SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - For travelers keen on size, the BootsnAll Travel Network has come up with a list of nine of the world's largest travel-related items.
This list was compiled by BootnAll Travel Network (http://www.bootsnall.com), a resource for independent travelers, and is not endorsed by Reuters.
1. World's largest hotel - First World Hotel, Genting Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia
Until recently, all the world's largest hotels were located in Las Vegas, but late 2006 the First World Hotel in Malaysia has been recognized with that honor. Located in the mountain gambling resort of Genting Highlands, about 20 miles north of Kuala Lumpur, this 3-star hotel has 6,118 rooms in its dual 23-story towers.
2. World's largest hostel - Danhostel, Copenhagen, Denmark
Determining the world's largest hostel based on bed numbers is hard but the title appears to go to the Danhostel Copenhagen City (http://www.danhostel.dk) with 1,020 beds in 192 rooms. This former office building has 16 floors and a central location.
3. World's largest swimming pool - San Alfonso Del Mar, Chile
This new resort about 60 miles west of Santiago has been recognized as having the world's largest crystalline pool by the Guinness World Records judges. It's actually a saltwater lagoon that runs for over a full kilometer between the ocean and many apartment buildings that is under completion and covers 20 acres. It is 115 feet deep at one end, and holds 66 million gallons of water, which is about 100 times as much as a typical Olympic size pool.
4. World's largest museum attraction - Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri, United States
This half-scale ship (http://www.titanicbranson.com) has only been open since 2006, and already more than 1 million guests have walked an elegant replica of the Titanic's Grand Staircase, and stood on the mighty ship's bridge. Your visit begins when they hand you the boarding pass of an actual Titanic passenger, and you check out the Memorial Wall to see if they lived or died.
5. World's largest casino - Venetian Macao Resort hotel
The total casino space at this resort (http://www.venetianmacao.com/en/home.aspx) that opened in August 2007 is about 550,000 square feet, with 870 gaming tables and more than 3,400 slot machines to go along with their 3,000 suites and 1 million square feet of retail space.
6. World's longest beach - Praia do Cassino, Brazil
Praia do Cassino (Cassino Beach) on the southern coast of Brazil stretches 152 miles from the channel that connects the Lagoa do Patos lake to the Atlantic Ocean near Rio Grande in the north to the border with Uruguay in the south. You can drive and park on it, so it also seems to double as a highway in places.
7. World's largest airport - King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia (http://www.the-saudi.net/kfia/)
The actual airport of the site is only about 14 square miles, but it sits on a property that is around 300 square miles, making it more than 6 times as large as the entire city of San Francisco, and more than twice as large as second-place Mirabel International in Montreal.
8. World's largest shopping mall - South China Mall
The South China Mall (http://www.southchinamall.com.cn) in Dongguan crushed all rival mega malls as of 2005 with around 6.5 million square feet of retail space and 7 different wings with themes of Amsterdam, California, the Caribbean, Egypt, Paris, Rome, and Venice, and, of course, an amusement park. Missing? Businesses and customers with few of the 1,500 retail spaces occupied in the suburban mall 70 miles north of Hong Kong.
9. World's tallest statue of a turtle riding a snowmobile - Tommy Turtle, in Bottineau, North Dakota, United States
As it's hard to pinpoint the world's tallest statue so BootsnAll instead chose a less controversial category. Tommy the Turtle stands 30 feet and he's riding a 34-foot-long snowmobile just about 10 miles south of the Canadian border.
