Day 5...The Great Wall

Hello Hello!

What an exhilerating day! We had a 5.30am wake up call ready for 6.30am to start a three hour bus journey. I actually can't remember the name of the place where we climbed the wall, if it truely matters to anyone please leave me a comment and I'll go out of my way to provide the info! (Except Luke...it doesn't matter to you, you are just going to pretend it does).

It was a really hard climb, especially by the fact that we were being chased by a bunch of Chinese farmers. These people must just chase people up and down the wall all day every day. Half of me wants to say fair play to them, some were over 60 years old and they were able to keep up with all of us, however this was much to my annoyance at the same time because if we didn't want a postcard at the bottom of the wall, why on earth after climbing and walking for 2 hours would we want to buy one at the top? There was also the whole "thats my farm down there, its a bad season" & "you my friend, good friend" (yes their English was fine) but I think the most annoying aspect of it was that they weren't really poor as their clothes were nicer than mine they were obviously educated meaning they are begging just because they think they'll get money, not because they need it. Overall we walked about 5 towers with the wall between each one getting longer and steeper every time, after about 4 towers there was one woman left following us, she eventually stormed off screaming and shouting when one of the girls offered her an Oreo! We did have theories that the whole lot of them were going to reappear with rifles, luckily that didnt happen - we actually passed them on our way down trying to sell postcards to another group of people. We only walked a little bit down the wall before taking a cable car the rest of the way, was lovely and relaxing meaning we could take in more views. Thats one thing China I have found isn't short on, scenery, im not complaining it makes a wonderful change from looking out at the car park in work every day.

Anyway, we got back at about 4pm to be dropped off at the pearl market. Unfortunately, Dom and I never made it as far as the pearls as the first floor is entirely dedicated to electronics, and its all so cheap! Ended up buying a ipod player for the car for about 10 Euros!

Tonight, obviously we went out for dinner again, im starting to miss home-cooked meals, the item worth mentioning was the desert. I had the most delicious banana fritters in the world, the batter was really light and they were soaked in honey and toffee...I deserved it after the amount of hard work today! They were so good we took a picture, but...we can't figure out how to put pictures on the computer! As soon as we do, we shall.

Tommorrow, we are off to the Forbidden City (inside it this time). Followed by a 12 hour overnight train

As ever,

Team Domro