Things that you won't read in LP Guide about Great Wall (i)

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Tuesday Dec 09, 2008

My brother came to visit me in Hangzhou during the October holiday week of 2007. Because it was the holiday week, I planned on having them see Shanghai and Hangzhou, then go to somewhere nearby Hangzhou for a few days to avoid the crowds. However, he and his girlfriend kept insisting that we add the Great Wall to the itinerary. He even emailed me asking if we could do a one-day trip to Beijing, see the Great Wall, and then fly back to Hangzhou that night.

The Great Wall is the number one must see in China, as we can see by my brother’s stubbornness. Fortunately, it’s close enough to Beijing that to be easy to plan into an itinerary, considering Beijing is almost always a city on most travelers’ itinerary. However, it is also just far enough outside of Beijing that it can be difficult or time consuming to do as a day trip, and with so many different parts of the wall to visit, it may be hard to decide which is the best to visit.

I am no Great Wall expert. I have been 4 times, all on tours. I am not a fan of tours, but the Great Wall is in my opinion worth organizing a tour for. Every hotel in Beijing offers them. Public transportation is often not worth the money you save, unless you are planning on spending an overnight out there. Also, with public transport, a lot can go wrong— you miss a bus or take the wrong bus, for example, and end up either missing a lot of time at the wall or having to push your wall visit back another day. Anything can happen— even when I went on a tour with my brother, our bus driver got in a violent and bloody fight with another driver on the road who cut in line at the gas station or something, and we all wondered whether we would even get there that day. If you are like my brother and came all this way for the Great Wall more than any other site, why not splurge on a tour so you can check out the wall in a hassle-free and well-organized tour? Just like Yoyoor, a tour gives you peace of mind to explore comfortably without worrying about when and how you will get back to Beijing.

Be careful to take a reputable tour, though, or if you take an individual tour, specify beforehand your exact schedule. You want to avoid the tours that take you to lunch for a few hours, then take you to a “ceramics factory” hoping you’ll buy something for a kickback to them, and then finally rushing you through the Great Wall with the little bit of time left before getting back to Beijing to beat the traffic. (to be continued)