1. Wat Rong Khun, Chang Rai, Thailand
Still under construction, Chiang Rai's controversial modern temple is
part traditional Buddhist temple, part white-frosted wedding cake, and
part avant-garde art with a disturbing penchant for pointiness. Visitors
must cross a bridge to the temple over a field of fangs and hundreds of
pleading white arms and suffering faces of statues reaching up from
hell. While stark whiteness predominates, the inside and other parts of
the temple compound (including the toilets) are sparkling gold.
Wat Rong Khun is open daily; the White Temple is a short drive from Chiang Rai.
2. Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
By the mid-1800s, the crypt at the Sedlec monastery had been a
popular burial site for centuries, with plague outbreaks and Hussite
Wars contributing thousands of remains. In the 1870s a local woodcarver
was hired to make creative use of the bones that had been piling up in
the crypt. This was no minor task: the ossuary contains the remains of
over 40,000 people, many of which were used to decorate the chapel. The
effect is as beautiful as it is macabre: elaborate light fixtures,
arrays of bells, furnishings, splashy wall treatments and coats of arms
are all loving recreated from skulls and bones of all sizes. Is that
chandelier staring back at you?
To reach the monastery, drag your bones 800m south from Kutná Hora's main train station.
3. Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang, North Korea
Under construction since 1987, the massive and still unfinished
105-story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang looks like a luxury hotel designed
for Mordor. Nicknamed the 'Hotel of Doom' and described as 'the worst
building in the history of mankind' by Esquire, construction halted due
to lack of funding, and the partially completed building stood
windowless and looming ominously over the city for 16 years before work
resumed in 2008. Strikingly modern when first designed, time has not
been kind to the building, which now looks simultaneously menacing,
dated, and unconscionably extravagant relative to the impoverished
populace.
Once granted a visa, visitors to North Korea have little choice in
where they are allowed to visit or photograph, but at 105 stories, the
Ryugyong Hotel is hard to miss from anywhere in the capital.
4. Dongyue Temple, Běijīng, China
Běijīng's most morbid shrine, the operating Taoist shrine of Dongyue
Temple is an unsettling but fascinating place to visit. Stepping through
the entrance you find yourself in Taoist Hades, where tormented spirits
reflect on their wrongdoings. The 'Life and Death Department' is a
spiritual place to ponder your eventual demise, the 'Department for
Wandering Ghosts' and the 'Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of
Violent Death' have slightly less inviting names, while the ill might
seek out the 'Deep-Rooted Disease Department'. Other halls are less
morbid, but no less interesting. Visit during the Chinese New Year or
the Mid-Autumn Festival to see the temple at its most vibrant.
Paying the extra Yuan for a guide can be helpful for interpreting the
aspects of the temple that might otherwise defy explanation.
5. Lemp Mansion, St Louis, USA
Reputed to be one of the USA's most haunted houses (if there are
degrees of hauntedness), St Louis' Lemp Mansion has a long history of
odd occurrences. Charles Lemp committed suicide in the house in 1949
and, ever since, strange things have taken place at the house, including
doors that swing open spontaneously, glasses that leap off tables and
break, and a tragically short-lived reality TV show. Today, the mansion
operates as a restaurant and inn that capitalizes on the morbid fame
through murder mystery dinner theatre, Halloween parties and weekly
tours by a noted 'paranormal investigator'. Stay the night if you dare.
The mansion can be found just off I-55, south of the Anheuser-Busch
Brewery.
6. Scott Monument, Edinburgh, Scotland
A spiky Gothic fantasy with more than a passing resemblance to a Thai
temple, the monument to Sir Walter Scott is a beloved fixture of the
Edinburgh skyline. Just 61m high, the climb to the top doesn't sound
daunting until you find yourself wedged into the preposterously tiny
spiral staircase. The final curve is so notoriously tight that squeezing
yourself out the final doorway requires the flexibility of a spelunker.
Edinburgh mystery writer Ian Rankin once set the scene of the crime at
the top of the Scott Monument, with much of the story focusing on the
physics of getting a stiff cadaver down the twisty staircase. Not a
claustrophobe? This might make you think otherwise.
7. Catacombe dei Cappuccini, Palermo, Italy
All of the inhabitants of the catacombs below Palermo's Capuchin
Monastery are decked out in their Sunday best. Unfortunately, that
Sunday was several hundred years ago, and the outfits have fared
significantly better that the wearers. The mummified bodies and
skeletons of some 8000 Palermitans from the 1600s through to the 1800s
are kept in the catacombs for all to see, some so well preserved that
they look eerily lifelike. Men and women occupy separate corridors, and
within the women's area there's a special virgin-only section. Spooky
for adults, probably terrifying for the kiddies - be warned.
The catacombs are a 15-minute walk from Palermo's Piazza Independenza along Via Cappuccini or a short bus ride.
8. Chernobyl Reactor #4, Ukraine
Famously the site of the world's biggest nuclear disaster in 1986,
the 30km-radius exclusion zone is mostly uninhabited today, but limited
tours have been available since 2002 for travelers who are curious
enough to get a glimpse of the industrial ghost town and aren't put off
by the ominous click of a Geiger counter. Factories, homes, schools, and
a particularly creepy abandoned amusement park stand decaying and
choked with weeds, but remain much as they looked at the time of
disaster. The Ukrainian government has indicated that the exclusion zone
will be increasingly open to travelers in the coming years. Just don't
step on the radioactive moss.
The best way to visit Chernobyl is to use one of the several Kiev-based agencies such as Solo East or New Logic.
9. Ottawa Jail Hostel, Canada
Want to spend the night in the slammer? Why not make it a jail
haunted by the spirits of former inmates and deemed unsuitable for
prisoners in the early1970s due to appalling conditions? Opened in 1862,
the Carleton County Gaol was in operation for over a century, but it
was hardly a hit with the prisoners who complained of cramped conditions
and sanitation problems. It might not have been suitable for prisoners
at the time, but if you're a traveler on a tight budget and don't mind
that your room happens to be a prison cell and your bunkmate might be
spectral, it's perfect. As a 'prisoner' today, your punishment includes
parking, wifi, and a games lounge.
10. White Alice, Alaska, USA
A gold-rush town a century ago and the finishing line for the
Iditarod dog-sled race today, Nome is the perfect example of a
honky-tonk, almost-at-the-Arctic-Circle frontier town. Overlooking the
town and the Bering Straits from the top of Anvil Mountain is White
Alice, a weird Cold War relic. From down in the town it looks like a
bizarre space-age Stonehenge, closer up it could be a film set for a
shoot of the Victorian-era War of the Worlds. The four strange
corrugated-iron sound reflector structures were intended for listening
to suspicious Soviet activity.
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