretty dramatic.

All the western comforts have been deployed to part sweaty foreigners from their money. In our case we were shivering foreigners as the temperature was hovering around freezing. Whereas the last time I went to the wall I used a creaky wooden ladder, here you get a very Nordic mode of transport.

As you can see the weather had taken a turn for the better and the sky was clear and blue.

Walking along the wall can be a pretty energetic endeavour.
Some of the climbs are almost vertical.

I think tough as it is going up, going down is scarier.

That's it for the Great Wall.

I got some great pictures at the Temple of Heaven on our last afternoon.

I'll post them as and when.

My holidays are over and I go to Jakarta on Wednesday.

I have a pretty tight itinerary but I'll do my best to get some pictures of that sprawling, chaotic city.

That's all for today, so go about your business.

T

A quick taste of the Great Wall

I took over a 100 pictures yesterday and as you can see, the weather couldn't have been more different than the snowstorm at the Forbidden City. I've only had time to post four this morning as I'm going doing a mad dash around town with the folks on this our last day in Beijing.
Hopefully they'll give you a flavour of how stunning the Wall is. I'll post more as and when.Stay well
T

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