If you’ve been to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) there is no need to see any other mountain. Situated in eastern China’s Anhui Province and popular with its breathtaking sweeping landscapes and misty peaks, the Yellow Mountain offers extraordinary scenes and views from what can look like the edge of the world.

Whether you look there are oddly-shaped pine trees and rock formations. Huangshan is actually an entire range of mountains and valleys, jutting rocks, shimmering pools, gurgling water falls and the ephemeral clouds. As an international ecotourism point of interest, UNESCO listed the mountain as an official World Cultural Heritage Site in 1990.

The trees of Mount Huangshan occupy an especially important place in China’s botanical research. Here you will find century-old pines, firs, ginkgoes, actinidia, Chinese torreyas and camphor woods– remnants of the glacial era. The Huangshan Mountain Range also provides a natural habitat for a wide variety of creatures. Among the mountain-dwellers are monkeys, goats, deer, pangolin and squirrels, in addition to an active bird population. The climate there is mild and humid, and the temperature is agreeable during all four seasons.

Getting there: Huangshan is accessible from Shanghai by overnight train, a five-hour bus ride or one hour by air. Expect expensive accommodation and food in the mountains everything is transported up the mountain by man-power: witness tough workers carrying live chickens or flats of coke cans in buckets hanging from wooden beams over their shoulders, and still making it up the mountain faster than you.

.

Hainan is China’s Hawaii. It’s on the same latitude, with a highly developed agricultural economy, roads and infrastructure. It’s China’s smallest province, divided by a 1.5 km strait from Guangdong, and nestled between the Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea. Like Hawaii it has the beaches, hills, forests, wildlife, and recreational roster. 

In the central highlands, the descendants of the Li, Miao and Han wear tribal dress in the villages, and ancient Chinese poetry proclaims the beauty of the waterfalls, gorges, lush forests with chattering monkeys – and the same coconut, banana, pepper and fruit fields you can see, if on a different scale. This is where to join the annual Water-Splashing Festival. 

Sanya, Hainan’s second city in the south, is the centre of beach life, and focal point of all tourism. Xiao Dongtian, to the west at Yazhou Bay is spectacularly pretty, with beauty spots alongside regular beach and countryside facilities. 

When to go: Year-round. Population: 8,200,000. How to get there: By air from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan, to Haikou or Sanya; by train and rail-ferry, from Guangzhou in Guangdong, to Haikou; by boat from several Chinese ports, to Haikou or Sanya. Photos by: Alfred(??) in Shanghai

Huacachina is a village in the Ica Region, in southwestern Peru. The oasis attracts many tourists as well as Peru’s rich families. The area around the lake is known for dune buggy trips and sandboarding. It is a tiny location, although it does have a few restaurants, bars and clubs.

In this quiet place, at a height of over 600 meters above sea level, ancient whales’ skeleton fossils were exposed by a slow process of wind and rain.  Huacachina is a very special place as.  In the middle of a massive sandy desert, surrounded by huge sand dunes was a gorgeous oasis with palm trees and a lagoon which is said to contain therapeutic properties. Particularly effective for the cure of skin and rheumatic illnesses.

Legend holds that the lagoon was created when a beautiful native princess was apprehended at her bath by a young hunter. She fled, leaving the pool of water she had been bathing in to become the lagoon.

This tiny little oasis in the desert is surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world.

Chic modern design, great facilities… Located on the edge of China Town, this exotic boutique hotel gives easy access to shopping, entertainment and nightlife areas. The lobby with furniture dating back to the 1920’s showcases the imaginative possibility of this blend between old and new. The New Majestic Hotel Singapore is a convenient 20 minute drive from the airport and a 5 minute drive from the city center.

The true charm of the New Majestic Hotel derives from the 30 individually designed rooms. The rooms adhere to different themes from the “Hanging Bed Room” where murals span whole walls through to the incredible Aquarium Room where a glass-encased bathtub sits in the middle of the room. Many rooms include private garden areas, customized baths and six meter high ceilings with floor to ceiling mirrors.
 

The unique styled rooms feature: Bose stereos, flat-screen TV, iPod dock, Kiehls’ toiletries, massaging showerheads, and wireless internet. Back downstairs, The Majestic Restaurant is a sleek reinterpretation of one of Singapore’s favorite Chinese dining rooms and serves modern Cantonese cuisine.

Taj Residency Hotel is one of the best 5 star hotels in Bangalore, India. The hotel is a one hour drive from the international and domestic airports. Quite close to the  Ulsoor Lake in the heart of the city is the Taj Residency Bangalore hotel. Strategically located, Taj Residency Bangalore is equipped to handle the needs of business travelers.

The hotel offers 166 well appointed rooms, including 5 Executive suites. Use of Residency Lounge offering complimentary Continental breakfast, Cocktail Hour and coffee throughout the day.

All rooms are elegantly appointed and offer guest amenities like international direct dial facility, mini-bar, channel music and a color television with satellite programs.

The hotel offers an array of business facilities including a fully equipped Business Centre, offering 24-hour Internet connectivity.

The restaurants and bars in the hotel include Cafe Mozaic, Graze, Memories Of China and The Jockey Club. Exclusive fine dining restaurant-cum-bar, serving Continental specialties.

FACILITIES: Swimming pool, fitness centre, beauty parlour, barber shop, car rental, currency exchange and safe.

In the middle of the Syrian Desert is without doubt the most beautiful and magnificent of the Syrian historic sites – Palmyra. It is often described as the bride of the desert. Its magnificent remains tell of a heroic history during the reign of Queen Zenobia. Located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus, Palmyra was an important city of central Syria.

Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world. This Arab commercial metropolis is located near a hot-water spring called Afqa, which make it an ideal halt for caravans moving between Iraq and Al-Sham, trading in silk from China to the Mediterranean. This strategic location made Palmyra prosper in a well-established kingdom from the 2nd century BC.

From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences. Recently, archaeologists in central Syria have unearthed the remnants of a 1,200-year-old church believed to be the largest ever discovered in Syria, at an excavation site in the ancient town of Palmyra.

The Mogao Caves(Caves of the Thousand Buddhas , or Caves of Dunhuang ) are a system of Buddhist cave temples near the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province, China. “Mogao” means high up in the desert. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years.

According to Tang Dynasty records, a monk had witnessed on-site a vision of thousand Buddhas under showers of golden rays. He started the caves construction work that spanned ten dynasties.Other pilgrims and travelers followed for the next thousand years.

The Mogao Grottoes contain priceless paintings, sculptures, some 50,000 Buddhist scriptures, historical documents, textiles, and other relics. The styles applied are typically from Indian-Buddhist schools.

Some sutras as big as 65 square metres, and encompassing a whole wall.

Despite erosion and man-made destruction, the 492 caves are well preserved, with frescoes covering an area of 45,000 square metres, more than 2,000 colored sculptured figures and five wooden eaves overhanging the caves.

Today, 220 of the Tang caves remain.  Today, the site is an important tourist attraction and the subject of an ongoing archaeological project.

The Mogao Caves became one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1987.

Located in Hunan Province in China,  Zhangjiajie Forest Geo-park covers a total area of 9,600 sq. k?, 1.1000 of China’s territory. This scenic area which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. In the area many scenic spots such as Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Baofeng Lake, Suoxiyu Valley, Tianzi Mountain, Yangjiajie Nature Reserve – together with Huanglong Cave (Asia’s largest cave), and many beautiful bridges, brooks and waterfalls. The area is a rare natural museum and famous tourist scenic spot.

The most attractive scene that Zhangjiajie features is the mysterious mountain covered with dense, primeval forests. It is said that 23 species of tare animals and more than 3,000 species of plants are living in the misty world. Many rocks are shaped like animals and fairies, and each is given its own legend.

This Linked Hybrid complex sited adjacent to the city of old city wall of Beijing. The Linked Hybrid is also called an ”open city within a city” project. The huge structure linked together 750 apartments, a public green space, commercial zones, a hotel, a cinema, a kinder garden, Montessori school and an underground parking. The buildings on the ground, under the ground and over the ground are fused together.

The ground level offers a number of open for all people (residents and visitors) to walk around. The space ensure some kind of micro-urbanisms of small scale. All public functions have connections with greenery.

From the 12th and18th floor, a multi-functional of skybridges with a swimming pool, a fitness room, a cafe, a gallery, auditorium and a minisalon connects the eight residential towers and the hotel tower and offer breathtaking view over the city.

Baekdu Mountain is a volcanic mountain on the border between China and North Korea. At 2,744 m, it is the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula. The area is a known habitat for tigers, bears, leopards, wolves, and wild boars. One of the highest crater lakes in the world, Heaven Lake, is at the top of the mountain. It has a circumference of 14 km, with an average depth of 213 m and maximum depth of 384 m. From mid-October to mid-June, the lake is covered with ice.

The road is situated in the Taihang ?ountains, Hunan Province of China. It is 1,200-metre-long tunnel which is about 5 m high and 4 m wide. Before the construction of the tunnel, Guoliang Village was almost cut off from its surrounding towns and villages. Its construction took 5 years but on May 1, 1977, the tunnel was opened to traffic. The wall of the tunnel is uneven and there are more than thirty windows of different sizes and shapes. One article suggested they carved windows mainly as a way to push the rubble out.

The Con Dao Archipelago lies 180 km south of Vung Tau, exposed in the South China Sea. Its isolation makes it unsurprising that Con Son, its main island, was a penal colony until 1975.  Today the small town that has developed round the remains of the penal colony is friendly and attractive. The group has evergreen trees and cool sea breezes. Dolphins jumping and playing round the boat when you visit Con Dao’s smaller islands. Photo by: Cmicblog

With potential infrastructure already in place, major tourist development is inevitable unless Con Dao as a whole is elevated from its present National Park to full-blooded UNESCO World Heritage status. The dense forest cover -especially the humid forest growing above 500 m – is pristine. Over 1,000 hectares of Con Dao’s living coral reefs survive in shallow waters. The terrestrial and marine biodiversity is colossial: Con Dao’s habitants attract hawksbill and green turtles and dugong among 1,300 species of sea animals. Photo by: vinh_hcmc

When to go: Con Dao’s climate is governed by the convergence of warm and cool ocean currents. Frequent, violent storms hit the archipelago’s western side from June to September, then reverse to hit the eastern side form October to December. Come between March and early June when the sea is at its most calm. Population: 5,000. Photo by: John Patrick Tobin

This is the south-western coast of Sri Lanka (26th December 2004). In this picture we can see the ocean rapidly retreats 400 metres,  just 5 minutes prior to the arrival of a devastating tsunami.

The spiraling waters continue to fill the coast just moments after the tremendous wave has hit.

This photo shows an alluvial fan, formed on the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China. An alluvial fan usually develops when water leaves a canyon, each new stream eventually closing up due to sediment – the result being a triangle of active and inactive channels. The blue ones on the left are currently active.

Retreating Glaciers Bhutan Himalaya. They are very beautiful and has a clear sign of slowly melting due to global warming. Easily visible are the ends of most of these glacial valleys’ surfaces turning to water to form lakes, a trend which has been noticed only in the last few decades.

Hurricane Isabel 2003. This photo was taken on the international space station in 2003 and illustrates the huge size of the hurricane’s eye. Isabel was the deadliest of 2003 and its winds reached 165 mph.

Greenland Eastern Coast. Greenland’s eastern coast is included in this true-color Terra MODIS image from August 21, 2003. The small marks of white in the water looks like ice originating from the deeper fjords and reach all the way to the ice-cap covering most of the island.

Aurora Borealis is natural phenomenon. The image was taken on-board space shuttle Atlantis during the sts-117 mission.

Egmont National Park New Zealand. The picture displays Egmont volcano last erupted in 1755 and is now situated at the centre of Egmont National Park. The volcano can be seen from space in the form of huge dark green disc. This photo was taken during the sts-110 mission, april 2002.

This is Beipanjiang River Railroad Bridge located in Guizhou, China. The bridge is a huge railway bridge that was built as part of the much larger ‘guizhou-shuibai railway project and connects two mountains. Its highest point is 918ft above the ground. The bridge has succeeded in connecting 2 of the country’s poorest areas.

This one is a Pedestrian Bridge located in Lake Austin, Texas. The bridge looks enjoyably risky to use, and is in fact not for public consumption – it links the main house on the estate to a guest house, across the lake. The 100ft arch structure has a main span of 80ft, achieved through the ‘nesting’ of five 5 inch diameter pipes that diverge from the spring point of the main span and the abutments.

This is Kintaikyo Iwakuni Bridge in Japan. The original Kintai Bridge was built in 1673 and didn’t last long until it was damaged due to flooding. It was then rebuilt and survived for more than 200 years until a typhoon battered it to death in 1950. The bridge that is now over the Nishiki river is the 3rd one and looks magnificent, it’s 5 wooden arches displaying an anamazing amount of detail and craftsmanship.

‘Henderson Waves’ is the highest pedestrian bridge in Singapore and can be found in a beautiful 9km stretch of gardens and parks. The bridge is a spectacular landmark. The horizontal part is made of thousands of balau wood slats, perfectly cut and arranged, and along the length of the deck a huge snaking, undulating shell cleverly forms sheltered seating areas on every upward curve.

This is a bridge. The only difference is that the bridge can’t be used by humans because of the fact that its purpose is to support 2 pipelines – 1 gas, 1 oil – across the extremely high gap in Papua New Guinea.

Piano house in Anhui, China

This unique piano house is in Anhui Province, China. This building was designed by the local Chinese government to attract more development to this area. Inside of the transparent violin is the escalator to the building, where a variety of city plans and ideas for the future development are on display.

The Blue Building, Netherlands

This building is located in the borough of Delfshaven, Rotterdam. It was once derelict building and one of the most unseen blocks of houses in Rotterdam. But by applying a layer of only 2 micron of blue paint, the block will remain blue as long as there isn’t a new plan for the area. And it became Rotterdam’s most photographed one.