• China's 'Red Ants' embrace RV culture

    Zheyang Soohoo / Reuters

    Men row a boat carrying a child on a lake in front of recreational vehicles (RVs), during a camping trip at an RV park on the outskirts of Beijing on April 14, 2012. Chinese buyers bought an estimated 1,000 RVs last year, but experts say the RV business is about to take off in the country.

    Reuters reports — Dong Xuemin can't wait for weekends when he heads out with family or friends to the mountains north of Beijing or to a lake for a picnic.

    Terril Yue Jones / Reuters

    Dong Xuemin poses in front of his RV and boat at his storage company in Beijing on April 17, 2012.

    Dong is a "Red Ant" - a member of a club of urban Chinese who'll find any excuse to hit the road, not in ordinary cars, but in recreational vehicles, those quintessential Western chariots of leisure transportation used by "Snowbirds" in North America typified by white-haired retirees heading south for the winter.

    Read more stories from China on Behind the Wall

    "RVs have a long and glorious history in the West," says Dong, 41, who runs a logistics and storage business in Beijing where he stores his RV, boat, all-terrain vehicle and motorized surfboard. "Chinese are the same; we love the outdoors. So we're learning the American and Western RV culture." Read the full story.

    Zheyang Soohoo / Reuters

    Children sit around a table as they play inside an RV, during a camping trip at an RV park on the outskirts of Beijing on April 14, 2012.

    Zheyang Soohoo / Reuters

    People light a fire on a barbecue grill next to RVs during a camping trip on the outskirts of Beijing on April 14, 2012.

     

  • Horse riding on a winter's day in Gaza

    Marco Longari / AFP - Getty Images

    Ola Abu Safia, 18, rides a horse at the Al-Furusia riding center in Gaza City on Jan. 10, 2012. Opened in 2002, the center caters to a small number of women who practice horse riding despite the strict social and cultural norms in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

    Marco Longari / AFP - Getty Images

    Hanan Abu Nada, 28, a lawyer from Gaza City, rides a horse with her daughter at the Al-Furusia riding center on Jan. 10, 2012.

    The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood, reporting from a Gazan riding club in 2010, described how some horses had been smuggled into the blockaded territory through tunnels from Egypt. 

    Previously on PhotoBlog:

  • Marko Djurica / Reuters

    People bathe in mud in the village of Ovca near Belgrade, Serbia, Aug. 21. In the 'Ovcanska Spa' the water is salty and comes from the depth of several hundred meters with high mineral content. Locals believe that various vein diseases, rheumatics, sciatica, and vision disorders are treated by the curative mud and mineral water that contains more than 28 minerals.

    Locals look to mud for healing near Belgrade

    By Katie Cannon, Senior Multimedia Editor

    I wonder if this mud has a high sulfur content, as the one time that I soaked in a natural mud spa, I had to dispose of my swimsuit and the clothes that I wore later that day since not even the laundry could get the smell out. Despite all of that, I would absolutely soak in the mud again since it felt great!

  • Douglas Mason/Getty Images

    The Flaming Lips perform during the 2010 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., on Friday, June 11.

    Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images

    A boy floats in an inflatable sphere at a lake in a park in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Sunday, June 13.

    Having a ball

    By Jonathan Woods, msnbc.com

    Two unrelated photos with a similar theme. Where would you rather be?