Journey to Jinshanling 金山岭

I keep trying to wake up early here in Beijing, which I actually do, however, it takes a while for me to get out of bed. When I woek up at 5:30 somehow it was already quite bright so a lot of my dorm mates were already taking their baths so I had to wait for my turn. By the time I got out of the hostel it was already 7:30, which was a bit late. I took the train to Dongzhimen 东直门 bus station and bus 980 that should bring me to the town of Miyun 密云.

First of all, the bus was travelling rather sloly despite it being an expressway. This cost me quite a bit of time. By the time I got to Miyun, it was already eleven in the morning. Then things were about to go from bad to worse. I needed to get to Jinshanling 金山岭 which is more than an hour away from Miyun. Upon arrival, I found out that was no transportation that will bring me there. Or rather, there was no suitable transportation for me. The park I needed to get to is not along the main highway which means I needed to walk quite far to enter the place.

Upon arrival at the bus station in Miyun, I was immediately mobbed by taxi drivers who were asking me how to where I needed to go. It seems business is quite hard these days. One particularly persistent taxi driver kept hounding me wherever I went. Explaining how there is no public transportaion to Jinshanling. I tried asking the people at the bus station itself but they were useless since the didn’t know anything. I ran to a restaurant in a futile effort to lose him. But he followed me anyway.

Even as I was eating my noodles, he kept pushing me to avail of his services, quoting CNY 250 from a trip from Miyun to Jinshanling and back. I thought that was expensive most expecially since I was travelling alone. Even though I told the taxi driver that I was pissed off because of his incessant sales pitch, he persisted. Actually I already knew the difficulty of getting to Jinshanling, which actually was not that difficult. The difficult part is coming back since there was no transporation back to town from there.

I managed to haggle the price down to a more reasonable CNY 160 but I wish I would have been lower naturally. As it turns out, it thought taking a taxi to Jinshanling was quite worth the money since the place was more than an hour away from Miyun, not only that, Jinshanling was in the next province of 河北. The taxi driver himself turned out to be a very friendly guy telling me all sorts of things about Jinshanling, even showing me some photos. As it turned out he wasn’t really an official taxi, he just had a car and just wanted to make money from it. He was also an unofficial guide at the Forbidden City. When we got there, as a show of good faith, he didn’t ask for a downpayment in case I don’t show up. He led me to the entrance watched as I started another adventure.

[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/JinshanlingGreatWall.kmz} zoom=19]