Author Archives: Mark Griffith
Hiking in LongSheng
With a return trip to Beijing for work, I flew out a couple of days early to visit the mountainous rice terrace area outside of Guilin with Adrian. This is the story of our journey. Friday morning we were picked up by our driver in the city of Lingui (just outside Guilin) around 8:15am, first … Continue reading
Best of June and July – 2012
June and July were busy busy months and I never seem to get around to putting this together until now. We visited Xi’an, celebrated our anniversary, took a 10 day mancation to Yunnan and then winding down and geting ready to leave. This will be a long post. Click through on any photo for more … Continue reading
Reintegrating The Other Way
Moving back to Seattle and leaving Beijing has been a somewhat smoother experience than coming to Beijing. Mostly because we really haven’t left yet and all the hard stuff is on the other side. Here are the logistics we went through in leaving : Deciding to Return :Â this might be obvious but for us … Continue reading
To Miss and Not to Miss
For the past 18 months China has become our home, and it’s surreal because many things are now just normal; the way things are. Readjusting to what I remember as familiar back home will be an interesting comparison. Â As we prepare to leave China and return to the US I’ve been keeping a list of … Continue reading
Driving in China vs. Driving in USA
As we get ready to repatriate to the US I’ve been keeping track of the things that are different between driving in the US and China. These are also a list of things I have learned about how to drive in China. Â This is my perception based on driving in China for the past 14 … Continue reading
Yunnan Mancation
Driving to the ends of the earth is one good place to find some sense of adventure. When you drive to the end of the road, where the pavement or gravel ends and the trail begins your bound to find something interesting. Since August of last 2011, right after Seth and I’s successful climb of … Continue reading
Xi’an – An Ancient City
“Everyone loves the sound of a train in the distance” – Paul Simon We’ve taken the fast train to Nanjing but we’d yet to take a night train. Knowing our time in China was short we planned a long weekend trip to Xi’an and booked our tickets on the sleeper train from Beijing to Xi’an. … Continue reading
Best of May 2012
Another group of the best of photos for the Month of May. Time is flying by too quickly. Click through on any photo for more details and information. We had took a long weekend driving trip to Datong, camping at Miles 12th annual Father and Sons campout, a visit to the Great Wall. Photos below … Continue reading
Driving to Datong
I love road trips. Stac and I have been loading up the car and driving a 1000 miles on a weekend since the first days of our marriage when we were at school in Utah and we traipse through southern Utah and northern Arizona. We saw Monument Valley in our 4 door Toyota Corolla that … Continue reading
Thailand
Our last big national and school vacation was Spring Break and Tomb Cleaning holiday. We were headed to Thailand a destination from Beijing that is only a four hour flight. Attempting to plan a holiday to Thailand is like trying to decide what food to try first at an all you can eat buffet. There … Continue reading