patti labelle blog: Places

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That's One Big Pothole

A large section of Shunwai Road (顺外路) in Nanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi Province, collapses on Wednesday, April 25, 2007. No one was hurt in the incident. Link

World's Eight Tallest Statutes

I am yet to find one chance to visit one of them .

No. 1. Ushiku Amida Buddha, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

The staute is 100 meter tall, standing on a 10m lotus base and a 10m platform, total 120 meters. It weighs 4000 tons and is the tallest statue in the world. The monument is three times taller and thirty times larger in volume than the Statue of Liberty. link

No. 2. The Statue of Emperors Yan and Huang, Zhengzhou, Hunan Province, China

The statue is 106 meters high, with the eye three meters wide and the nose eight meters long. Emperors Yan and Huang, two emperors in ancient Chinese legends, are said to be the earliest ancestors of the Chinese nation. link

No. 3. Kiev's statue of the Motherland, Kiev, Ukraine

The memorial of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) itself is 62 meters tall, the overall height is 102 meters. link

No. 4 Peter the Great Statue, Moscow, Russia

The 94 meter high bronze sculpture of Peter the Great standing in the Moscow River was designed by Zurab Tsereteli. link

No. 5. Statue of Liberty, New York, USA
A colossal statue given to the United States by France in 1886, is standing at Liberty Island in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor. The overall height is 93 meters. The statute is 46 meters tall, with the foundation adding another 46.9 meters. link

No. 6. The Motherland, Volgograd, Russia
The statue has another name called Mother Motherland Is Calling. Measured from the tip of her sword to the top of the plinth, the distance is 85 meters (279 feet). It is can be found at 48°44′32.5″N, 44°32′13″E on Google Maps. link

No. 7. Leshan Giant Buddha, Sichuan Province, China
Standing 71 metres tall, the statue is the tallest stone Buddha statue in the world. link

No. 8.Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The statue stands 38 m tall and is located at the peak of the 710-m (2330-foot) Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park, overlooking the Rio de Janeiro city. link

Croatia's Plitvicka Waterfalls

The Most Beautiful Waterfalls,Plitvicka Waterfalls

Waterfalls in Plitvicka Jezera National Park of Croatia are believed as one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. This amazing photo was taken by the landscape photographer Jack Brauer. To get to this vantagepoint directly facing these waterfalls, he had to bushwack down a slope and downclimb a sketchy cliff. With lucky timing, clouds covered the sun and the photographer was able to take some longer exposures to get the soft waterfall effect. Link to TrekEarth via Digg

Weird Traffic Light Signs in Czech

Yeah, really unique! Anyone knows why the Czech authorities put on so weird traffic lights? Link

Sexy Stools and Sculptures in Chongqing

Two ladies sit on specially designed human-bottom-shaped stools at a park in southwest China's Chongqing municipality April 20, 2007.

Children were playing around women-back sculptures outside a public toilet on Nanbing Road in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

Russia to Build World's Longest Undersea Tunnel to Alaska

Russia plans to build the world’s longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, said. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he added.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables.

Link

Poverty-hiding Walls

In Yongjing County, in northwestern Gansu Province, more than two kilometres of walls were built flanking one side of a major road. Unlike sound insulation boards in cities, these walls are not used to reduce traffic noise in roadside village homes, but to hide them from sight of drivers and passersby.

The brick and cement wall, painted into purplish blue and red, emerges even more conspicuous among the khaki-coloured loess hills. Behind the two-metre-tall wall, is a sprawl of villagers' houses and yards, which are roughly built with mud. In some areas of this impoverished county, 70 per cent of residents or more are living under the national poverty line.

The wall, dubbed an "official loincloth" by villagers, has made their lives more inconvenient. Villager Zhang Tianzhi has had to close his roadside shop after the wall was finished, and he even had trouble entering his own home.

Fake Snakes Keep Men From Urinating By the Roadside

Austrian officials fed up with motorists stopping to urinate by the roadside have put up fake snake warnings to scare them into using toilets.

Franz Perder, manager of a motorway restaurant in Guntramsdorf where some of the signs have been placed, said: "The idea is that people stop to relieve themselves, see the warning about snakes and get back in the car instead of going to the bushes to take a leak."

"Of course there are no snakes but they don't know that. The warnings have worked really well."

"We tried other signs but they were useless. These signs though have really worked. You see men coming up to bushes, getting ready to have a pee and then quickly zipping up their trousers again when they see the signs."

Officials say the worst culprits are East Europeans. The signs read 'Beware, mortal danger. Snakes' in Polish and Czech alongside a picture of a cobra. It also has the sign in English and German.

5,000 Rabbits Block Traffic In Hungary

Five thousand rabbits blocked a Hungarian highway Monday after the truck that was carrying them crashed.

The animals came free after the truck collided with another vehicle and overturned, police officials said.

The M1 highway- the main road connection between the capitals of Hungary and Austria -was expected to be closed for several hours while authorities tried to gather the loose animals, Highway Patrol Spokeswoman Viktoria Galik said.

Some 500 rabbits were killed in the accident and the recaptured were that were recaptured. They were expected to complete the trip to a slaughterhouse.

Video: Car Aquarium

This is a car that was modified to be an aquarium holding fish! It's located at the Busan Aquarium in Haeundae Beach, in Busan South Korea! And the sign specifically says PLEASE Do NOT Touch, yet there were kids bouncing on top of it!

Link via Uniquedaily

Britain's 'Shortest Yellow Line'

A yellow line put to simply separate two parking bays at a street in North London is deemed as the shortest one in the U.K..

The 18-inch parking restriction in Highbury Crescent in Highbury is just about long enough to fit one wheel.

"I was amazed to see the yellow line," said Elly Lishman, 36, who lives nearby. "It must be the smallest yellow line in the UK."

Islington Council said no ticket has ever been issued on the line, which was put there "to help drivers" [not book a ticket].

Link via A Welsh View

Villages Buried by Volcano Muds in Indonesia

On 14 April, a large number of families' houses, rice fields, mosques, factories and roads were seen being buried by mudflow in Sidoarjo of Indonesia's East Java. Since last May, an awry natural gas drilling project of Lapindo Brantas Inc. has brought endless thick muck to the district and affected 15,000 victims from 2500 families. Link to Xinhua & the Age

Morning Glory Pool--Most Beautiful Pool in Yellowstone National Park

Morning Glory Pool is the most beautiful springl in Yellowstone National Park. But, maybe some more years later, we can't see such a beautiful pool any more. Phillip Colla introduces on his website:

Morning Glory Pool, one of the most popular and beautiful pools in Yellowstone National Park, earned its name in the 1880's due to its deep blue coloration and likeness to the Morning Glory flower. Over the years visitors tossed coins, trash, sticks and rocks into the pool, causing its vent to clog and the flow of water to decrease. This prompted the temperature in the pool to lessen, causing the pool's deep blue color to fade and allowing the red and yellow algae that formerly only survived at the fringe of the pool to grow toward the center.

Morning Glory Pool-- in Yellowstone National Park

The World's Most Livable Cities

From Business Week

Quality of life issues are often in the eye of the beholder. Yet in this age of global economic integration, executives and their families do place such factors as schooling, quality housing, health care, recreational amenities, and environment at the top of their list. Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which provides advice to multinational companies on international assignments, has come up with a global ranking of the world's most livable cities based on 39 criteria ranging from personal safety to public transportation.

Switzerland's main commercial and cultural center, Zurich topped the 215 cities considered globally, followed by Geneva, Vancouver, and Vienna, which tied for third. In the Asia-Pacific region, Auckland, New Zealand, (5) led the pack, while Sydney (9) cracked the top 10. Meanwhile, in North America, Canadian cities such as Toronto and Ottawa fared better than U.S. ones, of which Honolulu (27) performed best. The hardest of the hardship postings: Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of the Congo (214), and Baghdad (215).

Penglai Blanketed in Thick Fog

This spectacular scenery in Penglai, a coastal city in east China's Shandong Province, happened on April 8, 2007. Thick advection fog floated slowly in, cloaking scenic spots and buildings for approximately half an hour. The town looked like a fairyland. Link

Gamirasu Cave Hotel

A really beautiful hotel!

Gamirasu is the name of an exquisitely restored eighteen-room troglodyte cave house opened in 1999, in Ayvali Village near Urgup in the heart of Cappadocia, Turkey.

The hotel is located in a restored thousand-year-old Byzantine monastic retreat which offers modern conveniences without distracting from the spiritual feeling of the area which has been known to be inhabited for more than five thousand years.

The hotel has a total of eighteen rooms: nine standard double, four deluxe rooms, two Cave Suites, two Family Suites and one Deluxe Suite.

World's Second Largest Man-dug Hole

The hole was dug by copper miners on the Sumbawa Island of the south-central Indonesia' West Nusa Tenggara province.

It takes four hours to drive the spiral road to the bottom of the pit, where trucks are loaded up before beginning the steep crawl back to the surface.

The mine, which opened in 2000 and is surrounded by lush jungle, is owned by U.S. giant Newmont and is expected to produce copper for the next 25 years.

Link to Indenosia News Blog & Xinhua

She Is Venice's First Female Gondolier

Alexandra Hai,Venice's First Female Gondolier

After she won a regional court appeal, 35-year-old German woman Alexandra Hai broke one of Italy's oldest male-only clubs rule to become Venice's first female gondolier. Since the beginnings of gondoliering in 1094, there has never been a female or any foreigner to steer a gondola. She once failed gondola-steering exam three times and fined £92 for illegal gondoliering. Link to Xinhua & IOL

Luxury Tombs in Lanzhou

Almost can't believe that these luxury tombs constructed in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu (one of the most impoverished provinces in China) could be priced as high as one million yuan. Link

San Francisco International Airport at Night

What a beautiful airport! via Uniquedaily