It was a month after the most recent quake when I arrived in Christchurch. Most of the city center is still closed off, allowing only brief, escorted visits for residents to retrieve essential belongings. These photos are only from outside that safety cordon.

While traveling, I’ve often whined about things that didn’t go the way I’d planned. There’s a tendency to dramatize the impact of unfortunate things that happen in our lives to make for a compelling story.

This is a stark reminder that there’s a huge difference between inconvenience and tragedy.

If you’d like to donate to those in need, you can do so here: http://www.redcross.org.nz/2011christchurchearthquake

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A shot of the city skyline, with Petronas Towers in the center. Taken from KL Tower. A bit pricey to go up and it’s difficult to get a good shot from up there because the entire observation deck is covered in angled glass. The views are beautiful, though and I liked how this one came out.

Ayutthaya is the original capital of Thailand and home to some amazing ruins and temples. I like this picture (of Wat Phra Mahathat) because of the way the brown and gray ruins interact with the clouds overtaking the blue sky.

Bonus picture:

Okay, I’m reaching back a couple of years for this one and repeating a photo I posted before starting my round the world journey. But I like it, so deal.

I was fortunate enough to travel to Dubai a couple of times during its construction heyday. This was a time when the Burj Khalifa (then known as the Burj Dubai) was only 145 stories and two years away from opening (note: if you missed my post on the best phallic structures in the world, it comes in at number 9).

It was a crazy time. City streets changed direction almost daily. Like ants finding a new path to avoid a boot that just crushed their former home, taxi drivers had to regularly seek out new routes to their destinations as the infrastructure grew at a pace no map, or even GPS, could keep up with.

The highlight of the trip was a helicopter tour over the city. The magnitude and number of projects was overwhelming and could only truly be appreciated from the air. Man-made islands, massive home development complexes, uniquely designed towers, malls to end all malls. Everywhere you looked, there were massive projects, accompanied by thousands of construction cranes. It was unlike anything the world has seen before and probably beyond anything that will ever occur again.

Forget the dotcom bubble and real estate bubble, Dubai built an “audacity” bubble, each project trying to top the last.

This pic is of the “Globe” island project. Dozens of constructed islands simulating the nations of the world were built and sold (reportedly, England was purchased by Sting). At the time of this photo, the only home constructed was this model.

If you’d like to see more, here is my Dubai gallery.

Taking a slightly different direction today. I found myself watching a movie that reminded me of Los Angeles, which brought back memories of the city I called home for 21 years.

Before leaving on my trip, a friend of mine joined me for one final tour of the city. We did all the cheesy tourist stuff, even things I never did the whole time I lived there.

However, when I think of Los Angeles I don’t picture Hollywood Boulevard, Rodeo Drive or even Venice Beach. I picture the mountains.

Southern California is home to incredible natural beauty that I’d rank pretty high in a “world’s best” list. Sadly, it’s beauty that most tourists, and even most locals, never take the opportunity to see.

When I wanted to get out in the middle nature, it didn’t mean driving to some far off location. I grabbed my bicycle and left from my front door. Within 12 miles, I was in the mountains. Millions of cars were just down the hill, but once you pass the residential areas, they are a rarity on the roads.

The scenery is at its best in a “green” year when we actually had some rainfall, but even when the desert climate creates more brush than lush, the serenity out there was astonishing. It’s all the more amazing when you consider that a bowling ball unleashed on these mountains would roll its way to the middle of the second largest city in the US (if you had bumpers around the corners).

The Santa Monica Mountains, the San Gabriels, Angeles Forest, Palm Desert, Lake Casitas are just a few of the wonderful locations for cycling in Southern California. To be fair, some of these are from rides a bit further away, including the northern coast. I considered it all my backyard, though. A playland for me, my friends and my bicycle.

(as always, click on any picture for a closer look)

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Lake Casitas on the way to Santa Barbara

On the way to Ojai.

Angeles Forest, with just a bit of snow in the distance.

Angeles Forest with the fog a couple thousand feet below.

Santa Monica Mountains on a cool, overcast morning.

The California Coast at dawn.

Heading up to Mount Baldy

A bit further north on the PCH, while riding from San Francisco to LA.

Finally, a picture of Big Tujunga Road in the Angeles Forest a few months before I left, just starting to recover from massive forest fires.

The Grand Palace in Bangkok is one of my favorite places in the world. The bright colors and intricate detail throughout such a massive complex are beyond anything else I’ve seen.

Does this really need a caption?

So, now that I’m writing more often, I still want to share an occasional photo unrelated to anything. How about Thursdays? Sure, why not?

This is one of my favorite pictures. Taken on Christmas Day 2010 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Yes, I was really this close.

One of my favorite experiences on this trip was a 3 day journey on a ship through Ha Long Bay. For only a few dollars more than staying at a hotel, we toured the thousands of limestone islands and slept in beautiful rooms on a boat gently floating in calm waters.

The soft limestone slowly wears away at the base, giving the islands their distinctive “top-heavy” shapes.

Kayaking, swimming, beaches, cycling and karaoke made for a packed weekend of entertainment. Or, you can just lay on a cot on the top deck of the ship and read in between Vietnamese seafood meals.

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The view from atop the climb to Surprising Cave. As you may be able to guess, it’s a popular stop.

Throughout Ha Long Bay, women row small boats loaded with soda, water, beer and snacks hawking to the passing ships. Their arm muscles could give Popeye a run for his money.

One of the many floating homes. Some are tied together as villages, some only in small groups of two or three. Hanging from the blue tanks are sand-filled buckets, which are used to create clam farms. Sure-footed dogs roam the bamboo web, alerting their owners of any nighttime bandits.

Some of the homes actually had generator-driven power and television.

Lots of time in transit this week, so I’m just going to share a few quick photos of the Baby Panda breeding center in Chengdu.

The baby panda nursery is the highlight of the center, but they don’t allow photos. You do have the opportunity to take a photo of yourself holding one of the babies for $150. In price and as an activity, something just didn’t feel right about pretending the baby pandas were toys, so I declined.

The babies in the nursery were one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen in person. There were 5 of them in a crib. The nurse would pick them up, feed them, clean them off and then return them to the crib. When she sets them down, they don’t sit up, they don’t roll over, they don’t do anything except collapse into an amorphous ball of fur with a face, flowing out on the table as though they were made out of furry, black & white Nickelodeon slime.

One of the adolescents downing some Panda Chow.

As part of their natural birthing process the babies are born prematurely, weighing only 1/1000th of the weight of their mother. An offering on the tour was a film about the panda life cycle and it showed how the mothers are woefully unable to care for something so small. In one clip, the mother was pawing at the baby with her enormous fingers, essentially beating it to death without really meaning to. She just had no clue how to treat the tiny offspring. (pssst. Don’t worry, the staff was able to separate them and rescue the baby).

As if it wasn't bad enough they eat all day, they don't even get off their backs if they don't have to.

Once the babies hit a month or two old, they are returned to the mother to care for them until they grow old enough to head out on their own.

The species is going extinct, not only because of the difficulty in getting adults to breed, but also because the babies rarely survive in a natural environment. It’s actually astounding they didn’t go extinct centuries ago with their poorly evolved survival abilities.

I'm a sad panda.

There were also red pandas at the center. I think they added these because they’re much more spry, running around and playing like weird mutant raccoons.

Trivia time – it’s a little known fact, but in the movie Kung Fu Panda, Shifu is a red panda. Could be why he was so resentful of the big guy and yet was able to develop a kinship with him. (unabashed plug from my past life: If you haven’t seen the movie, go buy it and look for my name )

Don't tase me, bro!

The red pandas also have an odd habit of finding a small plant, backing up onto it and then scratching their butts with it by wiggling back and forth. Like many places in China, they evidently don’t believe in toilet paper.

Yeah, I'm scratching my butt. You got a problem with that?

I was disappointed I didn’t get photos of the babies in the nursery, but overall, it was an amazing experience and I highly recommend a visit.