Places Aksel Wants to Go

This tiny island in the South China Sea is crawling with venomous sea snakes.

Four distinctly unique gardens commemorate the POWs who lost their lives during the Sandakan Death Marches of 1945.

These rat eating Giant Malaysian Pitcher Plants may have evolved to eat shrew poop.

Malaysia's floating mosque.

Over the course of its history, this tiny island has held enslaved people in transit and served as a quarantine zone. Today, it's a giant tortoise sanctuary.

Stunning ruins of what was once the center of one of the greatest empires in East Africa.

Mosques carved from coral and dozens of well-preserved stone structures fill this 500-year-old Swahili trading center.

An exquisite and eclectic selection of African masks stands out within a massive woodcarving marketplace.

Behind this unmarked facade lies the original bomba—a crunchy orb of fried mashed potatoes stuffed with minced meat.

A centuries-old bar once frequented by Picasso, Hemingway, and Dalí.

Once part of an ancient international harbor, it's now an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet for flamingos and other water birds.

The water here is so clear you can see the mysteriously sunken ship from the surface.

A curious cave church carved into the face of a cliff.

Reputedly haunted sandstone necropolis with exquisite stone carvings.

Unrefined, uneven, and unstable—this is the real McCoy of Pakistani suspension bridges.

These boulders bear testimony to thousands of years of cultural exchange along this trading route.

The history of the oldest fort in Baltistan is steeped in familial rivalry and gruesome deaths.

Time and local lore colluded to turn this fear-defeating Buddha into a man-eating demon.

A rare instance of a historical Peshawari mansion restored and opened to the public.

A perfectly restored 17th-century hammam in the heart of Lahore.

An exquisite example of Uyghur Islamic architecture.

An old curiosity shop holds on to a centuries-old tradition of manually-distilled rose water.

The culture that built these Tanzanian ruins displayed advanced knowledge of irrigation technology before mysteriously disappearing.

Once the private home of China’s most legendary tycoon, getting inside this stunning mansion no longer requires an elite pedigree or acts of daring.