First off we headed towards the Great Wall at Badaling (Baa du ling). As we were heading out of town we ran into a security drill for the upcoming Olympics. This created a large traffic jam as the "parade" of armored cars (or should I say vans) was preceded by a group of wheeled tanks (pictured below).
After all of the excitement, things settled down and we stopped at a Jade Factory where I bought myself a small jade stamp that has my name on it. There were a lot of really cool things there but we ended up only getting the jade stamp. Some of the stuff was really incredible and incredibly expensive. The Jade sculptue below was going for 1.5 million RMB, that's somewhere in the range of $500,000. Of course they promised free shipping. After the Jade factory it was time for the Great Wall. Of course we took the steeper of the two choices. It was at the Great Wall where we realized that contrary to what our guide had said that "Bu Yao" (no I really don't want any of the trinkets you are selling) wasn't going to cut it with the street vendors or should I say Great Wall hagglers. It had been good enough for the Beijing vendors but this Great Wall bunch was a different breed of vendor. We had to use the good old fashion keep-on-walking-until-they-find-an easier-mark technique.
Here is Science Mama fending off yet another vendor attempting to sell her useless junk.
O.K. I am way too tired to continue, I feel like I am slurring my words. By the way we are now in Guilin, had a nice flight. It is hot and humid here and I am very uncomfortable. I guess that's the price you pay to see Karsts. Until next time, Alpaca Rob signing off......
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