Saturday, March 31, 2007

The Great Wall of China

On the Wednesday I took a trip to the Great Wall of China. I booked this with Expedia. There was a driver and a tour guide and one other person on the tour. We went to the part of the all known as Simatai. This a quieter part of the Great Wall, without the huge tourist carnival. The drive took about three hours. I trusted the driver, but the driving on Chinese roads was fairly insane. Everyone was overtaking on the both the inside (using the layby) and the outside. People didn't always give much time to getting back in lane when they were overtaking. The climb up to the Great Wall of China involved a lot of steps. Frankly I had massive musscle failure after going up about 10 steps, so he tour guide spent a lot of time encouraging me to keep on going, while senior people effortlessly passed us by The other person on the tour was called Richard. He was traveling on some around the world tour. He was also working on some code to link in GPS with his mobile phone. He could still work, when he was travelling. Was I jealous of him travelling the world while still working on the laptop. Oh yes I was insanely jealous. There was a news story, that the Chinese authorities were going to clamp down on people making illegal maps with GPS. (I assume they worried about google maps like activity). I did toy with the idea of informing on Richard, stealing his laptop and his job. That would seem like the communist thing to do.