An early rise because today is wall day! After reviewing the many options I have decide to take a private taxi with Purple and James, it works out significantly more expensive, however for the convince and the comfort I have decided that, for the wall I will let this slide. It was £15 for a subway, bus, cable car to the wall, wall entry fee and toboggan down. The bus would also be about a 40min walk from the cable car. The taxi option works out at £30, and it leaves us right at the cable car and waits for as long as we want, then takes us back. We get picked up at 8am by Mr Dong, I laugh because I'm so mature. He has a VW Passat, which is super comfy, I even have a wee nap on the drive up. Most of the tour organised buses stop at shops where you have to get out and spend time in the shops. The tour company gets commission, this is one of the most popular scams, one I was not interested in falling victim to. Mr Dong assures us that he won't be stopping at any shops, time will tell. The journey takes two hours, the traffic in Beijing is crazy, but then in a city of 20m people and 5m cars, it's to be expected. There is a lot more space in the city than I thought, as we drive through the CBD there is plenty of open space, I had expected everything to be squeezed in. The driving, however, was suicidal. I think we nearly crashed on at least 3 separate occasions, and I would have said that Mr Dong was a decent driver. The policy appears to be that if you beep your horn, your coming. No indication is used, you just move into a lane, in fact even though there are lines on the road, few people appear to bother with using them. Sometimes you stop at lights, sometimes you don't, if pedestrians are crossing when they have a green man you can still just drive through them. Bikes are everywhere, and wee 3 wheeled trucks, just zig-zagging about the streets. I think I would last 2mins on these roads. Mr Dong also nearly ran a learner driver off the road, beeping away. Totally normal.
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Once we get out of the city I am treated to the real China, lovely mountain ranges and canals lined with willow trees. Much less car out here as well, though the driving is every bit as crazy! Mr Dong keeps asking us if we want to stop to get anything, but we are ready to go. 2 hours later and we arrive, there is a small village, which is undergoing so major redevelopment as I have no doubt in the not to distant future it will be hiving. Mr Dong parks up under a Subway (the sandwich place) and tells us this is where he will be whenever we are done. He walks up with us to get the tickets, I do a quick suicide run to the public toilets before we tackle the wall. He organises all the tickets and Purple even gets a bit of student discount because she has her student card with her, though it is only about £2. After we get our tickets it is up on a cable car to the wall, just like a ski lift. Purple is somewhat nervous about the quality of a Chinese cable car, I'm not thinking about it. We get to the top and we are over to one side of the stretch that we can walk. The total section that we can walk is about 3K, I am very keen to do all of it, I'm not sure the other two are, so I'll have to work on that.
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As soon as we get up on the wall we are greeted with 'hello beer, hello coca cola, hello water' from the Chinese woman sitting at the wall. We politely decline as it is 5 times the price at the wall, even at that, it's 50p. I have brought water from where I'm staying at a much more competitive price. The wall is divided by various towers along the stretch that we walk. The wall is quite a sight, built along the highest part of the mountain range. I can imagine as a Mongol, coming across this wall and seeing it extend across the range as far as you can see, fairly demotivating I would think. I have been really lucky again with the weather, there are very little clouds and I have sun and blue sky. Each of the towers along the way provides some welcome shelter from the sun, and standing by the windows allows for some cool breeze. It is a good job too because this section of the wall is fairly steep in parts, sweating has occurred. We walk the full section, though Purple decides not to attempt the last particularily steep section, instead going for the shaded spot option. Again the crys of 'hello beer, hello coca cola, hello water' echo in my ears. James and I get to the highest point that we can in this section, and it was worth the effort. Great views. In fact the whole wall section had given me a great view. It didn't matter where I was in the wall, just a look off to the side and you were treated to outstanding views. Combine this with the weather and it was a great day. We walk back along the wall and take in the other side before we head down to the toboggan. Now even though this was some what out of place, it was still a bit of fun. I wanted to attach my camera to my neck and record the trip, but there was not very much room so I had to keep it in my pocket. The toboggan was amazing. We waited until the people in front had left for a while so that we could achieve maximum speed, obviously we put Purple to the back. James and I manage to get up to quite a speed as we snake through the countryside. The toboggan was just like a a seat with wheels, it has a handle between your legs that you push down to go faster and you pull back to slow down. I tried not too pull the handle , don't want to slow down too much. Leaning in to the corners to maintain maximum speed, the ride down lasted a good 10mins which was longer than I had expected, which was a bonus. I tried to suggest that we got the cable car back up to go back down the toboggan, but this was denied by the group. Probably for the best, no need to be spending more money on that. It's was good though! We head to subway to get a sandwich because I am starving, I have a look over the wall to check if Mr Dong is still there. He is. I can enjoy my lunch now. Still worked out at about £4 for my foot long, and I'm at the great wall, says a lot about our prices back home.
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Well it was time to head home, a good 4 hours on the wall had tired us all out, so I promptly feel asleep on the way home, pretty much the whole way. Not sure if we had anymore near death experiences. James gets dropped off at Forbidden City and Mr Dong starts talking about how he waited for 4 hours at the wall and how he dropped James to Forbidden City, I'm starting to think that he is going to start increasing the already agreed price. He doesn't, I think he just wanted to confirm the price as James had been taking about going to an ATM. We got home and I wanted to go and get a shower, however I discovered that I had no clean clothes. I postpone my shower and inquire about the laundry services available, price was fine, but it takes 2 days to get your clothes! No good to me, I wash some clothes to last me for the next couple of days, hopefully the next place I go has a better option.
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Just ended up having a burger in the hostel as I'm scared of eating Chinese, especially after my previous experiences. I'm also starting to feel pretty bad, my throat is feeling sore and I can feel a cold coming along. I am not excited. I hate you China!!! Ha ha. I am not going to feel good tomorrow, I can feel it.