f you are looking for a way to experience somewhat of a different side of Beijing, you need to head out in the countryside outside of the city. Earlier last year I posted an article about touring the Beijing area - mountains and villages within driving distance. Today I will point you in the direction of one of the temples outside of the city — the Red Snail Temple located North-East of Huairou (north-east of Beijing). You can see the rest of the information about the temple plus some photos at: [url=http://site.chinafinds.com/blog/2007/03/11/the-red-snail-temple-hongluo-si-an-interesting-place-to-visit-in-the-vicinity-of-beijing/]Red Snail Temple Visit [View Full Entry]

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I just published a short story about the ChunYun -- the travel season associated with the Chinese New Year. This is a special time of the year, lots of people in China are on the move...and if you are living in or visiting China you can appreciate what I refer to. At any rate, please take a look at my posting on my blog at TravelChina [View Full Entry]

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Here is the first part of several postings about some interesting places to visit in Bulgaria. This Eastern European country is a good place to visit and enjoy both winter (skiing, hiking) and summer (hikinig, swimming) activities. This summer my family and I had a good visit to several nice resourts in Bulgaria and this is a quick write up about it. Bansko is located in the Southwest part of Bulgaria (directly south from the capital Sofia). To get there you have several options. We drove from Plovdiv (the second biggest city in the country located in central south Bulgari). We [View Full Entry]

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So we continue with the trip in Bansko. Once in the hotel (we stayed at the Kempinski on the outskirts of town) you are almost a stone throw away from a great mountain park. Here are some images to give you an idea about the location of the hotel. please follow the link to see my write up and more photos from Bansko [View Full Entry]

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Here is a map of our travels while in Bulgaria - we landed in Sofia (after a flight from Beijing China), then drove to Karlovo, then to Bansko and Melnik, following which we spent time in Nessebar (posting about it is coming next), and then visited Kazanlak and Kran, then back to Karlovo on our way to Sofia to fly back to China. After staying in Bansko for two days, we decided that it is time to experience some more of the nature and sites Bulgaria has to offer. So we drove to the town of Melnik — according to [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Bansko my family and I headed to the Black Sea coast. The interesting thing about Bulgaria (in a very summary description form) is that you can experience the pleasure of hiking tall beautiful mountains and 5-6 hours drive later you could be at one of the many seaside resorts. Our trip took us to the resort town of Nessebar located in the central part of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast (please see the map in the previous post) We had booked an all inclusive stay at the Nessebar IFA hotel (I believe this was a German hotel chain). The [View Full Entry]

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Recently I decided to post on-line some of my old photos from the time I first came to China. That was in 1987 -- I was fortunate enough to gain a scholarship to study as an exchange student in China. Of course at the time digital cameras were not something that was accessible to majority of people so I was using my trusted SLR camera and film. Recently I scanned a bunch of my old negatives and converted to digital images. I have posted some of those at my personal blog at Beijing 1987-1988 [View Full Entry]

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