The Great Wall of China

Day 7 * 21st May 2016 – City tour to the Great Wall of China & UCL Alumni Dinner at Intercontinental Hotel

Our first Saturday in Beijing itself didn't actually turn out according to the way most of us have expected i.e. the ability and freedom to carry out our own activities and organising hanging out plans among ourselves.. Instead, we dedicated our time in the morning to participate in the city tour that the university has arranged for us to climb the Great Wall. I would say on the day before that, most of us were still quite indecisive about joining the tour to the Great Wall since after all, we were required to gather around Tsinghua campus area around 8am in the morning. 

My friends and I were uncertain whether it was something that we would look forward to, as we wouldn't deny the fact that staying in bed for a little while longer on a Saturday after quite a hectic week so far and having to spend the morning/afternoon according to our own preferences were more appealing than the idea of touring the Great Wall. Not only that, I have actually visited the Great Wall before when I visited Beijing during my younger days :p However, after giving much thought to it, most of us made up our minds in participating the tour together.. At least, we wouldn't be alone after all. We would still be going as a group with some close friends along. That way, it wouldn't turn out to be that much of a bore or waste of a time.. Who knows? We might even enjoy the tour in the end.. Haha. 

Well, as expected, I think most of us did enjoy the tour. It was surprisingly fun in my opinion.. So, for those of you who don't know about this, the Great Wall consists of different sections that you can begin your climb from and each section takes various amount of time to complete the climb, depending on your own pace and the crowd on that day, while some sections even offer a different experience for you where you can have the choice of taking the cablecar or chairlift up to the wall since it would give you save your travelling time without hiking up the wall. 

With Mr Kong's guidance as the experienced tour guide for our trip as usual, we did not waste any time hiking up the Great Wall at all, but rather, most of us have agreed to try a whole new experience when visiting the Great Wall this time round. More than half of us actually chose the path to get to Mutianyu (one of the sections at the Great Wall) by taking the chairlift as mentioned before. I'll post a picture of it later in this post, so keep an eye on it ;) Though being a person who is quite afraid of height myself, I did not really hesitate in opting for the choice of going with the chairlift instead of climbing up to the wall myself with some other friends. The reason was because Mutianyu's section not only offer the choice for you to go up to that section of the wall by taking the cablecar/chairlift, you can also go down the wall later through the Toboggan ride. These options are not only a faster way of covering the Great Wall, they are also one of the choices that allow you to have a taste of fun when doing these typical sightseeing/touring activities. If you're ever interested to find out more about the Mutianyu's section at the Great Wall, I feel that it's appropriate for you to visit this link that I have just uploaded here: http://www.wildgreatwall.com/mutianyu-toboggan-ride/ I believe it is one of the websites that I have come across with, which can explain pretty much almost everything that you need to know before deciding on whether to proceed with hiking up or not to the Mutianyu Great Wall. Hope it helps!:) 

After the tour, we had a quick lunch at Subway arranged by Mr Kong. We had to rush our lunch because the journey to head back to our accommodation coupled with the traffic in Beijing would have cost us almost a journey of 2hours-ish. Bearing in mind that we also had another event to attend during that Saturday evening at the Intercontinental Hotel, which was a UCL Alumni dinner organised by our careers team. The whole purpose of the alumni event was to allow those of us who were from UCL's Masters in Management programme to speak with the new students who were to be enrolled for the 2016/2017 intake and for us to have a chance of hearing the experience shared by alumni students previously. That event was also participated by the Chair of the Exam Board for our School of Management. Finger foods were basically prepared by the school on that night, and I would pretty much say that most of us had a great time. The event didn't last until later than 9pm if I do remember correctly.. So, right after that, I joined two of my friends for another round of meal since most of us were still hungry. The same pattern again: Food, Talk, Eat, repeat.. That was how we spent our night together. Simple and just what we needed :) 

Before I start filling my entire post with more words, I shall let most of the pictures taken by the awesome Chanont do the talking now. Apologies in advance if most pictures do seem repetitive, as I just uploaded almost everything that I have in hand.. Wouldn't want to put any of Chanont's effort to waste, heh. 

Enjoy~!

The picture above shows the "chairlift" that I've taken to go up to the Mutianyu Great Wall section :)

Thanks for checking-in! Be sure to check out my next post ;) I know very well that these are all past events.. But, I would really wish to write these memories down when I still have the ability to recall most of the things now. It will definitely be amazing to have the chance to read through it all again sometime in future :)

That's all for now. 

Till then,

✗