The > Wall of Some Big Asian Country

Finally on the third day the weather was clear! I was going to go to the Great Wall of China! This was an easy 2nd for the top tourist sites I wanted to see on this trip, just behind the Pyramids. There are a bunch of different sites you can go see near Beijing, and originally I wanted to do this big hike between the Simatai section and another one. But in July they started more work on the Simatai section, so it won't be open for a while. Lame. BUT... I was also running low on money, so I went to the only part of the wall accessible by public bus alone, Badaling!

Of course this is the closest section, and so the most crowded. But I knew a few tricks for avoiding that. For starters, when you get off the bus (I was the only non-Chinese person on that bus FYI) they will try to lure you onto the chair lift. THIS IS A MISTAKE! At the top of that lift is a river of people all the way back to the main entrance. Don't do it! Instead walk to the main entrance and take a left, away from the river of people. You will immediately be met by several sections of wall that feel like a straight vertical climb... because they pretty much are. But keep going! Because after your 3rd heart attack, is a part of the wall with only 12 to 24 people. And it's big, and flat, and there are guard towers where cool breezes move through the stone and cool you off quickly. But the best part is the view. You can see the wall snake around for miles in either direction. You cannot see this view from any other part of the Badaling wall. It is worth every bit of the horrible pain you will go through to attain it.

If Badaling, the most overcrowded and touristy part of the wall, was that amazing, I can't even imagine how the other parts are. If I had hated the rest of my trip to China (which wasn't even close to true), the Great Wall alone would pull me back. I'm gonna have to come back at some point, I just have to. It was that much fun. Anyway, I put up lots of pictures on facebook. Sorry I haven't been able to put them on the blog. If I had known Blogger's pictures upload was this bad from abroad, I would have done something else. But it's too late now. Oh well, on to the last days in China!