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In hindsight (thousands of years of it) maybe rice wasn’t the best choice for humanity’s most popular food staple. Growing rice is very water and labor intensive. And it requires a flat field that farmers can flood during the planting season.

Rice is particularly labor intensive in hilly areas where farmers must create their flat field by carving floodable terraces into hillsides. We find even a single terrace impressive when we contemplate all the work involved, work usually done by hand. The sight of multiple rice terraces, stacked atop each other as if to form a giant’s staircase, is truly awe inspiring.

Spot Cool Stuff has been a longtime fan of rice terraces. We once flew round trip between San Francisco and the Philippines specifically to spend a single day in Banaue, supposedly the site world’s most grand rice terraces. Supposedly. After nearly two decades of rice terrace travel we’ve formed our own opinion on such matters. Here’s our list of the top 10 rice terrace destinations:

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You know a swimming pool is big when an average swimmer is unable to complete a single lap within it. And when he’s likely to be passed by a sailboat while trying. That’s the situation at the San Alfonso del Mar Resort in Algarrobo, Chile. The pool there — the world’s largest according to the Guinness World Records — took five years and nearly $4 billion to build. (That’s not a typo, that’s billion with a “b”). The pool is a full kilometer (.62 miles) long, 35 meters (115 feet) at its deepest point and covers more than 20 acres. The massive amounts of water required to fill the pool comes from the Pacific just beyond the pool’s edge. A high-tech filtration system cleans ocean water, cycles it through the pool and then returns it to the Pacific in an environmentally friendly way.
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