Yipee we can finally upload to our blog site!!!

Thursday 7th October

Finally! We have managed to find a wifi spot that doesnt kick us off after 2 seconds. I have also had to subscribe to a proxy service just to be able to upload anything, hey ho, sorry its taken so long to get all of these on here and please excuse any typo's I am sure that there are loads!

Wow what a day, as promised, Wu was there at 08:30 sharp and we were sheaperded into a shiny new car on route to the Mutianyu section of the wall. We were informed that because of the holiday the other sections had very large traffic jams that could add an additional 3 hours to the drive which definately wasnt a pleasing thought.

On the way Wu practiced his english on us with enthusiasm and I was very tempted to make up some words just to confuse him but resisted the temptation. At one point he asked us what the latitude of London was and we presented him with three of the most gormless looks that we could muster. He then asked what the word was for longditude, we told him and he sat and repeated it to himself over and over again for about 30 minutes, which was a little annoying but probably more interesting that what he had been saying originally.

We made it to the wall without any traffic jams in about an hour and a half and I promise you it is no less spectacular than you can imagine. To begin with you need to navigate through a small market with the usual collection of touts trying to harrass you into buying a totally original statue that just happens to be on every single stall. There are your odd splaterings of restaurants and even a subway which was a little worrying as I was afraid the americans had invaded it and we would be presented with "This section of the great wall is sponsored by Mc Donalds" and coloured to look like Ronald McDonalds face.

But to my relief all of the stalls and shops ended quickly and we were given two options, walk up to the main section of the wall or take the cable car. This was a very difficult decision that we must have dwelt upon for at least 0.5 seconds before opting for the lazy way (we didnt get our physiques for nothing you know).

Wu ran around collecting tickets to various things and spent about 30 minutes with us at the top of the cable platform, informing us of how they used to use wolf dung for this and that (shows how much I was paying attention) before he finally left us to our own devices.

Although this section of the wall is less touristy than that of Badaling it was still very busy at the begining section. It seems however that most people simply get up to the wall, look at it for a couple of seconds before decending back down to their air conditioned cars and KFC family bucket.

It was a welcome relief to get away from the masses and as we walked further along the wall the population started thining out dramatically until there were some sections where we were totally alone. I took a zillion pictures which no doubt will either be blurry or out of focus.
This section of the wall has an incredibly steep incline at the end of the main stretch and although we tried to cooerce Tyler up to the top we only made it about half way up until his legs gave way. We still made it a lot further than others and Wu was surprised at how long we had been walking for when we returned.

You could easily tell the people that had gone all of the way up, they were the ones wringing out there shirts and being given a wide birth by everyone, that is except for the multitude of flying insects that seemed to just be everywhere.

After we got dropped back off we extended our stay at the hotel by a few days and headed off to the railway station to book our tickets through to Xi'an. I was very proud of us, we managed to get three tickets for a night train, on the correct day and potentially even in the same cabin as one another.

From here we decided to make our way down to the Shaolin Kung Fu show at the Red Temple theatre, it was packed but we managed to secure three tickets for the evenings performance and were not disappointed. Tyler especially loved it and was awe struck as the artists balances on knife blades and flew around the stage. There were even small children doing somersaults onto their heads, a feat that looked extremely painful and yet natural at the same time, it was a great show and a perfect way to end the day!