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Writer's pictureNeil Greenwood

Around the World Trip - Day 18 - 19th Jan 2009 – Beijing.

Updated: Dec 16, 2022


Early start this morning, as we wanted to get out early as the great wall was quite far away. Peter met us at our hotel for breakfast and then we met Jason in our Foyer and then jumped on the tube. Got a few tubes to the main bus station and caught the bus across town for about an hour. The buses were very organised compared to ours as they have a scanner similar to the tubes where you touch your card on it when you get on and then again when you get off and it takes off the relevant credit. It got pretty cramped at one point and they just seemed to keep piling em on.


We got off the bus and then had to find a minibus to take us to the wall. It was 100yen one-way between us (£10) but we managed to barter a return trip for 150 yen. We drove for about 40 minutes and cam up to what looked like a deserted village. As we came out the other end there was a shabby ticket office and no people but it looked open so we paid our money and got a ticket. As we got inside we saw a sign that said “this section of the wall is not open to the public”, we could see the wall up above on the mountains all crumbled but couldn’t get to it. The taxi driver said he would wait for us so we decided to use the time to walk round the trail around the dam called “the wall under the water”


The walk round the dam was quite good for photos, the water was frozen and you could here funny banging noises under the water and at parts the ice was cracking. When we got 3 quarter of the way around the damn we could see the wall where it kind off had a dam and the water ran trough it (or it would if it wasn’t frozen. We were able to amble up the hill and get on top of the old wall and walk a bit up to where it met the road and the main pathway again. We actually ended up doing a better trip than if we had gone to one of the other parts of the wall as there are usually hundred of tourists there and we were the only people here which made for great pics. The other parts of the wall have also been restored and one area even has a MacDonald’s, which kinda ruins the whole thing I think. It took us about 2 hours in total to do the full walk. We then got our taxi back to the bus station and then the bus back to Beijing.


It was about 4pm when we got back so we headed to the hotel for a bit of a nap and then arranged to meet the guys at our hotel at 7.30pm to go to the night market.


Phil caught up on his phone calls and uploading pics while I had a sleep and tehn the guys met up at our hotel. We got the tube over to the area where the night market and wandered through the main street, which was full of shop with neon signs and huge screens showing advertisements (just how I managed China to be). We found the street where the night market was as it had a massive row of outside stalls along one side with Chinese lanterns on them. It was just like one long strip of food stands all trying to get yer attention to try there foods. They had everything from dog kebabs (there was no way I was going near them), to deep-fried starfish to various bugs on stick.


Phil was a bit braver than me so he shared stuff with Jason (who will also eat anything you put in front of him). I ate deep-fried scorpion, crickets and something cacarta that looked like a cockroach and a kebab of fajita wrap thing of unknown meat lol. Phil had the same but also sea snake and silkworm, which looked like a pod-type thing. Peter tried a silkworm but said he didn’t like it when it all burst as you bit it (that’s what I didn’t want to try it because of).


After the market we headed home to get and early-ish night.


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