Last Day in Beijing Into Xian

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We got up on our last day in Beijing as we had booked an excursion to the Mutanyu section of the great wall.  There was the usual spitting chorus to wake up to in the hotel.  So i got up and headed towards the bathroom, it was closed for cleaning, of course, genius... because who in their right mind would want to clean their teeth at the crazy hour of 8 in the morning.  I was told to go to a rival bathroom at the end of the hall.  I got there and had to bang on the shower room door as some huge chinese bloke had locked himself in there as he was apparently king of the shower room.  He let me into the shower room then walked about in the nip very un-selfconciously.  I felt like he was staring at me but ignored it and turned the shower on.  As i did so the huge bloke turned to me and started shouting at me in Chinese.  'This is not a good way to start the morning' i thought as the man came a metre away from me, showed me his arse and started slapping his shoulder.  'Bad custom, bad custom, we shake hands, i don't know what this is'? i shouted defensively.  He smiled and started slapping his shoulder and pointing at my shoulder....ah thank f*ck for that he's seen my odie tattoo... ha ha ha 'Odie' i shouted, 'moron' he shouted back in chinese, 'you have a lolly ice picture on your back'..... I guess that was what he was saying..phew that could have turned out in many other ways which i don't want to think about.

So got out and after we had been changed and stored our luggage we waited for our excursion lift, which didn't arrive.  The tour counter woman told us to go to another hotel and wait there for the mini bus.  So we walked for 5 minutes, found a huge plush, expensive and fancy hotel and waited there for 30minutes.  We started to panic after a while and we asked everyone where the tour bus would arrive, they asked us which number room we were in, we then told them we didn't actually stay in their hotel and it all got very messy and confused.  Eventually their tour counter woman spoke to us, kindly ignoring two chinese fellas who had just pushed ruth out of the way to get to the front of the queue.  She just told us to stay were we were and we would be fine.  So we stood by a huge column and put our bags down as some expensively dressed chinese business woman walked past us and launched a huge flegm wad into an ash tray in a stand fully two metres away......complete stunned silence until i could mutter the word "wow".

Great Wall - Mutanyu

So eventually we got picked up and headed to the wall. Your random tour facts are 16 million people in beijing, 1 million taxi drivers, 12 million bicycles.  There you go, you can bore people at parties with those facts as i guarantee i will be doing.

The journey to the wall is uneventful, if you are looking for Mutanyu and lost i'll give you a clue how to get there, it is a mile down the road from "The Natural Holliday Resort For Dwarves"...yes, i kid you not.  Not like those, man-made, fake dwarf holiday places, no this place was all natural, like a little hobbiton with swings no doubt.  Later on i saw a sign for "The room area for small, little people' sign posted..... not just little people but small little people...jeez, mini dwarves that really is tiny!

The section of the wall we were looking at was built on the mountains to dissuade the mongols from invading beijing.  Now it is main purpose is for sight-seeing fat tourists like myself and holidaying small little people.

The wall itself could be accessed my ski lift so a lazy way up really, it was well over 30 degrees but we managed to climb up to the end of the tourist bit but it was extremely steep and exhausting.  The fun part after an hour or so was the tobaggan run all the way down.  At least it would have been if an 80 year old man wasn't in front of ruth going 2 mph. Still much better than walking down.  The warning signs were quite clear on the way down though "drivers must keep above 25m distance with in front mustn't be laughing and playing boisterous collision or keep with one hand and do other things with the other".  Goes without saying really.

As soon as we were down we were accosted by people, a woman tapped me on the shoulder as soon as i stood up from the toboggan, "hello banana hello", she said.  "hello grapefruit hello"  i replied..and so it continued all down the small hill, "hello tshirt hello", "hello hat hello" etc.

Got home ok via obligatory free trip to a silk factory were we were showing how silk is made then ushered into a shop which we walked straight out of.

So in xian now.  Going to see terracotta army tomorrow, will be a very hectic day.