Beijing

After arriving at our hostel in Beijing we where handed a notice that there would be a curfew in the centre of Beijing. This was so they could practice the 60th anniversary celebrations that are due to take place on the 1st of October. As a result of the curfew we would have had to stay in the hotel from 1800 hours on Friday to 1100 on the Sunday. Luckily, there where some Spanish people that were also traveling with monkey business that manage to get hold of the office. Matt at monkey business asked us to get at taxi down to the office so he could sort out other accommodation.

After dumping our stuff at our new hostel we headed out to eat. Jen and I could not resist headed for pizza hut to see if there was a “difference”. The next day we decided to spend the day sorting out trips and shopping for a new day bag as the centre of Beijing was closed. We had a look around the real shops before heading into the clothes market where you can find any item of clothes you could imagine. We manage to find a decent clone of a north face bag which was about 10% of the price in the real shop.
In the afternoon we headed down to the electronics markets which are 2 big 5 story buildings selling all the gadgets and pc equipment you have ever wanted. It was a good job Jen was with me as I think I could have just spent the year in there. We decided that as we where struggling to find internet cafes and the hostel internet was always full to purchase a small netbook. In the evening we booked our 10km walk on the great wall for the next day.
We had to be up a 5.45am to leave for the great wall!! Had some sleep on the bus but the driver was crazy, along with every other driver so spent a lot of the time fearing for our lives! When we arrived at the wall you could choose to get up to the wall by cable car or walk an extra 2KM, (we opted for the cable car). While we were queuing for the cable car we were attacked by a huge wasp, it was not fun. The cable car up had a good views of parts of the wall be weren’t going to climb which was good. When we got off the cable car the task in hand hit us! 10KM of rocky steep terrain lay ahead of us. We put our game face on and set off, it was sooo hard, we’re not going to lie!! Some parts were so steep I had to use my hands to climb up. At one part there was a tower that had not steps down so Gareth and an old lady (who sells water from the top of the wall) had to help me down the drop! At the end of the 10KM walk there was a choice, to walk some more to the restaurant or get a zip wire down. We got the zip wire, oh my goodness, I was so scared there was no safety harness and we were very high.
The next day our legs hurt so much from the walk but there were Beijing sights to be seen. First we walked around Tiananmen Square and took pictures of us doing star jumps. We then went to the Forbidden City which was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. The place is a maze of interesting buildings. After the city we went to Jingshan Park and climbed up a load of stairs to the highest point in Beijing city. The views were not that great because of all the air pollution. After the park we got a metro (tickets only 20p to anywhere) to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of heaven is, well, a big park with similar buildings to the Forbidden City. There was one cool thing, the echo wall. We had a conversation 30 metres apart along the wall. We then got a metro back to the hostel, had a lovely Chinese dinner before heading to the station for our overnight train to Xian.