Apr 2, 2010 - The Great Wall (Jinshanling, Simatai)

Today the Great Wall was our chosen destination. We had to get up really early at 5:30 am in order to be ready when the tour started at 6. The trip was organized by our hostel and our group consisted of a German family, who live in Bad Rappenau, and a very cool English guy called Tom, for whom China was a the last stop of a one year world tour. The drive to the wall took us not less than 3 hours and was a very nerve-wrecking experience since people behave like nuts in the traffic. For example most of the time, when there was too much...

Oct 22, 2006 - Beijing

I had intended, once I left the Vodkatrain, to chill out and recover. However, if you have been reading this blog for a while you will appreciate that that was unlikely to happen and certainly the following two weeks contained its fair share of drunken nights. The hostel that I had moved into was on the traditional Chinese shopping lanes, which meant that it was constantly full of a confusion of people, cars, bikes and rickshaws. Occasionally shop owners would throw water onto the road for no apparent reason, people would hassle you trying...