Guess what i just saw, biking home from the station! An anaguma just ran in front of my bike and into a car park, then ran back out and jumped onto a wall! It was closely followed by three schoolgirls taking photos of it with their cellphones, and i asked them 'Sumimasen, kore wa NAN desuka?' (translation: what the heck is this thing?) and they ( Read more... )

Is the Great Wall really worth it? Especially now in summer, when it's unseasonably rainy, absurdly humid and hazy, and you can't see a mile into the distance. Do you really just go to say you've been, or it is worth the trip?

Also, i know the stone guardian lions (see icon) come in male/female pairs. Do they ever have names, or are they just

It's decided! We're going to Beijing next week, for four or five days. All ya'll who been there, what things should we definitely see, and what's worth giving a miss? Also, any advice i should have before we go?

Yeeeeeeee travel!!!

( World traveler, me. )

I can see everything. I'm at the tip of the universe and everything ever made is stretched out before me, whichever way i turn. All the winds from all the world have congregated across the Atlantic Ocean to blow at these cliffs. The Cornish headlands are everything i dreamed. The sea is incredible on a sunny day like this. It's bright ( Read more... )

There's a wind here that sounds as though it could tear a house out of the ground. When you walk you feel it whipping around you, trying to catch you in its crazy dance, pushing and pulling so that you can't stand still. The grass looks like an ocean, moving in waves, troughs and crests undulating across the swells of the hills ( Read more... )

It's funny how clouds ignore the horizon. As you look out, land seems to stretch and flatten, but clouds are as gargantuan and crystal clear at the edges as they are right above you. If nothing else could convince me that the world is round, the way clouds sail over the edge of the skyline without a change would be enough ( Read more... )

I'm on a train travelling through the English countryside. We're forty minutes out of London, but the only traces of city are scattered Esso stations through the trees. The day is grey and cloudy, and when we travel across fields it looks like the sky goes on forever. We've just passed a lovely village. A grey stone church on a hill with a ( Read more... )