The Great Wall-Been There Done That Got The T Shirt

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In true flash packer style we decided to book ourselves a taxi to the great wall (we got the name of a guy from Heiner-the German guy- whilst drunk) with a guy called Joe. We wanted to go to Simatai because it’s apparently the best part to go to …it’s the least restored and the least tourist apparently!! Up bright and early and Joe came to pick us up in a pretty nice car. He was a seriously nice guy and really restored our faith in China and the people. On the way to the wall he told us all sorts of stuff….about Chinas one child policy, some of this history of the country but more than anything he told us how much the Olympics meant to the people of Beijing and China. They are sooo excited and rightly so…he brought us to the birds nest and the water cube they look like they are from another planet. The birds nest looked like a hologram on the horizon..it was amazing. Gary was blown away by them and realy loved the birds nest. Then Joe all matter of fact was telling us about the birds nest and the construction and was like: “de peopow who are woking on it have to wea nappies so they can shit and piss in them and dont have to come down to use the toilet”. He was proud as punch telling us this because he thought this really showed the Chinese dedication to perfection but we just thought that the poor fuckers would probably have been shot if they had to take a breakfrom working. For him and probably others the same the Olympics is a chance for China to show the rest of the world that they have moved on and up and that they want to be part of the global community- all you see everywhere are signs of one world one dream…..this all sounds great in theory but when people come over for the Olympics they are going to shit themselves the people are so burly. Maybe its just a language thing though because anyone who can speak English is really, really nice but a smile is a smile in any language at the end of the day and that seems to be something that the majority of them (not all ) just don’t understand.

We had a big plan to get a cable car up to the wall have a stroll around and come back down…..total wasters!! When we got there it must have been at least 33 degrees and the cable car was broken so we had to climb up to the great wall and then climb the actual wall. I can honestly say I have NEVER sweated so much in all my life. If it was around 20/25 degrees it honestly would have been easy cheesy peasy but by the time we got to the wall it had reached 40 degrees and I was purple in the face!! We made it as far as we could and the views were just amazing. Garys ankle started to give way and it nearly went so I went a little further up while he tried to give it a bit ofa rest before we heded back down. One false move with that ankle and we were in major trouble. Although the good weather made the climb tough we got amazing views of the whole area of Simatai. We even bought the t shirts so now we can deffo say “been there, done that, got the t shirt”. Definitely one of the best places we have been and something I’ll never forget as long as I live.

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Photos

The Birds Nest
This is real......