We landed in China at around 5am. After a quick covid swab test (haven’t done one of those in a while) we were through to immigration, which would’ve been an extremely quick and easy process had anyone been there. As it was we had to wait an hour and a half for staff to arrive at the visa-free transit desk. The guy wanted to see our departure flight but didn’t care about the hotel reservations, and finally we were through. I had downloaded and set up a local payment app on a recommendation from a friend, and with that we managed to navigate the subway after discovering none of our other apps worked with the Chinese internet restrictions. It seemed silly to buy a local sim card for only 5 days in country, but pretty much everything in China uses mobile payment apps, and there’s no public wifi anywhere. People were mostly very confused when we presented old fashioned cash, and required exact amounts because there was no change to give, but we got by. We got to the hotel before 10am but fortunately were able to get straight into our room for a quick recovery nap. In the afternoon we headed out to the closest tourist spot, the Temple of Heaven. Everything in Beijing is much further away and much larger than the map makes it seem. The Temple of Heaven is a spread across 3 square kilometres and visiting the whole thing took us 4 hours. By this point we were starving, and luckily found some food vendors right outside the exit. We discovered the ‘Chinese hamburger’, a flaky pastry roll with spiced beef cooked into the middle, similar to the bun Creed had fallen in love with in Taiwan. He subsequently had 7 more of these during our 5 days in Beijing, but none quite matched up to the one from the Taipei night market.

The next day we went to the Forbidden City to try our luck getting same day tickets as we’d spent the past week failing to secure them online. We’d read that the online site was the only way to get tickets, and that they tended to sell out immediately when they were released at 8pm 7 days prior to the ticket date. We’d recruited my mum to help us try to book them while we were out camping in signal-less areas in the middle of Mongolia, but had no luck, so we were prepared to be disappointed but had everything crossed for showing up in person and winging it. When we arrived we found a ticket office with 7 open desks and organised queues at each one, and following directions from staff we got in the shortest line and bought 2 tickets for immediate entry with no problem whatsoever. The online stress had been completely unnecessary. So we headed in to the site, one of the top things to do in Beijing, very glad not to have to miss it. It was again extremely large, with so many side temples, extra exhibitions, and tons and tons of people. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many people in one place.

We decided to end our day at Tiananmen Square, just south of the Forbidden City but still a 2km walk because we’d exited at the north gate. This is where our luck ran out, because, despite being a public square, you also needed to have booked tickets online, and yet again these sold out immediately a week in advance, and this time there was no in-person ticket office. We were able to drive through on our taxi ride the next morning and get a glimpse of the square and Chairman Mao Memorial, but this sadly was as close as we got.

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The next morning was an early one, as we were heading out to the main event: the Great Wall. We’d had a bit of a back and forth trying to book an overnight camping trip at the Great Wall with some hiking included. We’d managed to organise it so that I would be waking up on my 30^th birthday on the world wonder, as a completely epic birthday celebration. On the first day of the tour we took the train from Beijing to Gubeiku, one of the least visited sections of the wall. After a quick breakfast with our guides we headed straight out to begin our hike, starting with a fairly crumbling section with not much restoration. We met one local couple in the first watchtower, but otherwise we had the wall totally to ourselves. From here we had to leave the wall to bypass a military zone, and hiked for a while through the trees. This section is known for its spectacular scenery, and is the section most often used in promotion materials. If you’ve seen a picture of the Great Wall, you’ve most likely seen the exact spot we visited. When we rejoined the wall at the Jinshaling section we enjoyed more recently restored sections, still with very few other people. I was astonished by how few tourists there were, and it made the entire experience so much better than I could ever have imagined. Our guide wanted us to head down from the wall at around 1.30pm, but Creed and I managed to negotiate (via google translate as the guides spoke 0 English) for us to keep walking unguided, and be picked up at the exit at the other end of the section. This gave us an extra 2.5 hours on the wall passing through a further 22 watch towers, and was truly the highlight of the hike. And it really was a proper hike, as the wall is actually extremely hilly, and very very steep at times. After dinner we collected our camping gear and headed back to the wall to set up camp. Creed had managed to sneakily pack a birthday bottle of unknown Chinese liquor, but I accidentally found it in the afternoon, so we enjoyed some pre-emptively while sitting on the top of the watch tower that would be our home for the night.

Wake up time was 4.30am, in time for a sunrise which was more mist than anything else. Seeing the wall appear out of the fog and darkness was mystical, magical, and the most incredible birthday present I could ever have imagined for myself. (Thanks to my dad and stepmum for funding it, and to Creed for sharing it with me!) We treated ourselves to another swig of the birthday booze, which tasted exactly like the cough medicine from my childhood that I always wanted an extra spoonful of. Then we headed along the part of the wall we hadn’t seen the day before. It started to rain, which made it all the more atmospheric, and fortunately our guides had provided umbrellas. We took shelter in the last visitable watch tower of the section until it let up a little, and then took one last look at the great wonder of the world, and made our way back to reality.

The reality was that our train back to Beijing was cancelled. With a fair amount of difficulty thanks to the language barrier we figured out that there was a bus option, and our guides took us off to the bus stop. At this point we were supposed to get out of the car, but still didn’t really know where we were going or what bus to get. After another difficult and this time sightly more heated discussion we discovered it was two buses, but the guide didn’t know how the connection in the middle would work because he’d never taken the bus himself, and also didn’t have enough money to cover the trip for us which we’d been assured he would. He ended up driving us to the bus stop for the second bus, which was almost half way back to Beijing, which made the situation much more comfortable for us but I don’t believe he was too thrilled about it. The second bus pulled up just when we did, so we hopped straight on and ended up back in Beijing earlier than the train would’ve got us there and in a more convenient location for the next hotel. Our next hotel was also a bit of a birthday treat, an upgrade from our previous business hotel to a large fancy room with a circular bed. We relaxed a little too much in the afternoon and headed back out later than intended, discovering that the temples we’d wanted to see were already closed. It wasn’t too much of a let down as in the evening we were meeting up with my friend Rhi who’d been my cabin mate on my trip to Antarctica. She now teaches English in Beijing, and was able to recommend a fun area for us to spend the evening. We enjoyed some cocktails on a beautiful leafy rooftop, and then headed to another bar with more interesting cocktails and shisha. We spent the night reminiscing and people watching, and then Creed and I found a quirky burger and pasta joint, and took our food back to enjoy in front of a movie.

On our final morning in Beijing we managed to successfully visit the two temples we’d failed to get into the day before. We then headed out to the Summer Palace, the last of the top sights that we needed to fit into our brief layover trip to China. It was once again an enormous site, and absolutely jam packed. It was also blazingly hot, with very little shade. We got some great views of the lake and gardens, but were pretty sightseeing-ed out by the time we got to the museum, which we zipped around very quickly. With our last couple of hours left in the city we opted for a more relaxed version of sightseeing – a walk through the park at sunset.

We headed to the airport late in the evening, ready for an early flight in the morning.

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!