Day 59 : After 8 weeks on the road we hit the “wall”

Location :   From Beijing to Datong. China.

High Point : The Great Wall of China.  Not only did it impress, it made 5 boys with normally far too much chat become almost speechless. The mere magnitude and scale of this colossal beast blows the mind. Some quick stats for you : Built over 2000 years ago. 8862.8km long (well that’s how long China say it is). It wiggles a lot and goes over bumps.Low Point : Jim singing randomly just two lines from some pretty terrible songs constantly throughout the day. Will this ever stop ??

Games winners : Ross won his first ever “Extreme Desert Ball” in a car park of a petrol station. Confused on lookers as per normal.

Chinese word of the day : We are trying to learn one a day and doing pretty well. Today the word for “world”. Shijie. I have frankly nailed it. Chinese is easy !

Monkey notes : Being back on the road is awesome. The roads are amazingly smooth so plenty of opportunity to bring back the games in the back of the cab. I plan to destroy the new boys at the war game Risk. Myself, Paul, Ross and Jim all know each other extremely well so all boundaries of chat have been tested on day 1. This could get interesting.

It was Jim and Paul’s first day of driving and blimey they had to hit the road running. Paul especially had a lot of fun as there was no time to warm up as he was  constantly boxed in by the crazy Chinese lorry drivers. They seem to really enjoy themselves, even trying to spark up a conversation with us as they undercut Martha on the hard shoulder. Proper comedy.

After a monster 12 hours on the road Sun Ji (our fixer) found us a bizarre hotel in the smashed up backstreets of Datong. We ate noodles in our pants and it seemed half the staff of the hotel staff were in our room trying to fix something. The strangeness of FTFE continues …

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