Beijing. The Great Wall.

The skies are grayer than a mountain mule and we're hitting the Great Wall today. What luck. We had another early morning wake up call. The damn wall has been around since the days of the first dynasty, it can wait another hour or two, can't it?

It's 9am and I've just seen a man run a red hot metal bar across his naked palm, in an attempt to sell us some ointment at the Po Shi Tong medical centre. It was disgusting, click the photo to see the clip.

Wow, you can't see anything today. It's so cloudy. Well, here it is, the Great Wall.

You can buy a padlock, write your name on a little ribbon and lock it to this chain here. Kind of a way to say "I was here" without vandalizing the wall. They even sell certificates at little stands they have along the wall to say that you climbed to the top. It's a scam though because you can buy one at the bottom of the mountian as well.

There are guard towers at certain intervals along the wall. The 6th guard tower is the highest point of this part of the wall. Eh, doesn't look all that bad. The guide says it will take 1.5-2 hours to get up to the top, but most people only make it as far as tower 4.

I'm pretty sure I can make it to the top in about an hour if I don't stop.

I'm tired as hell right now and am only two-thirds of the way to the highest point of this region. I don't know if I can make it all the way up.

I was honestly going to turn back at the 5th guard tower, that is until I saw my 68 year old uncle trudging up toward me. What the hell? I couldn't let a senior citizen out-climb me. So up we went.

Here we are at the top! I can't believe this man's energy. I'm ready to keel over and die he's not even winded.

The three Chinese guys are part of my tour group. We're somewhere close to the 4th tower here, on the way down. That old Italian guy (who's in his 70's) is still plugging along. I passed him somewhere around the 2nd tower. I tell ya, these old folks are amazing.

Close to the bottom now. We still have some time before the tour bus leaves, so we checked out the cannons and talked to other people coming down from the top. It's a good feeling to be at the top, but I'll be happy to get off these steep and narrow steps.

The climb to the top wouldn't have been half as bad if the steps were actually even. Look at this, it's murder on the legs and you can't even get into "the zone" while climbing because each step is of a different height. I wasn't so scared going up, but coming down was a nightmare.

How on earth did people partol this thing carrying 40lbs weapons and full armour? Especially during the winter when it'd snow and ice over here. You'd probably lose half your troops just due to slipping on the damn steps.

After the climb, every one was exhausted. We grabbed lunch and then set out for the Ming Tombs. Here's a shot of the court yard outside the tombs.

The tombs are enormous and only hold the bodies of the Emperor and a few of his wives. I don't know why people threw money here, since it's nothing more than a slab of rock between the coffins.

The Ming Tombs were something of a mystery. It was a whole mystery about the location and so forth.

It's interesting how they found it, but you can read that for yourself on some educational site.