Hong Kong post #3 - Great Wall

We did the hostel organized trip to the Great Wall - advertised as a bus to Jin Shan Ling and a 10 km walk to Simatai along a non-touristy part of the wall. Sounded great, what they didn't tell us was up at 7am to be the first to be collected for the bus which then went around every hostel in Beijing before setting out on the road. Eventually got to the Jin Shan Ling section at noon after our first experience of Chinese bus driving kamikaze style. The non-touristy section turned out to be swarming with hawkers and "guides". We had to quite rudely tell the first woman who followed us "NO guide. No money" after 20 minutes. After walking another 30m it was the same story as another "guide" (no guide. mongolian farmer.) tried to pick us up. As well as this we had the constant offers of "Hello wat-ah. Hello coka. Hello bee-ah. Hello pose-caa. Hello T-shut." This went on for nearly the first half of the hike and thinned out after 5km. I say hike because this was one of the toughest walks we had ever done. Up a set of 50 crumbling steps to the next awaiting hawker in the tower above and then down 50 steps and on to the next flight.







After such gruelling physical exercise, we thought we deserved a easy finish and paid 35 yuan a piece to sail down the last section on the Flying Fox. Yippeeee!