Favorite Man-made Structures

This is the third post in our series of the most memorable and interesting things we have seen and experienced in our four years of full-time global travel. Here are some of our top man-made sights and structures.

We both like architecture, and there are so many unique, interesting, and beautiful structures in the world that this is tough for us to narrow down to just a few top places. We enjoy noticing the differences in buildings and housing of ordinary people and how structures vary from country to country; the raised wooden houses of Northern Thailand, the woven bamboo structures of Myanmar, the wood fire heated floor systems of Korea, and the extended family living/inner courtyard structures of Bali to name a few. But for this post, we will focus on the large, memorable structures.

Angkor Complex – Siem Reap, Cambodia

Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world. Originally built in the 12^th century as a Hindu temple, the wat itself is an incredible sight. Besides the wat, we are fascinated with the whole complex in total, an engineering marvel of canals and reservoirs, support structures, and other smaller temples of varying sizes and ages. We spent three days exploring the area, but there is plenty more to see and it is on our list to return to for further examination.

Mrauk U – Rakhine State, Myanmar

The temples of Bagan are a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Myanmar and probably the best-known tourist spot in Myanmar. We visited Bagan and enjoyed it, however, we enjoyed Mrauk U a little bit more. Mrauk U (pronounced Meow Oo) is a collection of temples similar to Bagan. One thing that we liked about Mrauk U was that it is much less developed and far less touristy than Bagan. We felt like we got to see Mrauk U in its raw state before it is fully developed for tourism and flooded with package tour buses, aggressive touts and vendors, and wall to wall Western and Chinese food restaurants.

Gaudi Architecture – Barcelona, Spain

Antonio Gaudi was born in 1852 and received his architecture degree in 1878. His most famous work is probably the Sagrada Familia Basilica. Construction began on the basilica in 1882 and is now expected to be finished in 2026.

There are many Gaudi buildings in Barcelona, and we got to see quite a few of them. His style is distinctive and unique and the collection of his architecture makes our list of top man-made structures that we have seen in our travels.

Hellisheioi Geothermal Power Plant – Reykjavik, Iceland

Nerd Alert! I am not sure that this would make everyone’s top list. Although the building is kind of a cool design, the attraction for me is not so much for the beauty or significance of the building, but rather the whole plant concept, engineering, and execution. Just to tell a little bit on me, we planned on taking the whole day to do a circle tour of Iceland. The power plant was the first stop on the tour and I wanted to make the most of the day and see as much as we could so we made sure that we arrived just before the doors opened for the day. There was another couple waiting outside the doors anticipating the opening as well. Susan struck up a conversation with the woman and said, “Yes, my husband used to be an electrical engineer, so he insisted that we come here.”

“My husband was an electrical engineer also,” she replied. They then exchanged knowing, sympathetic looks.

It is pretty cool, though. One hundred percent of Iceland’s energy comes from renewable sources, mostly geothermal. The plant generates electricity and provides hot water to heat homes and under-road piping keeps driveways and city streets clear of ice in the winter. On the weekend, it only takes two people to run the entire plant, however, twelve people are required to run the tours of the facility and staff the gift shop.

Shwedagon Pagoda – Yangon, Myanmar

We have seen hundreds of temples, cathedrals, pagodas, and other religious structures in our four years of travel. Getting “templed out” is a common phrase used by many travelers to capture the feeling of being exhausted by the sheer number of temples that you can visit. After a while, they can start to look alike. However, Shwedagon Pagoda (or Temple) makes our list due to its sheer size and the amount of gold that is layered on the buildings. I have seen estimates of the amount of gold at Shwedagon being up to 66 tons (60 tonnes). At current gold prices, that amount of gold has a value of around 3 billion US dollars.

Maijishan Grottoes – Gansu Province, China

There are many grottoes or cave temples in China. We saw four of what most people consider to be the top five in China, plus many more over our multiple visits to China. While each one is special, unique, and spectacular in its own way, The Maijishan Grottoes were my favorite.

Work on the caves was started in about 380 AD and construction continued over the following centuries and eventually, 7,200 Buddhist sculptures were completed as well as over 1000 square meters of murals. Today there are metal stairways and catwalks where visitors can view hundreds of the caves. Most of the caves were carved out of a sheer cliff face. It is hard to imagine how people were able to get to and carve such caves and sculptures over 1500 hundred years ago.

It was hard to choose just six places out of all the interesting man-made structures we have seen in the past four years. The next post will be about some of our favorite events and festivals.