Ready to go for a month in xinjiang

Date: March 06, 2010
Location: From JinShanLing in Hebei, to Simatai in Beijing.
Weather: -3 degrees Celsius, blue clear sky

On one of the best day for a long time in Beijing, I visited a beautiful part of the Great Wall. Stunning views and challenging climbs made it a good and fun day trip. Could feel it in my knees and legs the day after. Toughest was the second part of Simatai that climed straight up on the mountain. A just crazy achievement to build a wall up there.

this a defence structure of the wall. it enables the defenders to fight at each step while withdrawing if the wall is overrun. the enemy can only climb using the narrow steps while the defender can fight from behind the walls with small openings to fire projectiles.

the famous simatai. not as beutiful to walk as jinshanling but just amazing in the achievement to build it. on the stones used to build the steps can names of the soldiers who built it be read as seen below.

It first when you wake up, spend the day exploring the new environment that you realise it was not a bad idea to take some vacation. Going to Bali, despite the long trip, was in fact not bad at all. It was a short trip of only five days (inlcuding two for travel), and we stayed on the south east part right on the beach with view of the corral reefs and a mountain.

First day was spent snorkling and in a SPA. Maybe a not to well thought trough decision. Snorkling in the morning gave a nice sunburn, and then SPA for three hours, of which body scrub was one hour, hurt a lot!

The second day was spent driving around in a car with a driver for 11 hours. visited several villages on our way to a still active volcano. The volcano was the most boring part of the trip but a nice view. On the way back we managed to visit a few more temples, have some freshly roasted Bali coffee and get lost in the jungle.

Third day and last day we spent walking around on the beach and shopping in a market an hour away.

During the whole stay we enjoyed all the great food we could find..except the grilled fresh fish was the local dishes such as nasi goreng and fried noodles two favourites. Add a large selection of fresh fruit juices and you will feel very good. The pity though was that on the flight back from Singapore to Shanghai, the planes aircon was so cold that I catch a very bad cold. So I have since arriving in Shanghai been sick and almost embarrasing coming back to office in worse shape than before leaving for vacation.