In the latest extravagant spending spree in the Middle East, and again in Dubai, yet another wonder has been built in the Gulf. In very close proximity to the 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel, which is the most expensive hotel in the Middle East, comes Atlantis. An £800million resort that will cost you £13,000 for a night’s stay. To put that into perspective in terms of our local currency, that is 66,362,968,405 (66 BILLION 362 million 968 thousand 405 pesos) they used to build the resort and for you to stay in their best suite for ONE night, you only need to pay a modest 1,078,389 (1 MILLION 78 thousand 389 pesos). My God.

This 113-acre resort was built on an artificial island off the Persian Gulf and officially opened for business on September 24, 2008. They say that one of the main drives they had in building such an epic structure was the move towards how tourism can help sustain their economy once regional oil profits stop flowing. So Dubai is pegging its hopes on people who are filthy rich to invest and spend their money there… wisely. He he.

But seriously, this place is a wonder in itself. The mega-resort boasts of 1,539 rooms with 17 restaurants to choose from. They also have what are called the Lost Chambers suites, where the bedrooms all have picture windows that look out through the resort’s 11m-liter lagoon filled with 65,000 specimens of marine life!

On the outside the guests have free access to Atlantis’s 42-acre Aquaventure waterpark. It is a one and a half mile river you can float in with fantastic rides topped off by the Leap of Faith, an almost straight down 90 feet vertical slide that zips you through a shark-filled lagoon in break-neck speed. The first time I saw this kind of thing was when I was back in my old company and they showed us this vertical slide in the first Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. It was going to be a perk you would get if you hit way past your sales quota. I was in awe at the first sight of it and wanted to go there SO BAD. Now I want to go here! Can I afford £230 a night though to stay in the standard suite? Yes I can, but I won’t do it!

It’s funny how I started writing this blog with three words in my head… Paradise on Earth. It would have been if it weren’t so darn expensive. It also got me thinking on whether I would actually go and pay £13,000 a night to stay in that unbelievable Lost Chambers suite that they have if I was filthy rich, but my answer would still be a NO. I’d rather spend that much on something else than throw it all away on one night staying in a room, no matter how amazing that room is. But of course, that’s just me. I would still keep hoping though, that some time in the not so distant future, my company would send me here! Ha ha. Until then, I will dream along with the pictures of this place called Atlantis for now, just like all of you will too

Ever since the time I first saw what a galaxy looked like back when I was a kid, I was enchanted by pictures of them, as well as all the intricacies that went along with it.  All the exploding stars, theories on how everything was created and how it all began, and how really vast the universe was.  I then came upon a book written by Stephen Hawking, one of the best, if not the best mind of the century, called “A Brief History of Time.”  The book I’ll probably write about in a few days, but the concept of which revolves around how images like the one below come about.

The image below, is called the Snowflake Cluster and the Cone Nebula.  One of the many jaw-dropping images that NASA has captured through sophisticated telescopes that bring us these awe-inspiring pictures of the universe we know very little about.  The picture speaks of patterns that result in the tumultous unrest that accompanies the formation of an open cluster of stars in the Snowflake Cluster.

Bright stars from the Snowflake Cluster dot the field. The stars soon heat up and destroy the gas and dust mountains in which they formed. One such dust mountain is the famous Cone Nebula, visible in the above image, pointing toward a bright star near the center of the field. The entire region is located about 2,500 light years away towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

Now for those who aren’t really into astronomy, you may wonder what 2,500 light years means.  Let’s take the above example and say that a star is 2,500 light years away. The light from that star has traveled at the speed of light to reach us. Therefore, it has taken the star’s light 2,500 years to get here, and the light we are seeing was created 2,500 years ago.  So we are actually looking at the past and seeing how that star looked 2,500 years ago! In a similar way, to put it in a better perspective, our sun is 8 or so light minutes away.  If the sun were to suddenly explode right now, we wouldn’t know about it for eight minutes because that is how long it would take for the light of the explosion to get to the Earth.

So there :)  More of that when I talk about Stephen Hawking’s book!  For now, if you want to download a higher resolution of the image above, please click HERE.

I was surfing through some sites earlier and came upon this spectacular engineering marvel. Talk about the new wonders of the modern world. It is the world’s largest swimming pool, acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records early this year.

It lies in Chile’s Southern coast and measures 1,013 meters in length and covers an area of eight hectares! It is more than 1,000 yards long covering 20 acres and has a deep end of 115 feet and holds 66 million gallons of water! It took 5 years to build and cost nearly £1billion and the annual maintenance bill will be £2million!

This man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds at the San Alfonso del Mar Resort at Algarrobo, on Chile’s southern coast. The resort’s large pool utilizes a technology developed by the Chilean company Crystal Lagoons, which uses water pumped from the Pacific Ocean, that is then filtered and treated for supply to the pool. The sun warms the water to 26c, nine degrees warmer than the adjoining sea.

Talk about paradise on earth! Look at that view above and imagine that you have just woken up in the morning and opened your curtains and this is what you see! Wow. Its turquoise waters are crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.

It dwarfs the world’s second largest pool in Morocco, the Orthlieb, nicknamed the Big Splash, which is a mere 150 yards long and 100 yards wide. Just to give you a comparison to what normal is, an Olympic size pool measures around 50 yards by 25 yards. The Orthlieb is 3 times that length, but the pool at San Alfonso is 20 times the length of an Olympic size pool!

I’m curious enough to want to go to Chile just to stay in this resort and soak in this pool. Hmm, starting to sound like a good honeymoon spot hehe! The water is so unbelievably clear you just want to jump in it. I wonder if there are fishes though, and how many people have actually gone here. I haven’t seen any reviews from tourists who have been here though so I’ll be looking around for that. Oh, and for such a great wonder of a pool, they could have at least named it something right??