Evening at the Summer Palace I didn't make it to the Summer Palace until my final evening in Beijing, and I was graced with a delicate sunset. This place is also called the "Gardens of Nurtured Harmony" and it rests on top of "Longevity Hill", a very Chinese-folk-sounding name. What is kind of interesting is that this entire area was manmade, and the huge hill was built out of dirt when they excavated the man-made lake! It is a truly beautiful place, as you can plainly see. I could not have asked for a better place to explore on my last night in China. - Trey Ratcliff Read more (and check out a new TWIT Photo Webcast) here at the Stuck in Customs blog.

The Airship Isabella During SXSW, I ended up at a party that had a pretty big steampunk contingent, which is of course very cool to me. I thought I had some good steampunk stuff from Burning Man until I saw these guys... This was at the Big Bang Bordello Party put on by True Ventures and Tunehopper. It was super-crowded, like most decent SXSW parties, and there was a raucous stage show with a bunch of gals in lingerie and stuff. Is it lame that I hung out with all the steampunk guys in the back? Yes, probably. Many of them were crew from the Airship Isabella, and they had all kinds of inventive steam-powered goodies. What is Steampunk? Follow that link for the Wikipedia entry... and also, you may remember the Steampunk photo from Burning Man. - Trey Ratcliff See all three of these here at the Stuck in Customs blog.