I had planned to write about our amazing China trip as soon as we returned but, as I actually had to work a bunch, and I had 1,211 pictures to sort through, it kept getting pushed back, but I'm here now...
Our trip had an auspicious start as soon as we left Singapore. We were so responsible and booked our flights months ago, while we were still in Turkey. On the way to the airport, we were chatting with our taxi driver who also had plans to go to Beijing that same week. It turned out that his entire trip, with a full tour, cost about as much as one of our airline tickets. We also did not have a nonstop flight to Beijing. This turned out to be to our advantage...After the short leg of the flight, we had a layover in Kuala Lumpur. From there, we had about 6 hours to Beijing. I was disappointed to find (since I am so large and need alot of space) that I was stuck in a middle seat on the plane. While we are sitting in our tiny, cramped seats, someone comes back and softly asks to see our boarding passes. He tells us that they'd like to give us an upgrade to Business class "but separate seats. Separate. You won't be able to sit together." By the first "sep-" I had (sophisticatedly) shouted "OK" started crawling over Chris, likely elbowing him in the face to get a move on and continuing "yeah, yeah, we see each other all the time." Let me make sure to give them a plug...We were flying Malaysian Airlines, my new favorite airline...And the flight attendants were so nice that they actually asked someone else to move so we could end up sitting together. While one person was putting our bags in the overhead compartment, someone else was handing us glasses (glass glasses. Not the plastic stuff that cracks if you accidentally bite down onto it) of champagne so we could have a pre-take off flight. Chris was so exhausted from all of his hard work at school, so he fell asleep immediately after takeoff. I, on the other hand, love feeling important and pretending to have a luxurious life, so I stayed awake for most of the flight, taking advantage of more drinks "keep 'em coming" might have been my exact quote to the amused flight attendant, the best chicken and beef satay I have had to date, and the personal video screen filled with movies and television shows. Oh, and when they served us food, they set our tray tables with LINEN. We should not have to eat off of mere plastic tray tables, surely not! Basically, it was the best flight I've had since the "NY to Orlando upgrade of 1993" and has led me to the undeniable conclusion that: Coach is for suckers.
Anyway, back to the actual visit to China. The trip was partially to visit China and partially to visit with Chris' parents who were in Beijing as part of a longer trip around the country. We had planned to be with them on their tour from Sunday to the following Saturday (we were arriving early on a Saturday morning,) but visit the Great Wall of China on our own beforehand. Being the over-researcher that I am, I contacted about 5 different companies that do hikes of the Great Wall with a one night camp out on the Wall, nearly signing up with one, before I inadvertently realized that we actually weren't meeting Chris' parents until Monday so I decided to start organizing a 2 night trip on our own. In subsequent research, I came across a guesthouse at the Simatai section of the wall, along with contact information for a man in the US who created the website for the Chinese owners (who didn't speak much English.) I decided to contact this guy, who ended up being an invaluable resource when planning the trip. I'm not going to put his name on here, but we'll call him J, because I don't want him to have to be harassed by anyone else! Basically, he called the owners in China for us, to organize our stay and also organized a driver to bring us from the airport out to the Wall, hold our luggage while we hike, and take us to our hotel in Beijing 2 days later. For our second night's stay, I had contacted the (also invaluable) tour company representative that Chris' parents were using for their tour, and asked if she wouldn't mind contacting a man who I had read about online as someone who rents out a watchtower on the Wall and provides dinner and breakfast to his guests (and who also does not speak English.) As we were going to be hiking along the wall, I wasn't sure how we would hook up with him or figure out which watchtower belonged to him. I was told by the tour agent "his wife runs a stall on the wall, and she'll have your name taped to it."
There were so many loose ends here, I wasn't really sure if it was going to work out, but never one to like failure, I had my fingers crossed and...It couldn't have turned out better! The driver, who I was warned (there's a theme here) didn't speak English, actually brought his college-aged, English speaking niece along for the 3 hour trip, just to make sure we could figure out all the details about where he should drop us off, when and where he should pick us up, and if there was anything else we needed. She gave us her phone number, so we could contact her for any reason, which we did when we decided we wanted an earlier pick-up time on our final day (after 'roughing it' for a few days, a girl needs a couple of hours at the Silk Market...More on that later)
We arrived at Simatai at about 9am on Saturday morning and, in the pouring rain, started our walk. After following the "walk along the river and take a left at the first watchtower" type of directions we got from J and thwarting some would-be Wall-escorters/postcard-hawkers, we arrived at the Simatai Guest House to meet our friendly hosts for the night - "You're the Americans!" he said as we walked up to the place. After finally getting some sleep on the beds (wooden planks with 1" thick foam stapled to it) in the Guesthouse, we awoke in the afternoon and had some amazing sweet and sour chicken, fried rice and homemade (and delicious!) noodles and a couple of beers. After our first meal in China, and after the rain cleared and we realized we could see the Wall extending as far as we could see, from our patio, our host offered to take us on a walk (he did speak a little English) up to the Wall for sunset. It was awesome.
Here are a couple of pictures from the Guesthouse and our sunset hike. We are heading out to Oktoberfest today, so I can't write more but I will update the rest of the trip in the next day or so...
