China more

Wow what a day. I got up at 5:45am today. Incredible. So the purpose of this insane behavior was to go visit the Great Wall of China. We went to a section less than 2 hours from Beijing which is pretty close. However it isn't the really tourist bit so it wasn't crowded which was nice. This was my third time at the wall. And it is still awesome. It just seems to go on forever. Took like a million photos. Got totally ripped off coming back down though in the souvenir stalls. Shop people quote ridiculously high prices for stuff so you bargain way down. But even the bargained down price which you think is great is still a rip off as I found out later... Steve managed to buy a hat for 1/5 of the price that I got for the same one. And I thought I'd done well. Got some cool stuff though.

After the wall visited Tiananmen Square. Had wanted to go see pickled Mao but apparently the building is shut for a few months for renovations. Stupid Olympics. Beijing has gone crazy trying to tidy itself up. A whole huge road has been blocked off cause they're developing the whole street. And that was a very main part of the city.

So we hung about the square for a bit. Went into the Forbidden city etc. Then we went and got lost. Then we got taxi back to hostel and spend the night eating a lot of food. While watching Hot Fuzz. These youth hostels are great.

Think we might go wonder about the Sumer palace tomorrow which will be fun. Then we fly out!