Worlds strangest hotels

Tianzi Hotel

 

Where: Hebei Province, China

What It Is: Built in 2000, this 10-story building depicts Fu, Lu and Shou—Chinese gods symbolizing good fortune, prosperity and longevity.

Why It’s Unique: The Tianzi Hotel is the largest image hotel in the world. Shou, on the left, is holding a peach that contains a suite. Enter the hotel through his right foot.

 

Sandcastle Hotel

Where: Weymouth, UK

What It Is: This seaside resort was made entirely from sand—about 1100 tons of it. A team of four sculptors worked seven 14-hour days to finish the hotel in late July of 2008. It held up until the next big rainstorm.

Why It’s Unique: For about 15 dollars per night, guests fell asleep under the stars and woke up to the tide lapping at the door. Not appropriate for people who disliked getting sand in their bathing suits, or who required indoor toilets.

 

Icehotel

Where: Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

What It Is: Icehotel is the world’s largest hotel made from snow and ice. Guests can sleep in a bed made of snow and ice (like most of the other furniture), at temperatures around minus 5 degrees C.

Why It’s Unique: The entire building melts and gets reconstructed every year. Each November, a team of architects rebuilds the rooms, bar and chapel from several hundred tons of ice. If your ideal vacation consists of walking around in snow pants and fur, ICEHOTEL is worth a repeat visit—it is, after all, a different hotel every year.

 

Karostas Cietums

Where: Liepāja, Latvia

What It Is: A former military prison built in 1905, Karostas housed revolutionaries, enemies of the people from Stalin’s time, and more recently, KGB.

Why It’s Unique: “A good hotel has got to be safe, clean, and have good staff,” says Bush. Karostas breaks that fundamental rule of hospitality, inviting its guests to “live the part of a prisoner on a dismal night”—by sleeping on grungy prison bunks, eating prison food and taking abuse from prison guards.

 

Ryugyong Hotel

Where: Pyongyang, North Korea

What It Is: Also known as the “Hotel of Doom,” the Ryugyong once aspired to be the tallest hotel in the world. The 105-story, 3000-room project was abandoned in 1992 for economic reasons, but construction resumed in 2008.

Why It’s Unique: Instead of becoming the tallest hotel in the world, Ryugyong is deemed by many to be the most poorly designed building in the world. The most absurd thing about this hotel is contemplating who on earth would want to stay there, when, and if it is ever finished.

 

Magic Mountain

Where: Chile

What It Is:The Magic Mountain. With a waterfall cascading from the pinnacle of the roof, the lodge is a special place.Originally a place for friends to stay while they enjoyed the hunting and fishing resources of the Hulio Hulio reserve, the name is from a favourite book of the owners.

Why it’s unique: The Magic Mountain Hotel in Chile’s Hulio Hulio Reserve looks like something straight out of a fairytale: a gnarled, wooden cone with a waterfall cascading from its pinnacle, approached via a wooden drawbridge and with porthole windows peeping out at irregular spaces. As if that weren’t magic enough, it’s surrounded by a pristine biological reserve.