Nature - The best artist, but sometimes it interferes with the idea man, and because such an alliance appear surprising places. We offer you a selection of the most unusual parks in the world.

Park Buddhas — Laos



 The park was started in 1958 by Luang Pu (Venerable Grandfather) Bunleua Sulilat. Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat was a priest-shaman who integrated Hinduism and Buddhism. His unique perspective was influenced by a Hindu rishi under whom he studied in Vietnam. After the revolution in 1975, anxious about the repercussions of the rule of Pathet Lao, he fled from Laos to Thailand where he built another sculpture park, Sala Keoku in Nong Khai. Both parks are located right next to the Thai-Lao border (Mekong river), only a few kilometers apart from each other, and the tallest structures of the Buddha Park can actually be seen from the Thai side of Mekong.

The statues are made of reinforced concrete and are ornate, and sometimes bizarre, in design. The statues appear to be centuries old, though they are not. There are sculptures of humans, gods, animals, and demons. There are numerous sculptures of Buddha, characters of Buddhist beliefs like Avalokitesvara, and characters of Hindu lore, including Shiva, Vishnu, and Arjuna. These sculptures were presumably cast by unskilled workers under the supervision of Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat. One notable sculpture resembles a giant pumpkin. It has three stories representing three levels - Hell, Earth and Heaven. Visitors can enter through an opening which is a mouth of a 3-metre-tall demon head (9.8 ft) and climb staircases from hell to heaven. Each story contains sculptures depicting the level. At the top, there is a vantage point where the entire park is visible. Another sculpture, an enormous 120-metre-long (390 ft) reclining Buddha, is also a park attraction.

Park Sinners — Thailand



 90 minutes outside of Bangkok sits the Wang Saen Suk Hell Park, one of several "hell gardens" that can be found throughout Thailand. At this tourist destination, you can pack a picnic and ramble around the charming sculpture garden, which depicts sinners being eviscerated wholesale in the Buddhist underworld.

After all, nothing says "sunny weekend stroll" quite like statues of demons disemboweling the damned, arsonists transforming into snakes, and dogs eating a lost soul's giant testicles. Also, if you've ever used birth control, there's apparently a giant bloody vise waiting in the afterlife. (I'm not sure if dental dams qualify one for an eternity of squeezing.) Notes Fortean Times of this charming point of interest:

Around the giant sinners stand a further 21 life-size sinners, whose heads have been turned into various animals according to their misdeeds. Thieves are transformed into monkeys; the dishonest into toads; the corrupt into pigs [...] Although often gruesome, Thailand's hell gardens are popular weekend destinations for family days out. As well as an entertaining way of teaching strict morality, they also encourage donations as a form of merit-making to support the monks and the monasteries.

One of io9's friends in Thailand further elaborated on the park's family-friendly angle — "It's fun seeing little Thai kids running around statues of people being eaten alive, having their guts torn out, etc. My five-year-old cousin loves the amusement park, but is terrified of Ronald McDonald." So yes, if Faces of Death ever went in cahoots with Six Flags, the result might just look like this.

Creation Museum — USA



 The Creation Museum is a tourist attraction near Petersburg, Kentucky which presents a mythical account of the origins of the universe, life, and humankind, portraying a 'creationist' narrative based upon a literalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis, rather than scientific knowledge. The Creation Museum opened its doors to the public on May 28, 2007.

The Creation Museum has been criticized as promoting "fallacy over fact" and attempting to advance the tenets of a particular religious view while rejecting, overlooking and misconstruing authentic science. The museum has received criticism from the scientific community, educators, Christian groups acquainted with the scientific method, and in the press.

Its exhibits reject universal common descent and biological evolution, and assert that the Earth and all of its life forms were created 6,000 years ago over a six-day period. In contrast to the scientific consensus, exhibits promote creationist claims including the proposition that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted, and that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark. Scientific evidence supports the conclusions that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and that the dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years before human beings arose.