When North Korea, China and the United Nations Command (UNC) signed the 1953 armistice which effectively ended the Korean War, they did so in a village called P’anmunjÅ?m. After the cease-fire was signed, construction began on a site located about one kilometre east of the village, the Joint Security Area (JSA). The three blue buildings straddle the border between North and South korea, and were designed and built by the UN to allow delegates from North Korea to enter one end, and delegates from South Korea to enter through the other. All meetings between the two countries have taken place in the JSA since its completion.

History lesson over If you’d like a more complete lesson, try the Wikipedia pages on the Korean War and P’anmunjÅ?m.

Thanks to Andry.

These red-gold buildings in Bangkok, Thailand, make up the Mang Gorn Luang (the Royal Dragon), the largest restaurant in the world. The restaurant covers 8.3 acres, has over 1,000 staff, and accomodates 5000 guests. The servers wear roller skates, use speedboats to cross the large decorative ponds and fly on ziplines from upper levels to lower ones, while the kitchen is capable of turning out 3,000 dishes an hour!

And despite all these huge numbers, apparently the restaurant fills up completely by mid-morning. Typical!

Thanks Matthew Sz (Seriously, I don’t mean to do this… sometimes people are just good at finding cool stuff!)

This is Marseille Skatepark in Marseille, France. Just like the previously posted Kona Skatepark, the Marseille park featured in one of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, THPS 2. You can clearly see the large multi-bowl and the side-by-side pools. As I remember it, version 2 was the one where they introduced manuals; which changed the face of THPS forever!

More information available at the offical site (in French, naturally).

Thanks to Laurent Thevenet and Matthew Sz (who actually submitted Kona too!)

Sticking with members of the World Federation of Great Towers, this is Rotterdam’s 186 metre-high Euromast. Apparently the tower is built on a concrete block weighing 1,900,000 kilos!

You can see the view from the 100 metre-high restaurant on the official site, and Hans points out that the red structure on the water just to the south is another floating Chinese restaurant!

Thanks to Alessandro Lo-Presti (Agilo), Aar Clay and Hans.

This is the super-cool looking Tashkent TV Tower in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Standing at 375 metres, it’s slightly smaller than yesterday’s Central TV Tower, but it’s the tallest structure in central Asia (whatever that means). The tower uses a vertical cantilever structure which makes it look like some sort of gargantuan tripod, and also casts a brilliant shadow.

Note: The thumbnail here is rotated 180 degrees from the original, simply because it looked way cooler the right way up!

Just like the Central TV Tower, the Tashkent Tower has an observation deck (slightly higher at 318 metres) which allows it too, to be a member of the World Federation of Great Towers.

Thanks to Mikhail Kushnir, Pasha M. and Tim, we now have an Uzbekistan category!

Still in Beijing, this is the Central TV Tower, which (including its antennae) is 405 metres tall, and easily the tallest structure in the city. A race to the top of the tower is held annually, with two laps of the base followed by a climb of the 1484 steps leading up to the 238 metre-high observation deck. The Central TV Tower is also part of the World Federation of Great Towers, of which several have already featured on GgSs.

Check out all these brilliantly brightly-coloured cars on this highway in Beijing.

I’m not sure though why these cars seem quite so colourful, and perhaps it’s simply down to the combination of an over-saturated image and a very sunny day, but it sure looks cool However, there could be a clue further down the road, where it appears that the image’s colour channels aren’t properly aligned.

Actually, if you scroll north and south along the road, as well as hundreds of other similarly luminous cars, there’s also several quite cool looking intersections.

Thanks to Philip Ng.

Docked in the middle of Aberdeen Harbour in Hong Kong, in the style of a sumptuous Chinese palace, is the gigantic floating restaurant Jumbo Kingdom. Opened in 1976, this mammoth eatery can accommodate up to 2,300 people, and the facilities include a ’six-star’ gourmet restaurant, shopping, exhibitions, cafes and a ton of other stuff. However, I read that Jumbo Kingdom no longer actually floats, and is now supported by concrete. Can anyone verify this?

There’s a free ferry which takes you out there, and you can see some of them docked by the side of the restaurant itself (see this photo for comparison).

Some people claim that this is the world’s largest floating restaurant, but the Jumbo Kingdom site makes no such claim, which makes me wonder… What is the world’s largest floating restaurant? And (more importantly) is it in hi-res?

Many thanks to Leonard Wan for being the only person to submit this!