Beijing Part #3

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14th August
Spent the morning at Behai Park which is next to the forbidden city in Beijiing. I think this is probably the nicest spot in Beijing. The park is basically a lake with an island in the middle which has a big hill and a pagoda on top. The view from the top looking over the forbidden city are very impressive.

In the afternoon we watched some basketball. We were fortunate to see China play - with our tickets we're never sure who we're going to see. China's star player - and probably the most famous athelete in China - is a vertigo-inducing 7ft 6in tall. China palyed Angola who unfortunately didn't have their own giant player and so lost convincingly. Also saw Rissia play Belarus with Belarus taking the win in the last few minutes.

15th August
First day in the "Birds Nest" stadium today. Because the stadium holds 90,000 people, this put a considerable strain on the special Olympic busses. Our bus was completely packed and had a very angry Chinese guy shouting at various people on the bus. When everyone started to heckle him the situation deteriorated, resulting in the driver having to stop the bus and calm him down. It was like being on a school bus when I was 9!

Stadium was more than half empty when we got in as the transport and the venue security weren't able to cope with the amount of people. This is unfortunate for the many Chinese people who only have a ticket to one event who end up missing half of it.

This morning Kelly Southerton competed in the Heptathlon. This is an event that you can't win on the first day, but you can certainly lose it. Unfortunately Southerton had a terrible forst morning which put her out of contention. Also saw the first round of the men's 100m. Usain bolt appeared to walk around the track, putting in no effort at all - but still ran 10.1 seconds.

We had a 5 hour gap until the evening session of the Athletics so we sat in the Olympic park and I wrote some of this blog in my notebook. We had a policeman/security guard standing next to us trying to intimidate us and stop us writing. They ar every nervous about anyone writing anything bad about China. Fortunately, being in the Olympic park makes us immune to normal Chinese law enforcement because of the amount of media around. The last thing they want is the headline "Chinese police confiscate tourist's diary in the Olympic Park".

In the evening we were back in the Birds Nest for a bit more athletics. The highlight was seeing a huge bearded Polish guy win the Hammer final.

16th August
No sport today so we booked ourselves on a trip to the Great Wall of China. There are quite a few tourist spots along the wall. Many of them are incredibly busy with coach loads of tourists which ruins the experience a bit. We opted for a part of the wall (called Simuntai) which was a bit further away from Beijing and so quieter. Our trip involved an 8km walk along the wall which was an amazing experience. The walk was exhausting as it is all up and down steep steps, but we were rewarded with incredible views and there were hardly any other tourists in this bit of the wall. Every few hundred meters there is a watch tower which provided us with some much needed shade along the way.

Slept for 3 hours on the bus trip back to Beijing!

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