What a birthday

When the alarm went off at 6:00 AM, Ted and I could barely roll out of bed. We have been on local time for a while now, waking up at 9:00 to leisurely stroll outside for some hutong breakfast and morning tea. While the early wake-up call wasn't the funnest thing to do on my 24th birthday, it was well worth it, as we were going to see the Great Wall.

And we weren't just going to Badaling, where every tourist bus goes. At this section of the wall, much of it is reconstructed, and part of the tour is also being forced into shopping at silk and vase factories. Ted and I had decided early on that when it was time to visit the wall, we were going to go to a much more remote area so we would not have to deal with a constant sales pitch while trying to enjoy the experience.

So there we were, on our way to the Jin Shan Lin section of the wall at 7:30 in the morning. While we were ripe with anticipation, we soon found that the drive was much longer than expected, and before we knew it, had been in the car for over four hours. While this wouldn't have been that bad if we were able to do our intended trip, which was a hike from the Jin Shan Lin section over to the Simatai section (a 10k hike), we soon found ourselves in the worst traffic jam I had ever witnessed.

While we don't have any pictures to prove the chaos, the scene was one I don't want to remember. Just imagine, in an idyllic fall landscape in the outer reaches of Beijing, pasenger cars, tourist buses, semi-trucks, and huge trucks full of pigs, logs, cattle, grain, tractors, and whatever else you can think of creating four lanes of traffic on a two-lane country highway. We were stuck in this traffic for at least two and a half hours, as congestion got so bad in one area that we finally had to change our planned trip. With all of the time sitting in this traffic going absolutely nowhere, we didn't have enough time to complete the hike on time, so we took another half an hour to turn around and settle on going to Simatai, which would have been our hiking destination.

But as soon as we arrived, we knew that sitting through all of the traffic and the long drive was well worth the wait. I have to say that this went from being one of the worst birthdays ever (sitting and breathing in truck fumes is not my idea of a good time) to one of the best. The views were stunning , and the day was beautiful.





This was truly a birthday experience I will never forget.