The Viimsi Shopping Center in the Estonian town of Haabneeme is famous for having a giant boulder square in the middle of it.

There are many things one expects to find in a supermarket, but a giant rock is definitely not one of them. And yet, in one Estonian supermarket, a giant rock with a circumference of 22 meters and a height of roughly 6 meters (including the part buried in the ground) is one of the highlights of most people’s shopping trips. The rock has been there long before the owners of the shopping center drew up plans for their business venture – about 10,000 years, to be more precise – but they only discovered it when digging the foundation,  in September of 2014. Workers initially intended to blow it to smithereens, but the locals opposed the plans, and it was later discovered that the giant boulder was actually an “erratic boulder” eligible for conservation status.

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The Shrinking Mill of Port Colborne, in Ontario, Canada, is an intriguing optical illusion that makes a giant grain elevator shrink the closer you get to it.

Usually, things tend to appear smaller in the distance and grow in size the closer you get to them, but that rule does not apply to the grain elevator located in Port Colborne’s Sugarloaf Marina. As motorists turn left onto Lakeshore Road west from Cement Road, they have their view filled by this massive concrete building in the distance. It’s so big it literally fills the horizon, but as you drive forward, instead of getting even bigger, it starts to shrink, and by the time you make the left-hand bend, it’s just an average industrial building in the distance. The mind-bending optical illusion has such a strong effect that nine out of ten people who see it for the first time drive back to get another look.

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The Namib Desert in Namibia is said to be the oldest and driest desert on Earth, so the last thing you would expect to find right in the middle of it is a working pink refrigerator.

Imagine walking through an African desert, nothing but rocks and barren mountains as far as the eye can see, and all of a sudden stumbling on a pink refrigerator and a metal table with two small chairs next to it. Sounds like one of those infamous desert mirages, but not only is this Barbie-inspired fridge real, it also works, and it is constantly restocked with refreshing drinks.  Located about a 20-minute drive from the main road traversing the Namib Desert from north to south, the pink refrigerator was installed by the Namibian government’s tourist board and has become one of the most popular attractions in the African country. It was designed as a modern take on the desert oasis for weary travelers looking to quench their thirst.

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El Marco, a small rustic bridge connecting the Spanish village of El Marco to the Portuguese village of Varzea Grande, is the world’s smallest international bridge.

Crossing the 19ft (6 meters) long and 4.7ft (1.45 meters) wide El Marco wooden bridge, you’d think you were just crossing a small stream in a rural area of Western Europe, but you couldn’t be more wrong. By taking these few steps over El Marco, you are not only crossing from one country into another, but you are also changing time zones, as Spain operates on Central European Time (CET/CEST), while Portugal follows Greenwich Mean Time (GMT/BST). You can think of it as the easiest way of time-traveling.

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A tiny park roughly the size of a newspaper in the Japanese town of Nagaizumi currently holds the Guinness Record for ‘world’s smallest park’.

A decade ago, we wrote about Mill Ends Park, the former world’s smallest park. At just two meters in diameter, it only had room for one tree and a few tiny plants, but it was of decent size compared to the newly crowned smallest park on Earth. Located a short distance from Nagaizumi town hall, in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, the tiny park measures 2.6 square feet and consists of a tiny patch of grass, a couple of stone plaques, and a stool for visitors to sit on and admire their surroundings. The park has reportedly been around since the late 1980s, but it was only recently recognized by Guinness Records as the world’s smallest recreational park.

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Rain Report Cafe in Seoul is a unique cafe where it rains perpetually every 15 minutes and patrons are offered umbrellas, rubber boots, and raincoats.

If you find nothing more relaxing than a cup of hot coffee on a rainy day, you’ll probably love the concept of Rain Report Cafe, a South Korean cafe where it rains heavily every 15 minutes. Rain is definitely an unusual concept to design a cafe around but judging by the very positive Google review score this place currently has, Rain Report is definitely a very special place. Nestled in the middle of a residential area in Itaewon, Rain Report is almost completely decked in black and lined with bamboo trees, which really makes you feel like you’re outside the busy South Korean capital when the downpour starts. And that happens very frequently.

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Every summer, Oregon’s Lost Lake disappears down a couple of volcanic tunnels only to return in the fall, as a number of streams start flowing into what looks like a peaceful meadow.

Driving past Lost Lake in the late fall or in the winter, you may not pay much attention to the seemingly plain body of water, but making the same drive in late spring or in the summer, you’ll definitely do a double take as a peaceful meadow replaces the lake. This is the magic of Lost Lake, a special attraction located in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, just off U.S. Highway 20. Starting in late autumn, a number of streams start flowing down from the surrounding mountains filling the meadow that soon becomes the bottom of the Lost Lake, and by mid-winter, the lake is at its fullest. The disappearing act begins in spring and is completed in the summer, as the contributing streams dry out, and all the water in the lake is drained via two holes that act like the drains of a bathtub.

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The Shiziguan Floating Bridge, also known as the Bridge of Dreams, is an innovative 400-meter bridge that allows cars up to 2.8 tonnes to drive across the surface of the Qingjiang River in China.

Nestled between the forest-covered mountains of Enshi Prefecture, in Hubei Province, the Shiziguan scenic spot is one of China’s most breathtaking natural attractions. However, what really separates it from other impressive sights is the experience of taking in the beautiful scenery while driving along a bridge made of floats and placed directly on the water. Built using German technology to prevent rollovers, the Shiziguan Floating Bridge has been operational since 2016 for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The bridge is made from high-density polyethylene floats filled with water for extra stability, so if the drivers respect the imposed speed limit of 20 km/h, they should only feel the gentle sway of the river beneath.

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The Nepalese capital city of Kathmandu is home to a peculiar shrine to goddess Vaisha Dev, the patron saint of toothache, where people suffering from dental problems nail rupee coins on an old tree trunk as offerings.

Located on a narrow street in Kathmandu, between Thamel and Kathmandu Durbar Square, the Toothache Tree is undoubtedly one of the most unusual tourist attractions in the Nepalese capital. The Vaisha Dev shrine is said to be a stump cut from the mythical tree known as Bangemudha, but it’s almost impossible to tell that it is a tree at all, as it is completely covered in Nepalese rupee coins nailed onto it. Although it is impossible to know just how old this unique shrine really is, some sources claim that it dates back to the Lichchhavi kingdom that existed in the Kathmandu Valley from approximately 400 to 750 CE. Even though modern dentistry has been practiced in Kathmandu for decades, people still come to the Toothache Tree to nail coins, hoping the goddess will release them of their dental problems.

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Gaoqi Ling is a natural wonder in China’s Hunan Province, a mountain of perfectly smooth rock with an extremely narrow ridge that people love to traverse despite the apparent danger.

China’s Danxia Park is famous for its unique landforms, particularly the multicolored “Rainbow Mountain,” but it is home to other less-known but just as intriguing natural formations. Gaoqi Ling is one such natural wonder. Originally a watershed, this natural wonder had its steep ridges shaped by the water washing over them and then smoothed out by rain and wind. Today, the sharp ridges are often compared to a giant knife edge or the spine of a sleeping dragon with its ribs extending outwards.

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China’s Yuntai Waterfall is generally regarded as Asia’s most impressive waterfall and is often described as a natural wonder. However, it turns out that its spectacular water show is artificially enhanced.

Yuntai Waterfall is the most popular scenic spot in the Yuntai Mountains, drawing millions of tourists annually. The tallest waterfall in Asia (a sheer drop of 314 meters) offers stunning vistas and a breathtaking spectacle that was recently revealed to be the result of modern technology. A Chinese vlogger managed to make their way to the top of Yuntai Waterfall where they spotted large metal pipes feeding water into the waterfall for an enhanced video effect. At first, the viral video of the discovery was criticized as fake, but sources from the Yuntai Mountain Scenic Area acknowledged that the waterfall is slightly enhanced to ensure a pleasant experience for tourists, regardless of natural factors.

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China’s Guizhou Province is home to about a dozen conical hills known as the Anlong Pyramids because of their resemblance to the much more famous pyramids of Egypt.

In recent years, Anlong County has become a popular tourist destination thanks in no small part to its pyramid-like mountains which have captured the imaginations of millions of people around the world. Apart from their pyramid-like shape, these formations also feature layers of rock stacked on top of each other so neatly that you could swear they were placed like that by someone or something. Ever since photos and videos of the Anlong Pyramids started circulating online around 2018, conspiracy theories about their origin began appearing as well, and despite experts’ best efforts to convince the public that these pyramids are completely natural, some people still believe that they are the work of an ancient human civilization or of aliens.

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The Hongyancun subway station in Chongqing, China is 116 meters deep and the difference in air pressure will often leave users with clogged ears when accessed via its elevator.

When the air pressure outside of the eardrum becomes different than the pressure inside, you experience ear barotrauma. It occurs most often during steep declines and descents and is usually associated with plane takeoffs and landings, or driving up or down mountains. Most subway stations don’t usually cause ear barotrauma, because they aren’t deep or steep enough for your ears to register a significant enough difference in air pressure. But using the elevator to reach the world’s deepest subway station might actually clog up your ears. That’s because it is located 116 meters below the surface, the equivalent of about 40 floors underground.

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The Recreo Verde tourist complex in Venecia de San Carlos, Costa Rica, is home to a tiny mountain cavern that has come to be known as The Cave of Death due to its ability to kill any creature that enters it.

Located on the edge of the Poas Volcano, la Cueva de la Muerte is only 2 meters deep and 3 meters long, which makes it a seemingly cozy refuge for insects, birds, and small animals looking for shelter. But appearances can be deceiving, as entering this tiny cavern results in an almost instant death. Although the tiny cave looks harmless to the naked eye, it is filled with carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that also happens to be extremely toxic. To demonstrate just how lethal the Cave of Death actually is, local guides place a lit torch inside the cavern and it is extinguished instantly by the absence of oxygen and the high concentration of carbon dioxide.

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Iran’s Shazdeh Garden, also known as the Prince’s Garden, is a surprisingly lush garden full of greenery and water fountains surrounded by arid desert.

Located 6 kilometers from the city of Mahan, in Kerman Province, Shazdeh Garden is a historical Persian garden built by the Qajar Dynasty, at the end of the 19th century. The rectangular complex is surrounded by stone walls that shield the green paradise inside from the harsh desert surrounding it. Seen from the air, Shazdeh Garden looks like a welcoming oasis in the middle of an arid sea, and it’s photos like the ones below that attract thousands of people to this place every year. It features five impressive water fountains supplied through the Qanat technique of transporting water from a well through an underground aqueduct.

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