Great Wall to Wall tourists!

Hmmm... Badaling, what can I say? I joined Andy and Alex on their first excursion to the Great Wall today as they had chosen to go to Badaling, a section I hadn't been to yet. A combination of determination and a little bit of (my very poor) Mandarin meant that we avoided the 250yuan package tours and 150yuan tourist buses and managed to find a good public bus that only cost 12yuan each way. That proved to be a very good move as the wall was not a good experience.

Badaling was the first section of the wall to be reconstructed and as it is the closest to and most accessible from Beijing it attracts a lot of people. Almost the entire section of wall was jammed with people and the ensuing hawkers bothered one all the way. I will definitely recommend the Jinshanling to Simitai section to anyone instead!

Yeah, it is the Great Wall, but just look at all the people and junk on sale...

The eastern section was even worse!

Adding a little Olympics kitch to the scene as only the Chinese can...

At least we found a little respite at the top of the mountain where the fat cannot tread...

Tomorrow it's back to class to try yet again to get my spoken language up to snuff. I'm starting to get a bit despondent with that side of things as I'm really struggling to make progress. I'm thoroughly enjoying learning to read Hanzi, and even managed my first full paragraph today. But spoken is proving much more tiresome. I guess my brain is totally photographic. The sounds are all incredibly similar and the meanings of those sounds so diverse. Aaah!

Anna sent me a photo from my birthday dinner... That's Kiko on the right trying to understand what the hell I'm trying to say in Chinese.