The autumn weather here in Beijing has been unbeatable of late — blue skies and mild weather. So, I decided to finally check out one of the last "big ticket" items in Beijing to which I had not yet been: Beihai Park. Being so nice out, I also went down to Ritan park to get some pictures of the lovely trees.

Taking Guerilla Tourism to a whole new level, I took a night train down to Nanjing, spent the day wandering around the city and seeing whatever sights there were to see, and then spent another night going back to Beijing. An interesting way to travel, and a beautiful city to boot!

I decided to spend a couple of months in India doing some yoga. My plans changed on account of a massive case of the plague, but I was still able to have an awesome time in Mumbai seeing the Ganesh festival and the beautiful sights of the Ganges River in Rishikesh, up in the Himalayas.

Before heading to India for a few months of yoga, I decided to go back and spend a few days in Beijing checking out the Olympic fun. The city was beautifully clean and sunny the whole time, with perfect temperatures. I walked around the newly opened Sanlitun village with the Apple Store, and also checked out the newly renovated Qianmen neighbourhood.

I did a day trip up to Port Townsend, WA, to visit some old neighbours of mine. Lovely town, crazy weather, and a nice way to relax for a day. Surprisingly decent food, too!

My sister had a week's vacation, and we thought it might be fun to go and do something together, so we rented a car and took a drive around New England. It basically turned into a "Maine Vacation", but that's okay — Maine is awesome.

My friend Zoltan moved to New York City a few months ago, and I had to go there to finish up a publishing project, so we planned to hang out some and see some places in the city that neither of us had seen before. We managed to get to the Empire State Building, the Guggenheim, and some parts of Central Park.

In the middle of my whirlwind touring around the northeast of the US and Canada, I managed to squeeze in a few days of relaxing up at my father and his wife's island. It's a great place to spend a few days not doing much, except catch some sun, and the dock makes for great waterfront yoga!

I had a few days to spare before the Asia Yoga Conference in Hong Kong next week, so I decided to head to Singapore and finally see one of the famous Asian Tigers. It was significantly cleaner and less polluted than Beijing, but also a bit more sterile. The zoo, however, is unparalleled.

I was invited to give a couple of talks at the annual PHP Québec conference in Montreal this year, so I took advantage of the trip to visit a few other places in North America as well. I managed to get some nice photos in New York City, and also up in Quebec.

Spring Festival is the biggest holiday of the year for the Chinese, on par with Christmas in the West. Everything shuts down, the locals all go visit family, and much gift money exchanges hands. It's a great time to be a child. In 2007, they started allowing fireworks again. The results are simply insane.

The weather has been pretty nice out lately, with cold, but not freezing temperatures, and generally pretty nice skies. So, we decided to try our hand at ice-skating in the Houhai neighbourhood this weekend.

Construction has finally finished on the Beijing National Grand Theatre of China, an ambitious egg-like building a few hundred metres west of Tiananmen Square. The building took some seven years to complete, and was designed by French Architect Paul Andreu. We went to check it out today.

The weather for Zoltan's visit here to China continues to be spectacular, so we took advantage of another day full of blue skies to visit the Summer Palace (yíhéyuán, or 颐和园) in the northwest of the City. The previous trip was made in 38C+ (over 100F) in miserable humidity and haze, but this time the weather was a gorgeous 15-20C (60s F) and the visibility was incredible.

We decided it would be fun to take a couple of days to go see some other city in China, not too far from Beijing. Unfortunately, we couldn't find train tickets for many of the more interesting places, so we went to Qingdao. It's a city.

This is my third trip to the Great Wall, but certainly my favourite location. Great weather, a nice group of people, and lots of ancient walled action. And a toboggan ride down the hill (check out the video).

My friend Zoltan came to visit Beijing for a coupla weeks from Seattle. The first few days, we just walked around some of the different neighbourhoods and explored places such as the Forbidden City and the Jingshan just north of it.

Time for another "trip through Beijing streets" type report. Today I went from my apartment to my favourite hangout area in Beijing, Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷). I bicycled the way there along Dongsishitiao, one of the big east-west roads. Being on a bicycle, some of the photos are at a weird angle.

Finally, a nice day with some sun and clear skies, so I took the opportunity to go bicycling through some of Beijing's nicer Hutongs inside the second ring road. Beautiful weather and lots of interesting stuff to see.

The Lama temple on the northeast corner of the second ring road is one of the nicer little temple complexes and areas in Beijing. Less generic feeling than the rest, and the weather was fantastic to boot!

Ever wondered what an automotive show in China is like? Well, it's kind of like any other car show, but with a lot more Chinese people, and bad fakes and funny logos.

Marc walks a mile or so, taking photos of the local Beijing streets every fifty metres or so.

Well, Samantha and I have been in Beijing for a few months, and we have seen a number of interesting things and met a number of interesting people. Here we have a bunch of photos of some of the various people, places, and things that we've seen, including a video of some people eating scorpions. Ew.

Gorgeous Friday with nothing to do? Why not go check out another one of Beijing's many historical monuments? Today's victim was the Temple of Heaven.

The old apartment was getting a bit small and expensive, so it was time to get a new one. It's about 3km north of the old one, muuuuch bigger, and actually somewhat cheaper. Sweeet!