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Category / Off-Beat & Little Known

Stop Everything and take a Tour of this Museum of Miniatures

The exquisite detail under the roof of Taiwan’s miniature museum is enough to make you teary-eyed. It was the first museum to collect miniatures in Asia, founded in 1997 and now ranked the 2nd biggest collection in the world– not bad for an off the beaten path museum hiding in the basement of an office building.…

Don’t Trust that Giant Abandoned Listening Device in Chernobyl

It looks like something out of a science fiction movie– close– it’s inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A former top secret military object used by the Soviet Union, the mysterious giant antenna system called the Duga-3, was the origin of an extremely powerful but anonymous signal between 1976 to 1989. The sharp, tapping signal came without warning,…

The Dark Secrets of a Tiny Tropical Island Occupied by Descendants of Pirates

There’s a paradise island in the Pacific Ocean that no one wants to live on. Food and water is plentiful, the land is fertile, it’s surrounded by the most pristine ocean habitat in the world, and yet a potential extinction of the island’s current population (primarily direct descendants of pirates who shipwrecked themselves here 200 years ago)…

17 Messy Nessy Adventures to Bucket List for 2017

This will be my final post of 2016 (I’m actually drawing myself a bath as I hit “publish” on this); a brief compendium of my favourite discoveries throughout the year. I know it’s been a tough one for many of us, but I hope this list brings you a little inspiration and maybe something to look forward to…

From Morocco to Cuba, this Guy is Documenting the World’s Endangered Cinemas

When I go to the cinema lately, I’ll admit, it does feel nostalgic, almost as if I’m doing something like they did “in the old days”– and my local cinema isn’t even a charming independent one. Should we blame it on Netflix? From our smartphones to internet-abled TV, today we have more entertainment options at our fingertips…

Fred and Myrtle’s Shell House

Fred and Myrtle Flutey are arguably New Zealand’s most beloved couple, best-known collectors, and are certified local celebrities. On top of it all, they were also warm and generous members of their community who loved sharing their passions with all who were interested. Over 30 odd years, more than one million people have passed through…

Mystery Internet Cave House: Solved

I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to identify an uncredited viral photo from the internet. I must have come across this picture of an underground cave cottage/ hobbit house/ Flinstones shack – whatever the internet was calling it – more than a dozen times on my internet travels. It could have been located anywhere from…

An Insider’s Guide to the Unknown Kingdoms

One of my first ever published articles back when I was writing for a local magazine in London, was about a street in Notting Hill called Freston Road, which declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1977. Frestonia, essentially a community of squatters who had come together to secede from the UK after the local council threatened to evict them, had their…

Alaska’s Eskimo Ghost Village on Stilts

For thousands of years, a community of Inupiat Eskimos lived, survived and thrived in one of the harshest environments in the world. This is King Island and these are the improbable cliff-hanging houses of Ukivok that a displaced community still calls home more than 50 years after its abandonment. (c) NOAA Photo Library In 1959, the…

Shopping at Cuba’s Ration Supermarkets

You might be ready to light up that Cuban cigar thanks to Obama or fill up your Instagram account with voguish snapshots from a Havana vacation, but even with the historic opening of diplomatic relations with the US, how will life in Cuba really change for Cubans? To get a real idea of the transition that lies ahead for Cubans emerging from their…

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