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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For 50 Years, the Rogan Megane Hakubutsukan or Spectacles Museum in Ikeburo, was the most iconic place to go shopping for eyeglasses and sunglasses in all of Japan, probably the world.

Located on the Higashi-dori shopping street in Minami-Ikebukuro, Tokyo, the Spectacles Museum was one of the most Instagram-worthy places in the Japanese capital. Although this was once a simple warehouse, under the guidance of founder and longtime owner Yutaka Takei, it became a giant advertisement for the products being sold inside. What really put the Spectacles Museum on the map was its unique facade, which consisted of thousands of pairs of colorful sunglasses attached to a giant metal frame. It was meant to attract attention, and that’s exactly what it did, in time becoming one of Ikebukuro’s main tourist attractions.

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The Santuario Della Beata Vergine Maria Delle Grazie, in Italy’s Lombardia region, is an old church famous for having a real taxidermied crocodile hanging from the ceiling.

What’s the last thing you expect to see when you look up in a church? Granted, there are plenty of interesting answers one can think of, but ‘a crocodile’ definitely ranks up there with the quirkiest of them. But if you travel to the small municipality of Curtatone, in Lombardia, Italy, you’ll find a church with a five-century-old crocodile hanging from the ceiling. It’s a peculiar sight, to say the least, but one that has been around for as long as anyone can remember. How the croc wound up at the Santuario Della Beata Vergine Maria Delle Grazie is, and will probably remain a mystery, but its purpose had been linked to religious symbolism.

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The Chained Tree of Peshawar, in Pakistan, has been under arrest since 1899, when a British officer decided to teach it a lesson for moving away from him. It has remained chained ever since.

125 years ago, a drunk British officer by the name of James Squid performed one of the most bizarre arrests in history in Landi Kotal, a town near the Torkhan border. Convinced that the tree was trying to get away from him as he struggled to approach it, Squid ordered it chained to the ground and placed under arrest. The chains have remained in place ever since, and a plaque tells the story of the arrest for curious tourists.

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Mori Ouchi, a cozy cafe in Tokyo’s laidback Shimokitazawa district, is famous for only catering to pessimists and people with a generally negative mindset.

Negative people tend to get a bad rep and are constantly told to be more positive, but, if you think about it, is there really anything wrong with being negative? The founder of Mori Ouchi, a small cafe in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo, certainly doesn’t think so. A self-described gloomy person, he got the idea for like-minded people over a decade ago but only decided to open it three years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The man had always felt like negative people were more sensitive and more easily hurt than others, so he created a space dedicated exclusively to them.

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Inishmore, the largest of Ireland’s Aran Islands, is home to a remarkable natural wonder, a rectangular pool cut so straight into limestone that it looks man-made.

Also known as “The Wormhole” or “The Serpent’s Lair”, Poll na bPéist is a natural water basin with an edge length of approx. 10 by 25 meters within a stone formation. It can only be accessed by walking along the cliffs south of the ancient site Dún Aonghasa, but in recent years it has become famous for hosting the renowned Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. The most fascinating thing about Poll na bPéist is its remarkable rectangular shape, which has led many to question its natural origins and sparked several theories, including that it is the work of an ancient civilization.

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The so-called ‘Guyiang White House’ is a gigantic structure located in the posh Huaguoyuan Wetland Park area of Guiyang City, in China’s Guizhou Province. It has gone viral as China’s largest mansion, but you can’t believe everything you read online…

Featuring an architectural style usually observed in European palaces and museums, the Guiyang White House has become one of the most iconic sights in the Chinese city of Guiyang. Although many have described it as ‘kitsch’, ‘over-the-top’, and overly opulent’, there is no denying the eye-catching appeal of this megalithic structure, both during the day and at night, when it is illuminated by countless light installations. The structure got its name because of its white exterior and Western architectural influences, but when it comes to size, it actually dwarfs its Washington namesake. The entire complex, including the artificial pond in front of the edifice, is said to cover an area of ​​18.3 million square meters.

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Every year, in late autumn, thousands of people flock to Bangye–ri, a village in Gyeongsang, South Korea, to witness the beauty of a majestic 860-year-old ginkgo biloba tree.

The secular Wonju Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is a national monument of South Korea famous for its impressive crown which currently covers a perimeter of around 17 meters. At around 32 meters tall (104ft), it is not even the Asian country’s tallest ginkgo tree, but the way its branches are spread out makes it one of the most visually impressive trees on Earth. In South Korea, the Bangye-ri Ginkgo Tree is often called the world’s most beautiful tree.

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A road leading to Bali’s Pandawa Beach that seems to split an entire plateau in half has sparked a heated online debate about the practicality of the project and its effect on local wildlife.

Featuring fine white sand and crystal-clear water, the picture-perfect beach of Pandawa was already one of Bali’s most beautiful seaside destinations, but the road dug into the limestone cliffs separating the beach from the rest of the island really catapulted it into the top tourist destinations on the island. Until only a decade ago, Pandawa Beach was only popular among locals, as the limestone cliffs secluded from foreigners’ eyes were notoriously hard to traverse. However, everything changed in 2012 when a road leading down to the beach was created by cutting through the cliffs. Today, that road has itself become somewhat of a tourist attraction in its own right, but also the topic of a heated debate.

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Located in Havana, Cuba, Coppelia Park is the world’s largest ice cream parlor. Also known as the ‘Ice Cream Cathedral, it serves around 30,000 customers per day and up to 600 at a time.

Built in 1966, Cuba’s ‘Parque Coppelia consists of a two-storey domed pavilion inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Cathedral of Brasilia outside which people queue for ice cream every single day, and a lush park complete with hundreds of tables where up to 1,000 people can enjoy the frozen treats at a time. The story goes that Fidel Castro ordered the building of Coppelia Park shortly after the success of his Communist revolution. He reportedly ordered twenty-eight containers of ice cream from American producer Howard Johnson’s, and upon tasting it decided to respond by creating something bigger and better, but cheap enough that anyone could afford. His idea was a huge hit, and to this day thousands of people continue to enjoy subsidized ice cream at Coppelia Park, the world’s largest ice cream parlor.

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