The Great Wall and Peking Roast Duck

24 July 2017

Trip day 6

Day 5 in Beijing

Great Wall Day!

My original wall plan had been to go to Simatai.  It's one of the wild sections of the wall (not restored, original wall, run-down) but it's also a 3 hour trip each way.  Given the weather forecast was for a hot sunny day I didn't really fancy the idea of that long a trip and climbing rocks in that kind of heat.  I am a fundamentally lazy person after all.

So I booked a trip to Mutianyu.  Restored section of the wall but a bit over an hour out of the city so it doesn't get as many tourists as the really close section.  Also touted as being the most scenic.

Cop out!  Coward!  Lazy piece of shit!

I know I know.  And I'm disappointed with myself for doing it.  I'd been tossing up for weeks which section to go to and now that I knew how hot it was I decided I wanted a shorter trip and easier day.

The hostel helped me to book a private driver (I.e. I told them what I wanted and they did it).  It was 600 yuan (about $120AUD) for the driver for the day.  Pickup from the hostel at 7.30am and drop off whenever I was done ... but likely around 3-4pm.

And I had company.  A pommie guy living in Perth  joined the room at the hostel last night and he was looking to organise a wall thing for today.  So I invited him to join me and split the cost.  Worked out really well.

Away we went.  The drive was pleasant with some nice scenery once we got away from the highway ... Took about 1hr15min.  Arrive at the ticket office and there were not many people there which I took to be a good sign.

Shuttle bus up.
Cable car up - terrible signage. Apparently there are 2 cable cars.  A nicer one for people who bought a return cable car trip and a dodgier one for people who bought the cable car up / toboggan down ticket.  We obviously walked to the nicer one assuming that's what we had bought.  Anyway ... after a bit of faffing to identify the gate around we got on the cable car.

And the wall was beautiful.

The wall itself is really impressive (restored ... I know but still great) and the scenery is just fantastic.  Lush forest everywhere.  Mist covered mountains stretching out into the distance.

And the weather was great.  Slightly overcast, light breeze, not humid.  Great day for ...

CLIMBING GOD DAMN STAIRS.

So many stairs.

See ... I was expecting to walk a certain section from tower 14 to 20 (or whatever it was) which is supposed to be the most scenic.  I've got no need to walk the entire length of the wall to prove anything.

However - the cable car we got took us to tower 5.  Which means I needed to walk from tower 5 all the way to tower 20-whatever to get the best views.  GRR.  I am not fit.

The walk was a killer for me.  Up steps, down steps, up ramps and down ramps.  Sweat pouring off me.  The final climb in particular was really challenging.  Probably a few hundred steps uninterrupted.  My legs were ruined by then and I still had to get back to the start!

But I did it.  Regular stops and much promising to get more fit (yeah right).  Jimmy on the other hand (hostel guy) was happily walking along and climbing.  Bastard fit people.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  It was definitely worth the effort.  Despite not doing the original section of wall I had intended I am not at all disappointed with the outcome.

The walk down was fairly painful for me as well but I got there.

There had been some light rain that morning so the toboggan wasn't running. It wasn't officially closed apparently but the people at the front had been waiting an hour for it to open so we just went down in the chairlift.

Our driver was waiting for us and we took a nice relaxing drive back into the city and peak hour traffic.

Had a nice shower then set about finding a Peking Duck place for dinner.  We went to DaDong Roast Duck restaurant which the Chinese guys in the hostel assured us was the best duck in the city.  Apparently it serves a leaner duck than the other top places which use a fattier more traditional style.

My map reading skills are not the best so after a false start we found the place.  Pretty fancy restaurant.  Huge.  Nice big tables and in the main section the chef comes and carves the duck at your table.

We had to wait 30 minutes for a table (on a Monday night!) then we got shoved into a little side room with the other sets of 2 people so we didn't get the full experience.

The duck was carved at the front of the room rather than at our table and the room didn't have the decorations or the ceremony of the main floor.

The menu at this place is a sight to behold.  It's about 2 feet tall, a food wide and about 1.5cm thick.  It's glossy with full sized pictures of every dish and a description of what it is in both Chinese and English.  It was actually difficult to handle it was so big and there was so much choice.  I did appreciate the presentation of it though.

We ordered the roast duck with condiments, a couple of vegetable sides, a couple of different types of dumplings and tried all the Chinese beers on the menu.  One of the Tsingtao beers (not the generic lager ...small batch of some kind) was so tasteless it was should have been called water.  The others (don't remember what they were) were OK.

The vegetables and dumplings came out first.   We expected it to all come out together at this place since it was all ordered together but apparently not.

Eventually the duck arrived and it was ... good.  I've never been a big fan of duck meat and this wasn't a revelation for me.  The meat was tender, juicy and the skin was crispy.  We wrapped it in the pancake with the cucumber, rockmelon, sauce (something like Hoi sin), lemongrass, garlic and sugar and ate it with our hands.  Other people were using chopsticks but this type of food demands hands!

Overall it was a good meal but the dumplings were better than the duck.

Finished up the night with some packing for the train to Mongolia tomorrow then out for a few drinks with a couple of guys from the hostel.