The Great Wall…and not-so-great transport
Monday, November 17th, 2008Of course being in China there are a few things which are ‘must see’s’, the most obvious being The Great Wall (TGW). It is one of the new wonders of the world as well so I can add it to my list of ones I have seen, only 2 more to go to complete all 7!
The wall is pretty long (obviously) so there are quite a few places you ca go and see it at. I wanted to go to bit called Simitai which is apparently a bit less touristy, while Rdoc and Tom wanted to do a hike which went from one part across to Simitai. The LP said it was a 4 hour walk up hill which I wasn’t really interested in, I just wanted to see a bit then get back to town to get some other things done. Of course things never work out as planned and the entire day turned out to be a lesson in patience as we somehow got involved in the great ‘great wall’ trasport scam.
Of course it looks easy in the LP, although by now we should have learn’t that it never is as easy as “just change to one of the regular cheap mini buses”. We all headed together for the first part which was easy enough, get to the bus station and take a bus to a town outside of Beijing. Strangely there were some over helpful women showing us the bus but we managed to mostly avoid them and got on our way. Of course though they had lined up taxis at the other end for us and one of their associates had gotten on the bus with us. Once we were getting into this town, we asked were to get off and this Chinese lady on the bus told the driver to tell us to get off at this main road. Waiting were lots of taxi’s and the women from the bus also got off and her car was there (how convenient) and tried to organise us a taxi. We ignored them all and tried to find the shared mini buses to get there. This lady was crazy insistent and followed us around in her car for about an hour making sure we couldn’t get on to a mini bus without her talking to them and then charging us some exorbitant price. It was super frustrating but eventually we got in one for reasonably cheap, although I was charged more than the boys even though it turns out I was only going half as far. Also while the driver said he would take me to the wall he actually dropped me 10km from the wall where there were even more taxis waiting charging more money.
By this time I was super pissed off and just started walking towards the wall getting more and more angry. After a bit a guy stopped ad took me to the wall, he was a photographer and was wondering what I was doing trying to walk the 10km to Simitai. So that was really nice.
TGW was of course amazing, the only downside is that is really just looked just like the photos, I mean really just like every picture you’ve ever seen. It stretched out across he top of this hill ad then once you were up you could look out and see it zig-zagging across the hills. It was beautiful of course and very very impressive, my photos though, look exactly how you’d expect! The best part was it really was quiet, hardly any other tourists, which made a good change from the rest of Beijing. Plus it was hot and sunny with clear blue skies which made it really beautiful and great views right across the wall.
(Really only one photo is needed as it really just looks like how you would picture it)
Once you are up on TGW you realise that the whole reason of it being a defense thing was actually a bit useless, its not very high or wide at all, certainly not something that would keep out armies. And really it didn’t as Genghis Khan easily broke through the wall a few times I think. Also recently the first Chinese astronaut was sent into space and upon returning was asked by waiting Chinese media if you could indeed see TGW from space as we have always been led to believe….well turns out you can’t. And really why should you be able to. Its long, but so are lots of roads and rivers and mountains. But despite it not really being much use in warfare, it makes a very cool thing to see. Its really steep, with dodgy stairs and crumbling sides. The watch towers break up the sections which have little rooms and windows. I ended up climbing right up the top of the Simitai section and by the time I was heading back down Rdoc and Tom were arriving, turns out it only took like 2 hours to walk ad I probably did just as much walking as them! But having 3 of us made it easier to bargain a lift back to the bus station. Of course there is some monopoly on taxis and we couldn’t get a cheap ride. We eventually found an American couple who had a mini van they hired waiting for them, but the driver refused to let us come unless we paid just as much as they had paid, super frustrating! eventually we gave in and he handed over half as commission to the taxi ‘ring leader’. Very annoying, but eventually we got there, got a bus and made it back to Beijing, quite late by now and didn’t really get to do all the other things I wanted, but despite frustrating transport TGW was very cool and well worth it. I would totally recommend people do an organized tour though as it works out to be about the same price and far, far less hassle.
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