Violent Pillow

We woke up early on Monday morning to meet Ming Ming, our tour guide, and Mr. Wong, our driver. Yes, these were their names. Our tour group could have been an ad for the United Colors of Benetton. We had two from Australia, two from London, and two from Holland. The girl from the Australia group was actually an Olympic athlete in swimming and her husband had gotten into the finals for Olympic Wheelchair Basketball, which was pretty amazing.

After careening through Beijing traffic we arrived at the BADA LING section of the wall where Deborah saw a bunch of old ladies naked. Yay for public bathrooms in China. Old lady vajayjay aside, I picked some pics to post that you can see after the jump, but not all of them. If you want to see ALL of the pics from The Great Wall you can go to my FLICKR set.

Yes those are bears. The entrance has bears to remind people that they will be released upon you if you don’t buy souvenirs.

So at the Bada Ling section, actually walking up to the wall could kill most tourists, so what you do is take these little train carts that pull you up the steep slope to the wall. Pretty cool.

The wall itself really takes your breathe away. Its hard to describe the size and impact the wall actually has on you when you are there.

Its hard to be almost as awesome as one of the great wonders of the world.

We were told that if you can walk up to the highest point and tower on the Bada Ling section you are strong and a “man”.

They should be happy they weren’t pushed off……by me.

Of course we made it to the top. Awesome = Us.

I may have been a little tired though…….Luckily I brought tennis shoes like a SMART person. Who would wear sandals to the great wall?? Oh thats right, Deborah and Justin.

So Amazing. the wall is cool too.

The train cart going back down is much faster. Wish it was roller coaster fast though.

Best store name ever?? Perhaps.

Next post? The Ming Tombs from the same tour.