Cambodia/Thailand:PreahVihearTemple A 'Danger' sign warns visitors about a fragile structure within the grounds of the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple. (Paula Bronstein/ Getty Images) Borders existed before humans appeared on earth -- the high mountains and wide rivers and vast deserts of the world that divide one location from another. Although today's borders are determined by politics, ethnicity, resources and wars, we continue to rely on natural formations to delineatewhere one country ends and another one starts. Whether because of the...

Balloon pilot Edcar Vermeulen, fires the burner as he prepares for a tethered ballon to rise up at the 3rd Taiwan International Balloon Fiesta at Luye Highland on June 12, 2013, in Taitung, Taiwan. (Ashley Pon/Getty Images) After last year's record-setting International Hot Air Balloon Festival in Taiwan, the Taiwanese government is working to make the 2013 festival even bigger. According to The China Post, last year the festival attracted 880,000 visitors from 14 different countries. This year the festival...

Peking Man Site atZhoukoudian- China The perpetual forces of the weather have produced some of the most breathtaking sites in the world, from high mountains to eroded buttes and deserts. The processes of deposition and erosion -- when sediments are laid down and then swept away by wind and water -- have also allowed us to look back into the Earth's past and study the fossils of ancient organisms. Some of our most exciting discoveries have been the uncovering of...

The Los Roques islands off the coast of Venezuela are beautiful destinations for tourists -- up to 70,000 people visit each year, dwarfing the 1,500 people who live on the archipelago -- but the islands are also the site of mysterious disappearances that might be caused by strange weather phenomena. In January 2013, a plane carrying Italian fashion mogul Vittorio Missoni and five other passengers and crew vanished without a trace. And the airplane is hardly the first to go...

CRH380A, China An increasing number of countries are turning to high-speed rail to link cities, citing its advantages over air travel for mid-distance trips. With well-designed and well-operated systems, weather conditions are less likely to affect journeys, proponents such as the US High Speed Rail Association say. It's not surprising that countries are pushing technological limits to provide the most efficient (and fastest) ways to travel by rail. In 2012, China launched the world's first-ever high-speed train capable of operating...

For boaters who can't decide whether they'd prefer a casual cruise or a dive to the depths of the ocean to avoid inclement weather, the new design for a 377-foot yacht called the Migaloo combines the best of both worlds. The design comes from Austrian yacht studiomotion code: blue. The studio has previously worked on yachts and super yachts in Asia, Europe and the U.S. "In our minds as designers, the concept was to submerge to travel or stay in...

Two French 'Tigre' helicopters fly over Le Bourget airport on June 17, 2013, north of Paris, on the opening day of the International Paris Air show which will be held until June 23, 2013. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images) If the Paris Air Show is anything to go by, flying is about to get faster, greener, and more comfortable. The 50th anniversary of the exhibition, which runs from June 17 to 23 and includes 2,215 exhibitors, will feature new models from Boeing...

In this Sunday, May 26, 2013 photo, a flight takes off for Katmandu from Lukla airport, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha) LUKLA, Nepal - As soon as the decades-old Twin Otter landed at Lukla airport, passengers burst out in applause. They do that for nearly every safe landing at the often terrifying airport at the gateway to Mount Everest. At an altitude of 2,843 meters (9,325 feet), the small airstrip here has earned a reputation as one of the most extreme...

ICEHOTEL Entrance (Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions) With the summer months quickly approaching, most folks are already ditching layers of clothing in favor of tank-tops, bikinis, and a few sweat-inducing hours under the sun. But not in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. Sunscreen and sand are in short order in this tourist hub situated just north of the Arctic Circle. Here you're much more likely to find yourself in a pair of thermal underwear nuzzled into the warmth of a reindeer hide. That's because...

Boa constrictor, close-up. (Thinkstock) TYLER, Texas — Samuel L. Jackson would have been cursing up a storm. An East Texas man has pleaded guilty to smuggling snakes on several planes from South America to the United States. During a court hearing Wednesday in Tyler, William Lamar pleaded guilty to importing wildlife taken in violation of foreign law. Prosecutors say the 63-year-old eco-tourism guide bought the seven live snakes in August 2012 in a market in Lima, Peru, and smuggled them...

Matt Silver-Vallance gets ready to fly across the sea from Nelson Mandela's apartheid island prison using helium-filled giant party balloons, on April 6, 2013 in Cape Town. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images) Traveling by balloons might look exciting, but with unpredictable wind conditions it can make for a bumpy ride. Matt Silver-Vallance floated from Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisonned for 18 years during apartheid, to the coast of South Africa -- using nothing but 160 helium-filled balloons and a paragliding...

Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) underwater. (Tom Brakefield/Thinkstock) Taking pictures of the local flora and fauna while on vacation can be a good way to remember the trip, but a group of tourists in China went too far when they saw a dolphin in shallow water. An injured dolphin died off the coast of the Hainan Province in southern China after a group of tourists repeatedly hoisted it out of the water to take pictures with it. According to the Shanghai...

Gerard dAboville, captain of the world's largest solar boat, Switzerlands MS Turanor PlanetSolar, stands on the boat's solar panels on June 18, 2013 at North Cove Marina in New York. Solar panels cover more than 5,554 square feet of the ship's surface. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) Boats have relied on the wind to travel around the world for hundreds of years, but last year was the first time that a vessel powered only by the sun completed the full circumnavigation. And...