The dolls belong to spirits that keep the deceased girl company and prevent further evil from descending upon the island

On a creepy island in a creepy swamp south of Mexico City there’s a place that looks like the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Here, among the scraggily branches and dead trees hang hundreds of old, mangled dolls.

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The bay’s superlative bioluminescence comes thanks in part to the 17th-century Spanish explorers

None of the photographs on this post are the product of PhotoShop manipulation. So what’s the blue luminescence you see around these swimmers and kayakers? That’s the result of the natural properties of Puerto Rico’s Laguna Grande.

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As fans of the hit ABC television series LOST watch the riveting drama about a group of airplane crash survivors on a mysterious island they often ponder questions of love, fate and survival. What exactly is the Dharma Project? and What do those numbers mean? are questions almost every LOST fan has asked themselves. They inevitably also ask Where exactly are all these gorgeous tropical scenes filmed?

The vast majority of LOST was set in various locations around Hawaii. Even many of the locations that were supposedly not on the survivor’s island were shot in the Aloha State. The Sydney airport? In LOST that was really the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.

Here’s our roundup of our favorite Hawaii LOST filming locations. Each are worthy Hawaii travel destinations, for LOST fans and fans-in-waiting who have (yet) to see the show:

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Kids (and those possessing a sweet tooth) might be disappointed when they arrive at the Chocolate Hills and discover they are not literally so. For everyone else, though, these curious conical mounds in the middle of the Philippine island of Bohol are bound to delight.

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Anyone who grew up on The Cat In The Hat and Green Eggs and Ham remembers the illustrations of one Mr. Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Trees with elongated trucks or with improbable collections of limbs, stark and scraggily landscapes with oddly balanced rocks and unlikely geometric shapes, buildings with unusual protrusions, awkward angles and with no two windows exactly the same—these were some of the hallmarks of the world Dr. Seuss illustrated in his 60 children’s books.

Here’s a look at some places on Planet Earth—places you can visit on your next vacation—that resemble scenes from a Dr. Seuss illustration. So, in the words of the doctor himself . . .

Once upon a time, fishermen off of the Greek island of Siphnos noticed a glow under the Aegean Sea. When they trolled the spot they were amazed at what their nets brought up: a statue of the Virgin Mary.

The fishermen brought the Virgin Mary icon to Chryssopigi, a small seventeenth-century monastery church on Siphnos located at the end of a spit of land jutting out into the sea. The Virgin of the Golden Spring soon came to be regarded as the protector of the island.

The Virgin’s protective powers were evidenced several years later when pirates, who regularly made life miserable for residents of islands in the Aegean, stormed the Siphnos shore chasing a group of nuns who were on their way to the Chryssopigi monastery. The nuns prayed as they ran with the pirates close behind. As the nuns reached the church containing the Virgin there was a great rumble, the neck of land connecting the church to the main island split open, and the pirates fell into the sea.

And that’s how Siphnos came to be known as The Island of Miracles.

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This is the second of our two part overview of Thailand’s best islands. Continue on to read the whole article or click on one of the specific “best island” categories:

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Thailand has over 250 islands, from deserted specks of land to tourist havens with mega resorts to everything in between. Regardless of what you are looking for in a tropical island, chances are that Thailand has at least one to fit your tastes.

Here’s the first of our two-part rundown of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorite Thailand islands. Continue reading on or click on an island category that meets your fancy:

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