After the welcome meeting... I was sold, the leader Mickey Mike is cool, he is Canadian Chinese, and really made me feel the way I wanted to.. he speaks good mandarin... plus is really enthusiastic.. which is great.

So I am here, for the first trip... and the first day was The Great Wall of China!

It was a three hour bus ride out to a section of the wall which goes along to Simati. . . as we went through the gate we were joined by a band of chinese woman who were trying to sell us postcards, t-shirts and water...

the whole group politely refused, but they kept walking with us... and they kept on walking with us for hours and hours, every few steps asking if we wanted postcards, water, book, t-shirt.. a reply No, would get a okay later.. and sure enough later they tried again.

I have to admire these people, working so hard to earn so little, but they did hassle too much, I was torn between ice maiden, or buying on the premise that they would go away once they had their pound of flesh, but no.. others who gave in to the hard sell, were swamped with more hard sell! So I stuck to ice maiden, and made it off the wall without any quality goods.

This distraction aside, the great wall is obviously awesome, and the scenery is stunning. Alot of the wall has been restored, but we went over some sections which were in a sorry old state. Which is how we felt by the end of it, the hotest day of the year, 5 hours of walking, and not really enough water was too much for us.. well on our first day anyway... I was seriously dehydrated and was losing my senses, balance was a problem, but I made it...

The wall is much steeper and harder to climb than you would imagine, in places it is near vertical, with a really rough cobbled stoned path eroded by hundreds of years of troups and tourists. In places it was quite precarious, dangerous even, which was fun.

The most un-fun thing, was the amout of sweat we were all outputting. I mean it is gross.. it was going to be a nice sweaty 3hr bus ride back to the hotel... but most of us managed a little sleep, the walk had hit us all!