Flowering House Hostel (last night here, maybe)

The temperature dropped by about 10 degrees last night and it has been raining all day the kind of light misty rain. It is quite cold, at some point had to wear my jacket and fleece, something that I haven't done since Papua New Guinea Highlands (in May).

Today visited the Great Wall of China. Lonely Planet lists 7 places around Beijing where one can see the wall. Our hostel's receptionist recommended Juyongguan as it is less touristy and closest to the city. Bus number 919 from the Deshengmen station takes you there but locating this bus turned out to be too complex for us: the station seemed to have no central information/ticket office, and is more like set of bus stops scattered over a larger area. Most of the buses are called 919, I guess their subtypes can be distinguished by a few Chinese characters next to the number. Nobody speaks English. Gave up and took a bus to Badaling (70km NW from the city), the most popular site to view the Wall, also serviced by bus 919.

As expected, Badaling was very touristy, with a very well restored segment of the wall, surrounded by restaurants, amusement parks, souvenir vendors, and a cable car line. Even a bunch of sad looking Asian bears are kept in a pit for entertainment. Locals feed them carrots. The Wall is very steep in some parts and was very slippery due to the rain. Good that they have installed hand rails. Walked a couple of kilometers along two stretches of the wall, some more remote parts were almost empty so one could take pictures with no people on them, although visibility to the wall snaking away over the hills was quite bad. The more touristy parts were crowded with Chinese tourist groups who were all interested in taking photos with us. So some time was spent on that but we are used to this by now.

The bus back to Beijing got stuck in a rush hour traffic jam and took about 2h longer than the trip out of town in the morning.

Yesterday visited the Forbidden City, another must-see Beijing sight. It's a large territory covered with orderly laid out Chinese houses and crowded with tourist groups. The most interesting thing for me was the location-aware audio guide that one can rent and the fact that they offer these guides in 40 different languages.

Tomorrow will try to buy the train ticket for an overnight journey to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Army there. But it seems that these tickets sell out quickly, so might have to postpone the trip by a day.

(It's been now more than 400 days on the road for us. Thinking of going home soon.)