After the rain

Yesterday was beautiful, with not just clear blue skies but also (unusually) some wisps of cloud floating through the sky. The perfect weather to overcome a hangover by spending a few hours in some of Beijing's beautiful parks which are being replanted with flowers (everything dies in winter and gets replanted in the spring). The day was only ruined because the DVD i watched stopped working 15 mins before the end :(

Today, the sky is blue but the pollution has started to return -1 day more of solid traffic and the sun will be hidden once again... until it rains again, like it did on Saturday, which cleared the skies and alleviated Beijing's water shortage for a couple more days. Thankfully it only started pouring down after me and Chris had got off the Great Wall into a bus. We'd spent the entire previous day hiking and (literally) climbing the Great Wall with 5 girls.

Unfortunately the girls all bailed out and got a ride back to Beijing Friday night, wasting all the camping gear they had carried for 10 hours; leaving me and Chris to spend the night alone in one of the guard towers atop the Wall. I fell asleep looking through the tower entrance at a the stars, though didn't sleep too well because of the worry some night-time hikers might stumble (literally) onto us during the night.

We'd already had to deal with 2 hikers who wondered through at 11pm, a Chinese couple who must be crazy to be hiking in the dark over such dangerous terrain. Though we were relieved to hear one of the voices was female as they approached we still hid as they walked through our tower -with us on the top!

The long holiday over (Thursday was int'l workers day, the weekend was moved to be Friday and Saturday and Sunday was a holiday for youth to commemorate youth day) I'm in Beijing for a week before heading to Bangkok for a couple days work and Malaysia for a quick break.