The Great Wall of China

The day after our arrival in Beijing, we took our first tour to The Great Wall of China. The tour was roughly 7 hours including travel time, lunch and a few other stops along the way. This was a really awesome tour, the history of the Wall and actually being able to walk along it was really amazing. We also had a great tour guide which made the day that much more fun!

The weather was fairly cold, but by the same token, it was nice not to climb the wall in the sweltering heat with 5x the people! However, we would still go back to see the wall during the warmer season.

History (courtesy of Wikipedia):

The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during the rule of successive dynasties. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC. The most famous is the wall built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang; little of it remains; it was much farther north than the current wall, which was built during the Ming Dynasty.

The Great Wall stretches over approximately 6,508 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 km (4,160 miles) in total. At its peak, the Ming Wall was guarded by more than one million men. It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall. (Wikipedia)

Entrance to the Great Wall is a tourist trap, equipped even with a roller coaster type ride to the top! There is also a fake wall built a few miles before the Badaling that was built for overflow tourists. Our tour guide informed us that even though, "in China, we can copy anything," the Badaling section of the Great wall was authentic.







We took a kind of rollercoaster ride up to tower 4 and then climbed to tower 8 on foot. I don't think anyone had a choice but to use the rollercoaster, unless you climbed up from somewhere on the other side of the mountain.







The Great Wall loaded with tourists like us!






























The Great Wall is coagulated with Chinese labors' wisdom, sweat and toil. Ancient records report that at least one million slaves and prisoners of war were conscripted to build the great wall which followed the contour of the land, taking advantage of natural defenses. As many died from exhaustion and starvation while working on this colossal task, the Wall was also known as "the longest cemetery in the world."


The bricks, rocks and lime used to build the wall had to be carried up to the mountains by bare shoulders. Those who succeeded in climbing the wall today are often regarded as "real heroes", from this we should realize the difficulty in climbing the wall, and can imagine how difficult it is to build the Great Wall without modern machinery at that time. Chairman Mao proclaimed that any person who wanted to be a real hero must climb the Great Wall, which has inspired many ambitious visitors. All tourists now know Chairman Mao's famous words, "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a real hero!"





"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" -Mao Zedong

"This is a Great Wall and only great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with such a great wall will surely have a great future" -Richard Nixon

Beijing, China for the Lunar New Year

One of the reasons we decided to live and teach in Korea for one year was the opportunity to travel to various countries nearby. In December we took a 10 day trip to Thailand and spent New Year's Eve in Bangkok. During the Lunar New Year, February 6-10th we had another opportunity to travel to a new country. We spent 4 nights in Beijing, China! We were visiting China while there were crazy snowstorms going on in the Southeast, where there were power outages for days and trains were not running. Fortunately for us, there was no snow in Beijing! It was very dry, albeit equally cold.

Although we only had 4 nights in China, we had an amazing time and would definately go back during the Spring / Summer months! As you can imagine, there was construction going on everywhere in Beijing as the countdown for the 2008 Summer Olympics nears. Speaking of the Olympics, wow!! the amount they must be making off souvenirs.. more on this later.


Gate 47 at Incheon Airport, Korea.





There's our plane, fuled up and ready to go!



Another in flight meal! Rice, beef, shrip, a bun, cake and some OJ - decent, but nowhere near as good as the food on Thai Air!



TsingTao beer.. mmm free alcohol on the plane :)



The outskirts of Beijing





Our blog would not be complete without a picture with a creepy baby doll, this picture was taken in the washroom at the Beijing Airport - instructions on how to use the baby change table.



One of the control towers at the airport, promoting China Mobile and the 2008 Olympics.

We took a shuttle bus from the aiport to this train station which was located near our hotel. The cost was Y16 or $2.25 each ($1=7Yuan).

There were about 5 city blocks that were encompassed with the shiny architectural designs below. On the first level there were some upscale stores such as Tiffany's, Burberry, Omega, Louis Vuitton and offices for Audi just to name a few.

Stay tuned for the Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City and more! (We're still sorting through pics, this isn't as easy as it looks!)

New Year's Eve 2008 - Bangkok, Thailand

Our last night in Thailand happened to be December 31st, 2007 and we spent the evening at Central World in Bangkok. Have you ever seen the countdown around the world on TV where they show you live footage of NYE in Times Square - New York, London-UK, Seoul-Korea, Tokyo-Japan, Sydney-Australia etc? It's even better than on TV! There were hundreds of thousands of people there having a great time, listening to the bands and waiting for the clock to strike midnight 2008 (and surprisingly, we had more elbow room than we have had in Korea and especially more than at the Seoul fireworks, wow!).

In a previous post, we mentioned that we met our friend James on the flight to Thailand, who was also an English teacher in Korea. Well, we met up with him while in Bangkok and made our way to mingle with the crowd at Central World, and of course we stopped at a 7-11 on the way for beer (in 1 square block we saw FOUR 7-11 stores, all stocked with cheap beer! :).

The theme for the countdown was Hands 2008: Bidding farewell to the old year while greeting New Year is a festive practice significantly embraced by people around the world as it’s the last biggest event of the year that leads to a fresh beginning. Hands Bangkok Countdown 2008 is designed to be an international symbol of the celebrations for Thais and visitors. Bangkok is a center of tourism in Southeast Asia, full of lively attractions and facilities for tourists. Click here for the official website.


3hrs, 56min, 11seconds to go!



Central World!



The bridge was also decorated for the event.



There were bright lights on the buildings everywhere you looked.



Krista and Prada.



Center stage, the globe was an digital display that also showed the countdown and the Hands 2008 logo.







So many people!



Ahhh Chang... how we miss your great taste..... :( If only we could get better beer here...



More lights!





It was a very large and upbeat crowd.



This was the largest LCD TV by Panasonic - they were showing a close-up of center stage as well as NYE around the world.





7minutes, 47 seconds to go!





Happy New Year 2008!!





Here is a short clip of center stage and the crowd.



It's a bit late, but Happy New Year 2008!! We miss our friends and family back home - this is our way of keeping in touch with what we have been up to during our travels (and providing info to anyone who is interested in travelling or teaching), we do encourage emails from anyone at jonandkrista@gmail.com. We also hope you will add your email to our blog list (top right of this page) you will receive an email copy of our blog posts when new ones are available.

Take care!