Beijing Adventures!

Hi folks!

Its hard to believe we've only been gone two weeks yet we've hit Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing! We spent the first week and a half visiting friends in Korea and Japan so not too much to report, just great hospitality, good food, and great friends. What more could we want?!

I also apologize for not writing sooner, now that we've arrived in Beijing and I have loads of pictures and video to share with everyone, the internet connetions in Beijing have proven to be hit or miss. So, sadly all of our prepared videos and photos are in my pocket on a thumb drive that is banned from this internet cafe. I even had to have my photo taken by the "Chinese Cultural Law Enforcement Agency" before getting an account for an hour. So, please accept a rain check on the pics and read on for our most recent adventures in China.

Ben and I found Beijing to be interesting and agrivating at the same time. The weather was surprisingly crisp with clear blue skies for the last three days. We took advantage of the sun and hit the Forbidden City and joined literally tens of thousands of Chinese tourists who followed hired tour guides who screamed into cheap megaphones the entire time. The buildings were beautiful but it felt like a cheap disney world to us.

The next day I was determined to not let the other tourists ruin my trek to the Great Wall, so Ben and I traveled out to a very rural part of the wall that passes through a very sleepy farming village. The wall had not been restorted and it was incredible to climb the original steps that climbed ear popping mountain peaks. This part of the wall in Huang Hua, and is so remote that there is no admission fee and virtually no tourists (we were on the only people on the wall). There was a local peasant who decided to charge a few cents to gain admission to the trail that leads to the wall and skirts his property. We also encountered a very husky Chinese woman on the wall who threatened us with a pick ax if we did not pay her admission to pass through the watch tower that she was occupying. We ended up pushing our way through without creating an international incident...hopefully. :-)

Beijing Adventures!

Beijing, China