Great Wall and Ming Tombs

What a day!!! We got to climb the Great Wall and then visit the Ming Tombs - the tombs of the 13 Emperors of the Ming Dynasty.



One of our first views of the Great Wall. It took many, many centuries to build this fortification to keep out the invaders of the north. Total length is 6700 kilometres. This section that we walked upon is the most well-preserved section.

Greg and Marilyn and Jannose and I pose on the wall.

We walked up the section that was the hardest. Sometimes, there were steps and at other times, just a smooth section.




We couldn't believe the steepness of the steps. At one point, Jannose and Greg started running up the pathway, but that didn't last long. Very STEEP!!


No steps here. Marilyn and Jannose are standing straight up. Good thing it wasn't raining or snow on the Wall. Terry and Nicki said they had snow when they were here two years previous.




This was a city on the other side of the wall. Good thing I got over the fear of heights. The roller coaster in Singapore may have cured me.


The Wall follows the lay of the land and the top of the mountain. Here, Greg is bargaining with a vendor who is selling books about the Great Wall. We bought two of them for about six dollars. They were nine dollars each in the store at the hotel. Great pictures in the book. Bought the second one for my brother who had been here last summer and never got one.


Here, you could put on some period clothes and have your picture taken. There were vendors all along the Wall selling crafts, books, purses, t-shirts, hats, watches. They had to carry up all their wares each day so by the end of the day, there were good prices to be had.
Quite the experience!!!!!!




This map shows the burial places of all the Emperors buried here.



We walked all along the route but if some people were tired, they could take the little golf cart. There were sculptures all along the route which had these arches all the way along. There was a large arch at the entrance and then about three others.


The route led here and inside the temple was this large sculpture of the Emperor.

A very busy day with lots of exercise. I think I took almost 100 pictures this day alone. We showed all the pictures of our whole trip to Arone and Kristi and Dean and Diane and the show went for almost two hours. You are getting the condensed version. We will put together a Power Point presentation down the road. Marilyn had her video camera so we hope to get a copy of that, perhaps when we get to Australia.

Welcome to China

Beijing: Host city of the 2008 Olympics. Had to take this picture in an 'official' store for merchandise. Erika will really love this picture.

The Cube for the swimming events. It has already been used for a few months for competitions.



The Bird Cage for the Opening and Closing ceremonies. It was used a week after we left for a practice event. Amazing construction techniques. We couldn't visit them but our coach driver drove by a couple of times so that we could take pictures. It will be great to watch the Olympics and see these places.




Tian An Men Square. A quick 360 movie. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating. Note that there are no tanks around, but quite a few soldiers.





A hallway in the Summer Palace for the Emperor. He had this park-area built so he could get away from the hustle and bustle of the Forbidden City. On the ceiling are some great pictures.

This is an artificial lake, only 3 metres deep at the max. People can rent little paddle boats or take a dragon boat(like we did) from one section to the other. The bridge in the foreground goes out to a little island. Note the crowds for early April. The lake is drained every winter.

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The entrance to the Forbidden City. My kids will like the picture of chairman Mao.


Once inside, you notice all the space that the average Chinese citizen was not allowed to visit until Communism took over and the reign of the Emperors was finished. The Forbidden City is almost 2 kilometres long and 1 and 1/2 wide. All cobblestones and many, many buildings like these.




This is the view from the other side which leads to the Summer Palace which you can see in the background.




This sculpture was found inside the Concubine's courtyard. The sign below wasn't in this area, but in other places. You couldn't scratch the metal on the dragon anyway. It wasn't referring to old people either.

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After lunch, we headed to a Jade Factory. We were allowed to take all kinds of pictures of the sculptures, furniture and paintings with Jade accents. This was our first visit to an 'Official Government Store' where we were given demonstrations(5 minutes) and then time to shop(1 hour) We found out later that the guides get a huge commission on everything that is purchased here. There is no bargaining allowed, but they give you a ten to twenty percent discount. Yeah, right.

This picture was teasing us for the next day trip to the Great Wall. Loved this picture but not enough to spend 300 dollars for it.


Here is the Happy Buddah. He's happy because he gets to eat everything he wants and nobody calls him "hoover". Because of the huge meals and amount of food we ate during the three weeks, we, Greg and I, often were called the HappyBuddah. Annie, from Montreal, really enjoyed that expression.

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So ended our first day in Beijing. We got to experience the traffic, the street vendors, the construction, etc. We arrived with some preconceived notions about China but were pleasantly surprised. Yes, there were lots of people but not huge masses. There were bikes on the roads in special bike lanes, but not thousands. The mass transit system seems to work very well. There are lots of cars though (Beijing adds 2000 cars daily to the traffic), with some very expensive Audis around. But, there is a lot of pollution in the air. The coal powered plants aren't very clean and the older cars and motorbikes and scooters also contribute to it. We really didn't see blue sky because of the weather and the pollution for two weeks.


Next post will be the Wall and the Terra Cotta warriors. That was our greatest day in China.

BANGKOK : 3 quick days

Foating restaurant on the river in Bangkok

A quiet respite from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, the Thompson museum-Nicki's suggestion.

Views of our river taxi ride. 3 dollars for the two of us and we were on the river for an hour and a half.

Accomodations in front of the temples.

The next three pictures are of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

An interesting bridge.

Some of the houses were pretty basic along the river.

This was the view from our hotel room. Note the elevated roadways and also directly below us is a temple with living accomodations for the monks. Couldn't hear the noise from the traffic in our room at all and the Monks were very quiet as well.

Inside a large park, we came upon these people doing exercices to music. They are on a roadway in the middle of the park.

A small wat that we visited prior to going to the
Grand Palace.

Shawn and Rebecca and Jannose beside our Tuk Tuks. We
went on a tour suggested by some people we met at a market.
Nicki said never to do things like that, but we had a great time.
Shawn and Rebecca, also from Australia,(we seem to meet
an awful lot of them lately) were on their way to India and then were
trying to get into China through Tibet. Haven't found out yet
if they were able to or not.

We didn't buy these pants. You can't go into the Grand Palace with shorts so the Jewellry Shop where we bought some rings bought us these ones. We got to pick our colours. I chose the purple ones. Shawn needs to work on not chopping off heads in pictures although we were all laughing a lot concerning these pants.

Phuket (holiday #3)


As we were gone for 6 weeks, it was like we had a bunch of mini-holidays. this one was for 8 nights on Karon Beach in the Phuket area. The tsunami hit this area and as a matter of fact, the resort we stayed at was planning its grand opening the day after. Needless to say, they were busy housing those who were displaced by the waves as the resort is up on a hill overlooking the area. Beautiful place. We lay on the beach, played in the waves, swam in the rooftop pool, ate some great meals, saw some shows, did a day trip to Monkey Beach and went snorkeling. The time went by very quickly. Here are some pictures:

Waves on our beach.

Sunset

Thai Volleyball -- Everything but hands

Noisy boats for travel between islands. They have a huge V8 engine and long propeller shaft.

Lunch snack on one of our walks.

Snorkelling for the first time. Very cool.

Used Sea kayaks to get to the beach. Also first time.

There were a lot of monkeys when we first arrived. After a few minutes, more tourists arrived in very loud boats and the monkeys took off into the trees.

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Here are some pictures of areas we visited on our boat trip to Phi Phi Island.

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The following pictures are views from our balcony and the rooftop pool.

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Below is the beach where we picked up a condition called 'sunburn'. You would think that I am old enough to know when to get out of the sun. Oh well......

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Oh look, another gas station?!!! (30 baht is less than a dollar for about 3/4 of a litre of gas) These little stations were used by the tourists who rented motorbikes.