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I am usually not a big fan of modern architecture, but somehow really enjoyed this site. Like Frederik I left the Metro station on the wrong side of the street and my first challenge was to cross the street. The house itself is rather ugly from the outside (as you can see on the pictures of the other reviews). The entry ticket and especially the photo permit are ridiculously expensive. On the other hand it would have been completely unsatisfying to leave the house with only pictures from the (boring) façade and due to the small rooms and group size it would be hard to take pictures without a permit. The tour was interesting. The guide spoke fast and with strong accent, but as I am used to Spanglish, unlike most of the group, I had no problems to follow. What I enjoyed about the visit were the many small details, between genius and freaky, that were hidden between these walls. Not a place that I intend to revisit, but definitely not the worst place I visited.

I visited this WHS in December 2017 as a day trip from Bangkok. Being quite easy to reach by taxi, it is always pretty much crowded unlike Sukhothai. in the 18th century it also suffered extensive damage by the Burmese, so what is left today is pretty much ruins on quite a large scale.

The restoration works seem much worse than Sukhothai with total reconstructions, additions, restorations with reinforced concrete and iron railings on some of the few chedis and stupas which tourists can climb. However, what I disliked most was that there is no actual buffer zone or restricted area for vehicles and few parking spaces so it was not unusual to see SUVs driving literally over the lower city walls.

The patchwork of roads were surely built right on some of the most ruined temples so it is actually quite difficult to appreciate Ayutthaya as an ensemble and it is much more difficult to visit both on foot as well as by the shuttle-shaped tuktuks. There are all sorts of dos and don'ts but nothing against the use of loudspeakers by tour guides which are really a nuisance for all visitors (including the tour groups themselves!).

That said, I managed to enjoy the site by using a set of earphones and an audioguide and headed towards the perimeter of most stupas and prangs instead of the main pathway. At Wat Mahathat, I bought a combined ticket for 6 wats, namely: Wat Mathathat which houses the Buddha head in …

I visited this WHS in December 2017. During my long weekend stopover in Bangkok (before heading to Oceania), I managed to fit in a day trip visit to Sukhothai thanks to Philip's precious info regarding the daily flights with Bangkok Airways.

By around 08:45 I was already exploring the well kept Sukhothai Historical Park. Bangkok Airways is no longer in charge of the shuttle service but the only car rental agency in the 'airport' provides this service. The departures are timed to coincide with the flights, even though I was quite uneasy to allow only 45 minutes before my 17:45 return flight to Bangkok. Everything worked out fine though and I managed to see quite a lot of the park and allow for some revisits too.

The term park here is very appropriate as there are lawns, palm trees, ponds, hedges and flowers separating each complex of wats. In a way it reminded me of my visit to Khajuraho, India. The atmosphere is very serene and bicycles are the main means of transport around, unlike Ayutthaya. I opted to visit on foot but there were longish walks/hikes I could have avoided especially when visiting the western and northern sections. The restoration works of some of the wats is a bit shoddy and it reinforces my conviction that there is no valid reason not to inscribe Myanmar's Bagan in the forseeable future.

That said, in my opinion Sukhothai is Thailand's best cultural WHS and still well worth visiting. The central section …

Fanjingshan (literally Clean Brahma) is a gem of mountaineering not yet known to many global tourists. The nearby town of Tongren has a new airport which has a shuttle directly to the ticketing hall on the mountain. The connections to this airport are quite plentiful (Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shanghai and Guizhou)From the same airport people go to visit Fenghuang (Phoenix) Ancient Town for another national relic, with at least one shuttle going there in the afternoon. You can also easily find accommodation around the Fanjing town or at the communities (towns?) around the ticketing hall area. There is a cheap shuttle bus from the town to the mountain area during the day time else you have to rely on a black taxi.

From the entrance there is a cable car station that will take you to almost the top of the mountain. It is actually worth doing because on the way you do not get to see much on the hiking path. I saw it below the cable car and was happy with my decision unlike on other mountains I have visited. Here the path looked boring. The best part of the scenery starts after the top cable car station drops you off.

A few miles up the mountain and you will be awed by rock formations. These plates make up stacks worth of multiple photoshoots. The main path goes along several of these and up to a temple which you can skip if not your cup of tea, then …

The alligator lake is in the town of Xuancheng, or rather just at the outskirts of. There are fast trains from Hangzhou/Shanghai and possibly even Nanjing for easy access and this place easily combined with all the WHS around the east coast area if you have that extra day available. There is a bus from the city center around every half and hour directly to the front door of the park - and as terminal station it is hard to miss.

Once you get there it should be rather empty. The lake and breeding pools are not very big. Be careful taking kids along because the pools do not have barriers. Most of these guys will just relax in the water but you can catch some moving around and even eating.

Overall there is not much to see. You can pose with the alligator for a picture - not sure how safe it is but the pictures make it appear that they do not bite. Crazy? There are some information panels. Walk around the entire thing in half an hour, maybe 1 hour max, and take the bus back to town.

I am guessing the universal value is for preserving this species of alligator - but honestly I would rather not see "zoos" popping up as WHS here and there, as much as the effort is appreciated.

I visited all 11 castles that are on the list during my week road trip along the coast of Ghana. Driving yourself is straightforward (international drivers license is needed and enforced). Google Maps is your friend by finding the castles. A short summary and some tips if you plan to visit them all too:

If yuo have just a day these 3 are a must see. Cape Coast is "best" as the guided tour has lots of information and there are some small expositions. Elmina can be done without guide I think then but ELmina is nice with local fish market. Do go there with guide so they can show you more and do make the walk up to St Jago too! Worth it.

- Cape Coast Castle, Cape Coast

- Elmina Castle, Elmina

- Fort St. Jago (Fort Conraadsburg), Elmina

From Takoradi you can visit 5 forts on a day without problem. There are 3 to the west of which Axim and Dixcove are very nice restorted. Butri is located on Butri beach which is a beautiful beach to also relax! Put Google Maps to "The Hideout" on the beach. From there you can walk up to the castle.

- Fort Saint Antony, Axim --> i already visited after Nzulenzu stilt vilalge and the 2nd day i did 4 forts and Butre beach.

- Fort Metal Cross, Dixcove

- Fort Batenstein, Butri

2 forts are to the east of Takoradi:

- Fort San Sebastian, Shama

- English Fort (Fort …

[Visited Ningming Cluster on Jan. 13, 2018]

English information on Hanoi-Nanning train route is limited. But coming from Hanoi, the MR1 train actually stops at Ningming Country. Hotels in Hanoi can book train tickets – mine costs $35 USD to Pingxiang Border and I bought Pingxiang-Ningming at the station for 11 RMB. The train leaves Hanoi at 9:15 PM and arrives Ningming at 7:00 AM.

Ningming really takes pride in their WHS. You can see the rock art figures printed all over town. They even put the UNESCO WHS logo in front of the train station - perhaps to remind travelers they are indeed not lost upon arrival on this sleepy town. And the ease of visiting this WHS stops here. There are no English signs pointing to Tuolongqiao Dock where boats supposedly to the scenic area are located. Locals are not of help either unless you speak Mandarin or local language. According to AMap (a Chinese map app) there are buses going to Huashan Murals. But the bus stops are nowhere to be found and there are no signs of it even on the GPS coordinate given by the map.

Already tired and frustrated after 30 minutes of looking for the dock and bus stop, I gave in to the offer of the man who kept talking to me. He had a van parked at the station and he offered to bring me to the site and back for 100 RMB. It was still 8:00 AM so I figured …

Visited in November 2017. Whatever they tell you at the branch of Ministry of Tourism in Alexandria (at the SW corner of Saad Zaghloul Sqaure), there is no direct public transport from the city to the archaeological site and the new monastery. The best way is to hire a taxi and have a good map because taxi drivers are not even aware that there’s a site like this not very far from the city – agree on the price before heading off, we paid 40 USD for six-hour trip. If you really want to get there by public transportation, take a bus to Borg el Arab International Airport and ask the driver to leave you at the junction to New Borg el Arab city. Then you have to wave for the passing cars, although hitchhiking is not recommended. If you’re lucky, you can get to New Borg el Arab, and you’ll still have almost 6 km to walk. It is really time consuming…

Or you can ask at Saint Mark’s Coptic Cathedral – sometime they organize some kind of pilgrimage tours, mostly for Coptic people, and if they have a free place in the bus/minibus, they can take there. Although this kind of tour focuses on the new monastery. I learnt it from the cathedral.

Officially to get to the site you need permission from the new monastery (it is worth to spend there an hour or so and be guided by one of the monks – he will glorify …

Robben Island was the penitentiary island where the South African apartheid regime kept its political prisoners between 1962 and 1991. Almost all of the past and current elite of the ANC was imprisoned here, but the cells also held members from the more radical Pan Africanist Congress and the Namibian independence movement SWAPO. The island, which lies in viewing distance from Cape Town, has been in use since the times of the Dutch East India Company (mid-17th century).

One nowadays can only visit Robben Island on a tightly organized tour. Beforehand I had heard and read a lot about those tours: not a minute of free time to walk around for yourself, unintelligible guides who tell muddled stories, even ferries that get into trouble on the short crossing (60 people had to be rescued from the sea in September 2017). But my experience was entirely different: maybe they have taken improvement measures or I caught them on a good day, but the staff on the ferry was very polite, engaging and safety conscious. The personal story of the former prisoner that acted as our guide I found very moving and added value beyond just looking at a bunch of stone prison buildings.

The boat tours depart four times a day from the most touristic part of the port of Cape Town. There, between the expensive restaurants and shops of the V&A Waterfront, lies the ‘Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island’. It is an exhibition space (unfortunately closed when …

The property is currently the Philippines' only mixed cultural and natural site in the tentative list, and one that has most potential for inscription.

On surface level, most tourists would be quick to compare Coron with El Nido (another property in the tentative list) in terms of natural landscape, beauty and biodiverity. Hence, there is a need to promote how the culture of the Calamian Tagbanuas - the indigenous group living in Coron - is intimately intertwined with landscape and seascape management of the island, its surrounding reefs and islets. See uploaded photo describing the vast expanse of the property.

Management-wise, the whole Coron has been declared an ancestral domain for the Tagbanuas, making them able to assert their traditional rights and continue their traditional fishing practices. Many of the areas in Coron are classified as strict protection zones, off-limits to tourists, as they are considered sacred fish sanctuaries for the Tagbanua.

The Cape Floral Region is one of the few WHS solely focused on flora. ‘Fynbos’ is the key subject here: a diverse shrubland and heathland vegetation with many endemic species. It comes for example in the variation of ‘rooibos’, which is used for the eponymous tea. Although plants aren’t my specific area of interest, I managed to visit Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens and the Table Mountain National Park during my 4 days in Cape Town. These cover only 1 of the 13 inscribed clusters – the other 12 are located in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces.

My explorations started at Kirstenbosch gardens. I was staying at a Bed&Breakfast in Klaassens Road, next to Gate no. 3 of the gardens. This whole area is incredibly lush – and wealthy. Properties sell easily for over 1 million EUR. Entering Kirstenbosch via this upper gate leads you directly to the fynbos and the proteas, both almost only to be found in the Cape Floral Region. With Table Mountain directly in the background, it’s all very pleasing to the eye. The lower part, near main entrance no. 1, is a bit more like a landscape garden and hosted lots of picnickers when I was visiting on a Saturday afternoon.

We’ve discussed before on this website whether it is more important to preserve an iconic and large fauna species such as the giant panda or the mountain gorilla, than for example a mouse or even an ant. This also applies to the flora: …

My wife and I visited Ivrea in January 2018 on a sunny winter's afternoon. It's an easy one hour train ride from Turin's two main stations, and trains leave about every hour. The (proposed) World Heritage area is adjacent to the train station, and everywhere is fully walkable.

There's a nice trail of information signs, talking about the Olivetti company and its eponymous founders - the main employers for the town in the 20th century. The large factory building is very impressive and reminded us quite a bit of the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam.

It seems the town has rebounded a bit since Els's visit, as the main factory building is now occupied by offices for Vodafone Italy, and a few workers were buzzing around (though we visited on a Saturday). The area we walked around did have a lot of closed shops, but it didn't seem particularly grimmer or worse-off than many other areas in Italy.

We were a little disappointed in the crescent-shaped building, as there's not really anything to see since it's built into the side of a hill (and there's large NO TRESPASSING signs). Though I guess all the windows look into the centre of the crescent, and I can imagine the residents don't want visitors peering in!

Overall we enjoyed our visit. We stopped to read all of the information signs, and our visit took about 2 hours all up.

Twyfelfontein or /Ui-//aes is a rock engraving site in northern Namibia, supposedly the best of its kind in variation and number in Africa below the Equator. My non-Dutch trip mates had already great difficulty in pronouncing ‘Twyfelfontein’ (which is a perfectly normal word in Afrikaans and Dutch, meaning ‘doubtful fountain’). But try its alternative name ‘/Ui-//aes’: the slashes represent two different clicks in the local Damara language.

The site lies deep into a barren valley, surrounded by pretty rock formations made out of sandstone. All of a sudden you’ll end up at a car park and a visitor center – Twyfelfontein caters to 40,000 visitors a year so things are organized quite well. It conveniently lies on the route between Etosha and Swakopmund, and as there is not a lot else to see in the area many tour operators schedule stops here.

We are assigned a guide and after a short walk on the main road in the burning heat, we start our tour at the remains of the house of David Levin. He was a white farmer who settled in the area in 1946 to start a sheep farm. He was the one who named the site ‘Twyfelfontein’, and up against the rocks this unreliable but still delivering water source can be seen under a shelter. He showed the rock art to an archaeologist, and in 1952 Twyfelfontein already was protected as a monument.

The area is covered by two guided circular walks, the Lion Man …

Few of you will be familiar with the Benguela Current. At least I wasn’t before I started researching my Namibia trip. At the country’s Tentative List I found an entry called The Benguela Current Marine Ecosystem Sites. It could surely do with a more catchy name and/or an epic subtitle if it ever were to be nominated, but in reality it is quite an interesting site. The Benguela Current is an ocean current that carries icy cold, wind-driven upwelled waters from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. These waters are very rich in nutrients, and they support a whole food chain from phytoplankton via fish to sea birds and marine mammals.

The proposed nomination includes a marine ecosystem along the southern Namibian coast including Mercury Island, Ichaboe Island, Halifax Island and Possession Island. In the coastal town of Lüderitz there are catamaran trips on offer to one of these islands: Halifax. They leave daily (weather permitting) at 8 a.m., take 2 hours and cost 450 Namibian dollar (about 30 EUR). Halifax Island is home to the largest colony of jackass-penguins in Namibia.

Lüderitz (“home of the sand storm”) is known for its windy weather, and I wondered how that would affect the boat trip. Just to be sure I had taken an anti-seasickness pill an hour before we left. Fortunately the sea wasn’t rough at all – the winds mostly start from the late morning - and we did not travel so fast. It was lovely to sit outside at …

The Etosha Pan in northern Namibia is one of the world’s largest salt pans. It is a former lake bed of 4,730 square km. Nowadays the area is mostly a dry, saline and uninhabited desert. This combined with the high temperatures results in the fact that no flora or fauna to speak of can survive there. Only ostriches sometimes seek shelter here from predators. Vehicular traffic on the pan itself is forbidden.

On the fringes of the pan there are natural (and artificial) waterholes, grasses and shrublands that support high numbers of mammal and bird species. They are protected within the Etosha National Park, which with a founding date of 1907 is one of the oldest conservation sites in Africa.

The park has the largest single population of black rhino in the world. Numbers are nowadays undisclosed to prevent unwanted attention of poachers (drones are forbidden in the park for the same reason). But earlier numbers indicate about 600-750 black rhino living in Etosha. We saw about 10 of them. White rhino has been reintroduced here as well, but they are more rare. We were lucky to encounter one formidable individual at the edge of the pan, and follow him around for some 20 minutes. He took a long mud bath, so he was one big clay-ey, shiny mess. Afterwards he crossed the road close to our truck, and disappeared into the bushes – not before giving his nose/horn a long rub against a tree.

We spent 3 days in …

In December 2017, I made a day trip from Karachi to Makli necropolis, about 60 miles to its east, which might be the world’s largest funerary site -- the ten square kilometer burial ground contains approximately one million tombs, mostly built between 1570 and 1640. Almost as interesting as the abundant tombs, were two elderly snake charmers who set up shop along the dirt path leading from the entrance to the tombs. The snake charmers seek visitors to fund a musical performance on the pungi, the wind instrument whose rhythmic sound and movements appear to hypnotize a de-fanged Indian cobra. Their second act is to entice visitors to purchase a serpent to battle an Indian mongoose to the death, although the mammal’s acrobatic agility, coarse coat and resistance to snake venom ensure its victory. For less than a dollar, I bought a common water snake to challenge the mongoose, but in order to maintain their inventory, my bout was interrupted by a snake wrangler who separated the two combatants. While on the way to and from Makli, I visited three locations on Pakistan's list of tentative World Heritage Sites: Chaukhandi Tombs, an early Islamic cemetery; Shah Jahan Mosque, a 17th-century mosque known for its geometric tile and brickwork; and the Port of Banbhore, an ancient city dating to the 1st century BCE. I made my arrangements with Travel & Culture Services (https://travel-culture.com).

In December 2017, I set out on the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore to Islamabad, where, after around four hours, we reached the much-improved turn off to the sixteenth-century Rohtas Fort. From what I was told, the fort receives very few western tourists; in fact, I was the only overseas tourist during my visit, so I was assigned a personal security detail. I’m not sure a guard was necessary, though, since all of the locals who approached me were only after a group photo with the foreign intruder.

I left Islamabad early on a December 2017 morning on the Grand Trunk Road to Taxila, an hour to the northwest, to visit the WHS's ruined second-century Buddhist monastery. From Taxila, it was a two-hour drive to Takht-i-Bahi, another Buddhist monastery, which was abandoned in the seventh century. From Takht-i-Bahi, it was less than an hour to Peshawar, where I arrived just in time for Friday prayers at the 17th-century Mahabat Khan Mosque. The mosque is located down one of the many narrow passageways in Qissa Khawani Bazaar, where the friendly vendors were surprised to see an overseas customer. In fact, I didn't seen any other foreign visitors in the heavily fortified and militarized city, maybe because it's less than 40 miles from the border with Afghanistan.

Visiting Camino Reale de Tierra Adentro – a route which probably has a history of very harsh conditions hundreds of years ago, makes you somewhat respectful. Nevertheless as an overseas traveler the knowledge of these facts is superficial, but still we would like to look into this site - at least some of the authentic places that the site comprises of - to see what it’s like today.

On our three week visit to Mexico july 2017 we had singled out a number of sites on the “Camino” for potential visits, in addition to WHS cities. It’s easy to tick of this site with no extra effort, but we would like to see if we could find other parts of the old road.

Three days into our visit, on our route from Tula de Allende towards Morelia, we headed to Cañada de Madero, Hacienda la Cañada and the vicinity. The gps was taking us from major roads and onto the smaller roads when we finally arrived at a location that in fact was a piece of the original road. This is now a calm part of central Mexico. We drove several kilometers of cobblestone street passing a romantic stone bridge – the Colima bridge and passed a few riding “vaqueros”. Houses and buildings along the road are hardly as old as the road, but very nice looking. Together with the lush vegetation it makes up a “picture” that really looked nice. In “the end” of the stub there was the …

UNique - 4/10

Located in the south-west region of Moscow, not too far from the banks of the Moskva river, Novodevichy convent does not give an impression of a religious complex at first glance. Tall, thick convent walls, crowned with twelve towers appear impenetrable and would not be out of place in a fortress protecting the approaches to the capital. The walls encase several monumental structures: the Smolensky Cathedral, several churches and the six-tiered belltower, once the tallest building outside of Kremlin.

ESsential - 4/10

It is perhaps not a coincidence that the construction of the convent commenced in 1524, around the time that the Great Prince Vasili III was doing his best impression of King Henry VIII by trying to end his marriage with the childless wife of 20 years. It was suspected that the newly-built convent was going to become the new home of the Great Princess. While she had never made it to the convent, it did become the designated place for the confinement of the female members of the royal family. Famously, Novodechy Convent was the place where Peter the Great incarcerated his older sister Sophia during the struggle for the throne.

COst-effective - 6/10

Before my visit, I had not realized that the main attractions of the convent - the cathedral and belltower - were covered in scaffolding. They have been undergoing restoration until a fire accident in 2015. This has set the progress further back, and the date for the completion is unknown. Still, …