I climbed The Great Wall

That's what it says on my new T-shirt. As we discussed on the bus ride, it's great to give souvenirs to friends and family. However, at the end of the day, you can't give your experiences, and you certainly can't give such a T-shirt to any friend that hasn't had this experience.

Given the postage cost is more than 8 times the postcards themselves, you'll be lucky to get them anytime soon. Sorry folks.

Jessica and Kyla are the replacements for the Finnish guys in our dormitory. While I munched down breakfast, the weather forecast popped up on the big TV: sunny - I gutsed the rest of my breakfast down, hoping to catch the girls before they left. Together we squeezed into a subway, onto the 980 bus to Miyun, packed another 2 French girls into a 4-speed sedan with our Chinese driver to Simatai.

Simatai is definitely the less touristed and more adventurous of The Great Wall sites. The actual flying fox looked cool but it was located just a little too near the starting point. The section we visited was only 19km long but still could be seen stretching from horizon to horizon - totally awesome. A grand day out. Definitely the best I have had in China so far! W-hoo!

From the #8 watch-tower, the options for our return were three-fold: back the same knee or ankle joint destroying way we came; walk down a path then via the personal open-air gondola cable-cars; or start with the mini-train, a useless and short distance down the hill all the way to the cable-car! It's not hard to choose, really...