An exciting couple of days

To cut to the chase, yesterday turned out nothing like I said it would. I didn't visit Tiannamen Square, I didn't go to the Forbidden City and I didn't explore the area.

Yesterday morning, I thought I would have a quick breakfast before setting out to do these things, so I packed my day pack and headed down the stairs to the reception. For some reason, at that time, I decided to ask around about how to get to the wall for the day after. The woman at the counter shoved a couple of brochures in my face, all laden with heavy prices with a big grin on her face. This made me feel slightly hesitant at first, but before I knew it, a group of American University students showed up in the lobby and mentioned to me that they were visiting the wall and that there was a spare seat on the bus they had hired. As I was an extra head, the ride became cheaper for everyone involved. How lucky!

The American students were roughly 20-22 years old and were a funny gang. So, after a quick breakfast of meat dumplings, we boarded the bus and headed off to the wall. Fortunately, we were booked to head to the older, more original part of the wall which was indeed a bit further out from Beijing than Badaling (the most popular part = all renovated). Nevertheless, a sore bum at the end of a long bus ride was very much worth it for the pictures and the experiences that we encountered upon arrival.

As a kid, I often imagined myself climbing the Great Wall of China. I used to think about how exciting it would be to walk upon the same bricks that ancient Chinese guards walked on, hundreds of years before me. I was not disappointed.

Something I noticed, whilst climbing the wall, was that the higher and further you climbed, the more original the wall became. Short, neatly-cut bricks soon turned to large slabs of stone and modern day mortar became a thick clay-like substance as the view became better and better. After we'd spent 5 or so hours walking the wall, we piled back into the bus as tired as we've ever been. I will forever remember that day as the day I walked the most stairs in my life. I'm still feeling it.

When we got back to the hostel, we all had a quick shower and changed into some better smelling clothes before heading out for dinner. As you can see in the pictures, this so-called dinner wasn't by any means your average weeknight feed. Scorpians!!!

Today, with an upset stomache, I got a chance to visit the Forbidden City which was indeed very impressive. The problem was, I was, at this time, quite keen to rush through the city in order to get back to the hostel. Reason being that public toilets in China consist of a hole in the ground with no toilet paper. This is of course a problem for poor little Matty who is under threat of dirtying his freshly washed jeans. With this in mind, we passed through the city at a reasonable pace before catching an express motorbike rickshaw home for WW3 in the mens room.

After my bowel was relieved and I had become 20kgs lighter, I quickly caught a train out to the 2009 Beijing Olympic grounds. It was cool to walk in the footsteps of athletes from around the world.

Overall, it's been a very productive couple of days in China and I hope I will be able to mimic to some extent, my success in Egypt, which I depart for tomorrow afternoon.