I woke myself up with a startle as I suddenly realised that I had not put my camera battery on charge the night before. I could not believe that I had been that forgetful, and with today being one of the big trips I was really kicking myself as I know so much better than this. True, I am staying in a room with 5 other people but this is not such a new experience for me and I should not have made such a basic blunder.
Thankfully I was awake before my tour was due to start so I dashed over to the plug socket and stuck it on immediately to give it at least a fighting chance of having enough battery life for the big day. Even more fortuitously was that my tour guide phoned me up shortly after to say that he was stuck in traffic and would be running late, which gave it an extra boost.
The white mini bus picked us up and then we skipped around to a couple of other hotels before we were off to our first stop, the Summer Palace. We passed a number of famous landmarks like the Birds Nest Olympic Staduim, which looks so much better all lit up at night time than it does during the day, and the Pan Gu, a five star hotel that is built to resemble a dragon.
In the mists of time there were at least five grand palace gardens for the emperor, but with war and time they have all fallen into disrepair and crumbled, with only the smallest of the five being the Summer Palace being rebuilt to resemble even a glimmer of its former glory. According to the guide it has one of the longest corridors in the world, being several kilometers long and was built purely so that the Empress of the time would not get rained on going from her inner palace to her outdoor temple of tranquility and reading chamber.
The palace was quite ornate and was set on the banks of a man made lake which led out onto the sea, overlooked by a man made hill and goes someway to show how fanatical they were about trying to get the right ambience and look of a place, no matter the cost of the hardship involved. I think the tour guide was a bit sexist as he had a number of nasty things to say about the Empress who ruled China at the time it was constructed, finsihing with that she would insist on having 128 dishes for every meal, mostly for the look or smell and not for the taste.
It would have been nice to see all that this place could offer, but a visit from a North Korean high official complete with black limo, armed guard escorts and several minibus's full for their entourage.
Once we left this tranquil but slightly cold day we then headed to the Great Wall at Badaling, via a quick stop over at a Jade Factory. Unbeknown to me and the other tourists this was just the first of a number of overly long stops that were not advertised or informed to us but formed more of the core trip that the actual visit to the two that were.
I have no idea of the average budget of your greta wall tourist, but I am fairly sure that no backpackers have a spare wad of cash in their possession equal to the cost of their house that they wish to spend on purchasing a five foot scale model ornamental jade sloop, but that is what was on offer in this warehouse of a factory. Before we even arrived the tour guide started to build up the magic and value of Jade, it being the symbol for wealth, for happiness, for the Emperor, for long life, for just about everything you could imagine and the problem was figuring out wha was genuine historical information and what was pre-sales hype.
Not everything was as beyond my financial reach, but I had no desire for a tiny single jade bead on a piece of string and everything else would have required a serious commitment on my part prior to purchase and was certainly not going to be any spur of the moment souveneir bargain hunt.
I thought that there would only be one factory stop off being visiting the wall, but there ended up being two, the second was one where they were selling pots, urns and vases made of brass then painted in the french style.
After this second factory we were driven to a restaurant for dinner and all the while subtly railroaded into visiting Juyong Guan instead of our original destination of Badaling as it was meant to be nice and quiet, with less tourists and much quicker to reach the actual wall instead of a twenty minute walk along the road.
What he meant is that it is a lot closer so it was easier to get back, it was quieter because it was such a small section of the wall that noone really woud want to visit it, and the crap about a twenty minute walk was just further to make it seem as if it would be a struggle to reach.
The section of Juyong Guan was very different from my memory and photos of Badaling, being lower, thinner and covering a much smaller area of hillside and what was there seems to have been rebuilt / renovated rather shoddily, but then as I had chosen to believe the no paid tour guide would deliberatly ruin a persons trip by shortchanging them with an inadequate visit to the Great Wall and had not done my own research on which section to visit.
However, all that said, it was still a triumph to visit and get some great shots and few people can boast that they have been to the Great Wall even once, never mind visiting two sections on two seperate visits to China years apart from one another both times while travelling solo.
As part of the tour I also met a Danish couple and an American couple with a quartet of Singaporeans completing our little group. It was nice to have share some travel stories with, not to mention have people willing to take photos of each other so that we had plenty of good momentos from the journey.
The trek up to the hill was a bit of a struggle and even though it was cold, having only thawed a few weeks ago it was still hard work making it up to the top and sadly the effort was not worth it as the view from the top was not magnificent with the section of the wall finsihing soon after, quite different from its seemingly endless snaking trail across the tops of far off mountain ridges which is the view from Badaling.
We were only less than two hours here, which considering it was barely 1pm and this was the last place any of us were interested in visiting it was not so cool at all, and the other reason why I would strongly suggest not taking a organised tour to the wall again.
On our way back we stopped at a silk museum / factory that was informative but not what we came to see and was in fact just another prelude sales pitch for the high quality silk bedding that were on offer on the way to the exit. All of us were in and out of the shop in less than ten minutes, except those group from Singapore who got roped into buying 4 thick bedspreads at about 1000 Yuan each, though took the salesmen a lot of time to snare them.
So much time in fact that I felt we must have been there half an hour at least befre the guide came out and then hit us with the, "Oh but you haven't even visited the clothes section" which we regrettingly skipped through at top speed just to satisfy his quota.
So you can image what a shock it was that instead of driving us away instead he then took us next door and proceeded to try and take us through a tea factory and shop. I say try as at this stage everyone except the Singaporeans had already had enough of this garbage and the second that the Danish couple heard that he thought we were going to be here for the next 35 minutes they mutinied and said that they were leaving by taxi right away and were not going to pay the full balance of the tour cost, which was around 180 yuan each.
I am not sure if our guide had ever experienced such a determined yet still polite refusal but the second they said that they were leaving it then gave me and the Americans an out too, and wieght of numbers overruled the Singaporeans insisting that we go back to the city centre immediately or we too woud deduct an amount from our tour fee and leave.
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