Monday, February 25, 2008

5 biggest hotels

MGM-Grand-Hotel-Casino
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The largest hotel is at the womb of Asia. It can be found in Thailand, the Ambassador City Jomtien. It is a paradise away from home. Just try to imagine a 40-acre beach singing you waves of lullaby. The mountains also embrace you with its green. All your anxieties are sure to vanish into thin air. You just need a ten-minute boat ride from Pattaya. If you crave for the city-way of relaxation and leisure, you need not worry about it.

MGM Grand Hotel
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This is also a complex which has tennis and sports center, business service for those who need one and convention center for those who gather for assemblies, reunions, forums, and so forth. Not to forget, this hotel has the largest swimming pool in Asia. The biggest trivia is that it has a total of 5,100 guest rooms and suites.

If you are around Las Vegas for some casino or whatever, it will make your trip complete if you try sleeping at MGM Grand Hotel Casino. It holds the title of the second biggest hotel in the world and the biggest in the North American region. You will say nothing but praises when you will see right in your very eyes its four 30-storey towers. What more if you treat your sight with its massive video screens? A huge gold lion is outside while live lions dwell inside the place. Feed your appetite with nine restaurants and two food courts. Go and get one of its 5,005 guest rooms.
Luxor Hotel Casino
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Are you still in Las Vegas? If the MGM is not the hotel for you, try the second biggest in Las Vegas and the third biggest in the whole world, Luxor Hotel Casino. The adjoining tower house and the pyramid-like structure have 4,408 guest rooms and suites in it.

Las Vegas also owns in its midst the fourth largest hotel in the world Mandalay Bay (including THEhotel). Ever since 1999, it has become popular due to being one of the hippest night spots.
Mandalay Bay front
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Numerous concerts are held here. When the sun is out, one can savor the enigma of its rich heritage for it has a unique coin museum.
Mandalay Bay
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A walk-through aquarium is also another delightful spot. Your stomach and your spirit alike will enjoy the trendy restaurants. It has all in all, 4,341 rooms.
Mandalay Bay shark reef
Image tags: uhotel, hortel, hyotel, hoel.


Do you love Italy? Well, if Europe is just too far, Las Vegas will be happy to let you in. Yes, the next biggest hotel is still at its area. A replica of St. Mark’s Square does the trick. You will experience Italy on its Renaissance period.
St. Mark`s Square hotel
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For music-adorers, this the right place. Strolling musicians are almost out 24/7. The Venetian has the largest standard rooms. Their size is at 700 square feet. Have a reservation from one of its 4,049 guest rooms and suites.
St. Mark`s Square hotel inside

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

10 best roller coasters

1. Steel Dragon is a roller coaster at Nagashima Spa Land Amusement Park in Mie Prefecture, Japan. Built by Morgan Manufacturing, this gigacoaster opened, appropriately, in 2000 - "The Year of the Dragon" in the Far East. It debuted only months after Millennium Force and surpassed the Cedar Point coaster as the world's tallest complete-circuit coaster. It also set a record for longest track length - 8133 feet, 2 inches (2479 m), which it currently holds.


2. Top Thrill Dragster is a steel, hydraulically-launched roller coaster located at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. It was the first "Strata Coaster," loosely defined as a complete circuit coaster that is 400 to 499 feet tall. It was built by Intamin AG and debuted to the public on May 4th, 2003. It is one of only 2 stratacoasters in existence, the other being Kingda Ka (2005) at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.


3. Thunder Dolphin is a steel roller coaster at the LaQua amusement park, which is part of Tokyo Dome City in Tokyo, Japan. At 262 feet (80 m) tall, Thunder Dolphin is currently the 5th tallest continuous circuit roller coaster in the world, behind only Kingda Ka, Top Thrill Dragster, Steel Dragon 2000 and Millennium Force.


4. Millennium Force is a steel roller coaster located at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and was built by Intamin AG. The fourteenth roller coaster built at the park, its royal blue track stands 310 feet (95 m) tall at its highest point. The coaster overlooks Lake Erie. When it was built in 2000, it was briefly the tallest complete circuit roller coaster in the world. It is also the first roller coaster to utilize a cable lift system, rather than the traditional chain lift. The chain lift was too heavy considering that Magnum's chain was 7 tons and two-thirds as tall. The cable lift uses a 800-horsepower motor that turns a set of sprocket gears that pulls the cable Cable lifts were previously only used on smaller coasters in Europe.


5. Dodonpa is a roller coaster at Fuji-Q Highland, Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan. It opened in 2001 and is a steel sit-down roller coaster with a compressed air launch. The ride was built by S&S Power of Utah, U.S.A.
It is 52 metres (170 feet) tall, and has a launch speed of 172 km/h (107 mph), which is reached in less than 2 seconds. When it was opened it was the fastest roller coaster in the world. As of 2006 it is the 3rd fastest but still has the highest acceleration at launch time.


6. Goliath is a steel roller coaster made by Giovanola of Switzerland. The hypercoaster is located in the Colossus County Fair area of Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California.During a brief period from its opening on February 11th to May 13th, 2000, Goliath's 255-foot opening drop was the longest and fastest (85 mph) on a closed-circuit roller coaster in the world. Millennium Force at Cedar Point eclipsed Goliath when it opened on May 13, 2000 with a drop of 300 feet and speeds of 93 mph.


7. Titan is a hyper coaster located at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, Texas.Titan's supports used 2.8 million pounds of steel to manufacture. When it was built, the Titan was the longest roller coaster ever to be built at a Six Flags Inc. park.The impressive layout includes a negative G camelback turn and a double helix turn that produces 6 full seconds of sickening G force of up to 4.5 G. The Titan has a massive drop, 255ft at the tallest section, and reaches speeds of 85mph during a 5,280ft long ride lasting for 3 and a half rather thrilling minutes.


8. Kingda Ka is a roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey, USA. At its opening on May 21, 2005, it became the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, claiming the title from Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point. The train is launched by a hydraulic launch mechanism to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main top hat tower reaching a height of 456 feet (139.5 m). Due to aviation safety concerns, the tower is equipped with three dual strobes: two mid-way up, and one on the top.


9. Nemesis is an inverted roller coaster located at Alton Towers, England. The ride was designed by Bolliger & Mabillard and opened in 1994 in the Forbidden Valley area of the park. It is themed around an entirely fictional legend created by The Tussauds Group (the park owners at the time) in which a monster, disturbed during routine maintenance work, creates a large crater in the Staffordshire landscape, and is necessarily restrained using the hundreds of tonnes of steel that make up the roller coaster tracks. The subterranean aspect of the theme was born of the necessity to build the ride in trenches to reduce its height above the ground, in compliance with local planning restrictions which require Alton Towers to build below the tree line.


10. Dragon Khan is a steel sit-down roller coaster located in the PortAventura theme park in Salou, Catalonia, Spain. Dragon Khan boasts eight inversions; this was a world record when the coaster was built. This record was broken in 2002 with the opening of Colossus in Thorpe Park, United Kingdom, which has ten inversions.

Friday, February 15, 2008

The most isolated islands on Earth

Easter Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. Easter Island is famous for its monumental statues, called moai pronounced (Mow-eye), created by the Rapanui people. It is a world heritage site with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park. The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui or "Big Rapa", was coined by labor immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1870s. The island received its most well known current name, Easter Island, from the Dutch sea captain Jacob Roggeveen who became the first European to visit Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722.


It's believed that Easter Island was colonized around A.D. 300 by Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands or Mangareva, as part of an eastward migratory trend that originated in Southeast Asia around 2000 B.C. Here developed one of the most remarkable cultures in all of Polynesia.

Easter Island (Spanish: Isla de Pascua, Polynesian: Rapa Nui) is one of the most isolated islands on Earth. Early settlers called the island "Te Pito O Te Henua" (Navel of The World). Officially part of Chile, it lies far off in the Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway to Tahiti.

isolated islands on Earth
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Due to its extreme geographic isolation, many people assume that only the highly intrepid traveler can get to Easter Island. In fact, the island is accessible by regular commercial air service, and tourism is the main industry of the island.

Still, it is rather "out of the way" for most people, with a minimum of more than 5.5 hours in the air from the nearest continent, and very limited routes to get there. The only regular flights are via LAN Chile airlines, several times each week on the route between Tahiti and Santiago de Chile. With no competition for fares on an objectively lengthy and obscure flight, it's a bit pricey.

Polynesian Easter Island
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Hiking and surfing are the big activities here. One of the most intriguing and practical hikes on Easter Island is along the rocky northwest coast from Anakena to Hanga Roa. Horseback riding here is fun and inexpensive. Anakena is too far to go by horse and return in a day anyway, so look upon riding more as a change of pace than as a way of getting around. The area north of Hanga Roa is ideal to explore by horse.

The biggest tourist attractions on Easter Island are, of course, the Moai. Please note that the Moai are archaeological features and should be treated with care as they are far more fragile than they seem. Often Moai will be placed upon ceremonial platforms and burials called Ahu. DO NOT WALK ON THE AHU as it is an extremely disrespectful gesture. Even if you see others walking on the Ahu do not do so yourself.

islands on Earth
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All of the sites, which can be visited for free (with one exception), are mostly found along the coastline of the island. The exception is the slightly inland quarry at "Rano Raraku". This 300 foot volcano remnant provided the stones for the great figures and is where a visitor can see various stages of the carving, as well as scattered partially-finished figures.

Easter Island features two white sand beaches. Anakena, on the north side of the island, is an excellent shorebreak bodysurfing location with a bit of north swell. Even the 1" waves barrel (it's also possible to surf in the harbor at Hanga Roa and many of the locals do so). The second beach is a gem so hidden, it doesn't even have a name. Found along the southern shore of the island near Ahu Vaihu (along the road from Hanga Roa to Ahu Akahanga), this beautiful and desolate beach is much larger than that at Anakena and is surrounded by breathtaking cliffs. Note of caution: the path leading down to the beach is somewhat treacherous and unstable and best reached by foot - driving off-road (contrary to the misguided and somewhat callous actions of some tourists) on most of the island is illegal anyway.

Spanish Easter Island
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Scuba diving and snorkeling is possible near the islets Motu Nui and Motu Iti (well known for "The bird man culture") who are located about 1 km. south of the island. There are at least one shop where it is possible to rent the equipment and from there get on a guided tour to the islets.


An often overlooked but particularily fascinating and "otherwordly" aspect of Easter Island is its extensive cave systems. While there are a couple of "official" caves that are quite interesting in their own right, there is also real adventure to be had in exploring all of the numerous unofficial caves on the island, most of which are found near Ana Kakenga. While the openings to most of these caves are small (some barely large enough to crawl through) and hidden (amid a rather surreal lava strewn field that has been likened to the surface of Mars), many of them open up into large and inhibitingly deep and extensive cave systems.