Great Wall

Eschewing a more expensive tour group, on the advice of some nice Dutchmen, we hired a cab to take us to a less touristy part of the the Great Wall for about $80. Although more than two hours out of town, Simatai was certainly as dramatic as the guidebooks said, and well worth it. We opted to hike up to the Wall instead of taking the gondola. The Wall itself is a challenge to walk, with an incline of 70 degrees in some areas, high narrow steps, and uneven footing. However, it was no match for our Tevas.





It was both a physical and emotional journey, knowing that the Wall was built by thousands if not millions of prisoners of war. The ridge line on which the Wall was built is so steep that our progress was slow, let alone the workers who brought those millions of bricks up there.

After runs up several long flights of steps and a knee-pounding descent, we were happy to ride the gondola back down. To our surprise, our cab driver had stuck around for about 3.5 hours to take us back to Beijing, per our agreement (he probably just couldn't find another fare). When we finally got back to the city, however, he didn't want to honor the deal we'd made at the outset, and tried to charge us the metered fare, which was about twice as much. Needless to say, there was a lot of talking past each other, to put it politely. I found the word for "50" in my guidebook and repeated it to him again and again in an attempt to get my change, to no avail, so we just got out and ate the $7. Interesting note: while $7 isn't worth fighting a cabbie to me, that's almost a decent daily living wage, so our driver did pretty well for himself.

Emerging from one of the convenient public bathrooms on the main drag near our hostel, I was happily surprised to see the familiar red, white, and blue spiraling sign of a barbershop. In a word, that was the best $1.50 haircut I've ever gotten.