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Aliens may have been rating our planet as a travel destination all along! This set of reviews is from Matthieu Barrère’s webcomic Awful Drawings. Link -Thanks, Kim!
Wish
there were words to describe how you feel while you travel the globe?
The Lonely Planet blog coined some brand new travel-related words that
may come in handy in your next journey:
automobilogic n.
The state of mind unique to road trips that convinces travelers that gummi bears and fried onion rings count as a daily serving of fruits and vegetables. Studies indicate that this may lead to automobesity.bratpacker n.
Someone who believes they have a revolutionary system for packing luggage and insists on explaining it to anyone who will listen.comeuppants n.
When an obnoxious person loses their luggage and has no change of clothes.crankophone n.
Someone who tries to make themselves understood in a foreign country simply by speaking louder in their own tongue.filibluster v.
To cause pointless delay by creating a scene in the airport security line to prove some point about personal privacy rights that no one behind you cares about.
Come to think of it, I know a few crankophones! Read more at the Lonely Planet Blog: Link
We’ve written a lot about Disneyland, but for those long-term, die-hard fans, you can help imagineer Rolly Crump with his memoirs. Obviously he has all the actually memories he needs, but vintage pictures of the park are another story. Sure he could get them from the company itself, but if you know a lot about the corporation, you know they aren’t the easiest to work with when it comes to copyrighted images.
“We need your help, oh great citizens of the Internet! I’m writing a book with former Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump, and we’re looking for some old photos for it that you may have in your collection. We’re looking for stuff from his time at Disney (such as Adventureland Bazaar in 1963, Tower of Four Winds, The Enchanted Tiki Room in the 60s, It’s A Small World at World’s Fair, The Land in 1980s) and his outside work (like Bear-y Tales at Knott’s Berry Farm, Circus World, and Busch Gardens). Anything that Rolly has brought to life, we’d love to see your photos of it. We will gladly give you credit AND a signed copy of the book if we use your images!”
I know some of you Neatorama readers have been visiting the park for decades, so here’s a good opportunity to take advantage of those old family vacation photos.
Link Via BoingBoing
I recently posted an article about discontinued snack foods, and many of our readers pointed out that some of the foods were still available in other countries. As it turns out, fast food companies operate in a similar manner, offering local favorites to other countries that they would never consider selling in America. Here are a few American fast food establishments and the dishes they don’t offer in America.
In Canada, poutine, fries covered in cheese curds and gravy, is offered at almost every fast food restaurant, but BK offers their own varieties that fit in with the rest of their food –most notably, the Angry Poutine with fried onions and peppers on top.
In Puerto Rico, mallorcas, sweet pastry buns, are a popular breakfast treat and Burger King takes full advantage of the popularity of these buns by offering the King Mallorca, filled with ham, eggs and three different cheeses. If you want something even more filling, you might want to try their Enormous Omelet, which isn’t an omelet at all, but actually one of the restaurant’s long hamburger buns filled with a hamburger patty, two eggs, bacon and cheese. Later in the day, you can always snack on some King Wings, which are buffalo wings marinated in honey –why aren’t these sold in America yet?
In many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico, you can enjoy the deliciously fatty Cheesy Whopper, which features a deep fried disc of cheese on top of a standard Whopper.
Personally, I want to try the Hawaiian BK Chicken available in New Zealand, which is like all the other chicken sandwiches Burger King sells, only it features bacon and pineapple. Sign me up!
The variety of KFC’s international menus is simply astounding, as the American version exclusively limits itself to fried chicken and a few sides, while the international franchises seem to have no limits on what they serve. On the more standard side, there is the Fillet Tower Burger, which is available throughout Europe and other locations, which is essentially just a chicken sandwich topped with a hashbrown. On the other end of the spectrum is the menu from Thailand, which features stir fries, a tuna and corn salad, fish fingers (like chicken fingers, but fish) and a donut filled with shrimp meat. China offers a similarly strange menu compared to the standard KFC fare, as it includes corn salad, beef wraps, red bean porridge, shrimp burgers and an egg and vegetable soup.
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Atlas Obscura took many readers on trips around the world without leaving their computers in 2011. They’ve compiled a list of their most popular places -to read about, if not to travel to- over the past year. Some you read about here; others may be new to you, but all are fascinating. Shown is Cactus Dome in the Marshall Islands, a concrete cover over a nuclear crater left after US weapons tests, just one of the ten places you can visit online. Link
Even if you don’t live in America, you’re probably familiar with our New Year’s Eve traditions, being as how they’re played on TV stations across the globe and portrayed in countless movies. That being said, there are tons more celebrations out there that don’t involve kissing at midnight, watching a ball drop and staring at fireworks in awe. Here are a few New Year’s Eve traditions from around the world.
Image Via asterix611 [Flickr]
It’s always nice to get a gift from a neighbor, friend or family member, but in some countries, visitors bearing gifts are practically guaranteed on the first day of the year. The tradition is commonly known as First-Footing and while it’s practiced everywhere from Russia to Wales to parts of the U.S., it is most common in Scotland. While the gifts brought for the occasion are important as they represent the type of luck the recipient will receive, it is also important who brings the gift. Ideally, the first person to enter a home at this period will be a tall, dark man, as this will bring the most luck.
Scotland’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are known as Hogmanay and the celebration is responsible for introducing the “Auld Lang Syne” song to the world. But the festivities vary from place to place and while some areas celebrate by singing and linking arms at the appropriate point in the song, other celebrations are much more dangerous.
In Stonehaven, locals make up balls of chicken wire filled with newspapers, sticks and rags that sometimes measure up to two feet wide. Each ball is attached to a chain or nonflammable rope about three feet long. At midnight, the balls are then set on fire and swung around the heads of their creators as other revelers watch the spectacle. Eventually, the fireballs are put out or thrown into the harbor. Despite the dangers, the event has drawn in many tourists and the small town now sees around 12,000 people standing in the city streets to watch the fire balls spin. If you want to see the action without risking life and limb, the celebration is now streamed on the internet.
Image Via MrPurple [Wikipedia]
If you just can’t get enough burning out of your New Year’s experience and you’ve already visited Stonehaven, then perhaps it’s time to purchase a ticket to Ecuador. That’s because on New Year’s Eve, locals line the streets with effigies of people who have made a negative impact on the last year, most commonly, unpopular politicians. Thousands of dummies are lit up at the stroke of midnight in an effort to prevent the negative events associate with those people from impacting the new year.
Image Via lowfill [Flickr]
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Of course you want to visit Pandora! We all do! But since it’s a fictional planet, maybe the next best thing would be to visit the location where Avatar was filmed. You can do that, because it was in the Keahua Arboretum in Hawaii. The arboretum is chock-full of lush and exotic plant life, just like Pandora -without the Na’vi or the man-eating monsters. Find out eleven more locations where your favorite sci-fi movies were shot at TravelSupermarket. Link -Thanks, Danny!
It seems like astronomers are finding more and more exoplanets every day -some which might possibly support life, although they are extremely far away. What if we could travel to those distant planets we know a little about? Vincent Vermeij (Chungkong) turned this idea into a series of travel posters, featuring some exoplanets that already have names. See the rest of the series at his site. Link
Our world is filled with extreme climates, peaks and more. If you’ve ever been interested in these record-breaking locations, then don’t miss these ten most extreme places on earth including the largest vertical drop as you can see above.
I don’t know about you guys, but this bike path in Ireland does not look like a place I’d want to take a trek. Oddee has even more outrageous paths for your viewing enjoyment and fear-inducing travel inspiration.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still uncertain about whether or not I would want my body to be buried or cremated after I die. That being said, I certainly would love to be a part of any of these unique and cool cemeteries located around the world.
Zach Anner, who we followed through his quest to get his own TV show on the new Oprah Winfrey Network, is getting ready for the premiere of his series, Rollin’ with Zach. The series premieres on Saturday, December 3rd at 12 noon ET.
The inspiring Rollin’ With Zach is centered around Zach Anner, a 26-year-old who has cerebral palsy, feeding his self-proclaimed “obsession” with travel on the show. Anner, who uses a wheelchair, participates in activities like rock climbing and sailing on the show.
“You really just have to have a good attitude, challenge yourself, and you can accomplish great things,” he says.
The theme song for the show was written and produced by John Mayer. See the promo video at People. Link -via reddit
I don’t know about you guys, but this seems so darn realistic. It certainly applies to every time I’ve been stuck on a plane.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Lego Brick Luggage Tag – $4.95
Do you have holiday travel plans? Are you in need of some new luggage tags for your trip? Why settle for boring luggage tags when you can have a LEGO Brick Luggage Tag from the NeatoShop. This great luggage tag, shaped like a LEGO brick, comes in the following colors:
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic LEGO items.
Comments Off If you’re the kind of person who finds commercial haunted houses boring and instead loves traveling to macabre places, then you’d better start booking your tickets because we’ve compiled some of the creepiest and scariest places on earth. Of course, if you’re squeamish and don’t like to read about death or look at pictures of long-dead bodies, then you should probably skip ahead because this article just isn’t for you.
At first glance, the Aokigahara Forest near Mount Fuji is an ideal nature destination, filled with stunning trees growing on hard volcanic rock, and icy, rocky caverns. But the forest has a much darker side, one that was popularized with the 1960 novel Nami no T?, where the main characters end up committing suicide in the area. While Aokigahara was always a destination for the forlorn to end their lives, Nami no T? made the idea much more popular and since the book was released, an average of 30 people kill themselves in the area every year, with a record-setting body count of 108 deaths in 2004.
The government has put out a number of signs in both Japanese and English urging people to reconsider their decision and seek psychiatric help. Once a year, a group of volunteers patrols the forest looking for bodies. These body hunters mark off the areas they are exploring with plastic tape that is never removed. Thus, even if you never see a dead body or ghost roaming the forest, you are still bound to see signs of the forest’s secrets wherever you happen to go.
Image Via Al Kaiser [Flickr]
Unless you already have a doll phobia, the idea of an island filled with dolls doesn’t sound all that creepy at first. It’s once you learn that the dolls are mutilated and left hung in trees while they rot away, all in honor of a drowned little girl that you start to realize just how creepy this macabre tourist destination really is.
It all started over fifty years ago, when the island’s only resident, Don Julian Santana found the body of a dead little girl in the canal where the island sits. He was haunted by her memory and soon started hanging dolls in the trees to appease the girl’s spirits and to ward off evil spirits from entering the island. Doll heads, arms, legs, etc. are sprawled out across the island in a strange sacrifice to prevent further evil. Strangely though, in 2001, Don Julian suffered the same fate as the little girl, drowning in the canal beside his home. Some people believe this was the work of the dolls who have since become inhabited by evil spirits. These days, the dolls remain the sole occupants of one of Mexico’s darkest tourist attractions.
Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo started when the local monastery outgrew its original cemetery, so the monks decided to mummify one of their recently deceased brothers before placing him in their newly opened catacombs. The process seemed to work well, so the monks began mummifying all of their fallen comrades and placing them in the catacombs. After a few centuries, word spread about the monk’s unique burial methods and it soon began to be a status symbol for rich people to be entombed in the catacombs buried in their finest clothing. Some people even left wills requesting that their clothing be changed by their family members at regular intervals.
The last friar was buried in the catacombs in 1871, but famous people from the area continued to be interred up until the 1920s. There are now about 8000 mummies lining the walls of the many hallways, which have been organized into categories: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks and professionals. Some of the bodies are even set in poses, including the bodies of two children who sit together in a rocking chair.
Los Angeles is a gorgeous city filled with movie stars and sunny beaches, right? As it turns out, the city is also loaded with oil rigs. You’d never know it though because the city carefully and cleverly conceals the rigs so you’d never notice them unless you were specifically looking for them. For more cool secret operations that are hidden in plain sight, be sure to check out this cool Cracked article.
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Just try to navigate this massive stone forest in Madagascar.The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar is home to a number of critically endangered lorises, which might actually be a good thing -who is going to brave traveling though this terrifying area just to poach a loris?
Now here’s a meadow I’d love to get a chance to visit. Where is this magical land of the AT-AT? I want to go there.
Link Via The Mary Sue
No, these aren’t scenes from Avatar’s Pandora, they are the China’s Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, which may have been the inspiration for the film’s stunning location. The drastic pillars are a result of thousands of years of erosion thanks to expanding ice in the winter. For more info on the park and more stunning pictures, be sure to visit the link.
If you’re looking to plan a creepy vacation for Halloween time, the BBC has you covered with this wonderful article documenting some of the scariest spots on earth. Pictured is the Island of the Dolls.
Lying off the canals of La Xochimilco, in Mexico, is a chinampa (floating garden) covered with the hundreds of dolls. Gathered by Don Julian Santana Barrera who scrounged rubbish piles, the dolls were hung from trees to keep away evil spirits and remember the drowning death of a young girl. According to Barrera, the dolls he planted and hung around the chinampa were still alive, but forgotten by their owners. While alive, Barrera would move the dolls around the island from different trees, creating a chilling sight. The chinampa is accessible by boat and the dolls are still around, despite Barrera’s death in 1992.
Personally, I’d love to visit any of these spots, but I’m a bit morbid.
Link Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]
I don’t know about you guys, but just seeing this picture makes me want to visit Singapore’s Changi Airport where fliers can take the easy way to the bottom of the terminal with these delightful slides. If you’re a slide enthusiast or just curious what other weird places could install slides, don’t miss this great Oddee article.
Japan is well-known for its fascination with pop culture icons, which is why it’s not too surprising that even their subway posters feature immediately recognizable characters including Jesus, Superman, Marilyn Monroe and more. The one above reminds commuters not to forget their umbrella. See more at Flavorwire.
South Africans Michael and Sunette Adendorff went to New Zealand, but had trouble finding the Majestic Hotel, where they had made reservations. They inquired at a chemist’s shop for help, but found there is no hotel at all in the town of Eastborne! Shop assistant Linda Burke looked at their paperwork and realized the hotel they wanted was in the UK -on the other side of the globe!
Ms Burke rang around but discovered all the local bed and breakfast places were full, so she offered them a room for the night in her house.
The couple, who were exploring New Zealand while visiting the country to watch South Africa play in the Rugby World Cup, had mistakenly booked into the hotel in Eastbourne, Sussex, on the internet.
“I booked into the right hotel, just in the wrong country,” Mr Adendorff told the Dominion Post newspaper.
Despite the good-natured ribbing they received, the couple said Eastbourne was very nice and the locals were friendly.
The Adendorffs were unable to get a refund on the hotel due to short notice. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Wikipedia contributor NordNordWest)
Excerpted from the book Food Journeys of a Lifetime, NatGeo Traveler’s new food section brings us a list of the best places in the world to find chocolate -or should that be the places in the world to find the best chocolate? Either way, it’s mouth-watering time. For example, you should know where to get chocolate at 4AM in Madrid.
Few institutions offer better evidence of Madrid’s insomnia than its perennially popular chocolaterías (also known as churrerías), typically abuzz with late-night revelers from 4 a.m. to breakfast time. Their trademark dish is the churro, a long waffle-like stick of savory fried dough, eaten dunked into very thick bittersweet hot chocolate. Stop in at the venerable Chocolatería San Ginés, an 1894 throwback. Expect entertainingly brusque service, bright lights, and a frenzied atmosphere.
Planning: Chocolatería San Ginés is downtown on Pasadizo San Ginés. It’s open all night.
And that’s just number eight on the list. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Miguel Pereira)
Apparently,the king of Jordan is a huge Star Trek fan so like a true Trekkie, he wants to show his love for the series as much as possible. The only difference -he’s ridiculously rich. So he’s decided to build his own Star Trek theme park in his own country for a cool price of $1.5 billion. He’s already made agreements with CBS, Paramount and Rubicon Group Holding -all companies who have the rights to the series.
Rubicon is said to be developing the “entertainment aspects” of the park, and it appears that it will be partnering with Paramount Recreation and CBS Consumer Products — which owns Star Trek — for creative development on attractions such as a planned “space flight adventure,” which is promises to deliver “a variety of multi-sensory futuristic experiences … that takes real-time immersive entertainment experiences to bold new heights.” The park and resort will also include restaurants, hotels, theaters, and shops. However, the entire resort will not be 100% Star Trek-themed; in an effort to promote tourism to Jordan, there will also be informative elements about Jordan’s history.
Supposedly the park will be open in 2014. Would any of you take a trip to Jordan to see it?
A new sushi restaurant in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan has taken to making some outrageously massive rolls and nigiri. They also serve up some absolutely tiny pieces with each order to absolutely mess with the minds of anyone enjoying their treats. In the picture above, regular sushi has been included to give perspective to the other trays. You can watch a video of it at the link, but be warned the dialogue is in Japanese.
Link Via InventorSpot
BuzzFeed has a great list of cool hotel rooms, and while most of them have stunning interiors, I have to say that this cow-shaped room is the one that really caught my attention. It’s apparently in Belgium, but I couldn’t find much else about it. Anyone care to fill me in?
We’ve all heard of the kitty and puppy cafes sweeping through Japan, but for those of you who like more cold-blooded pets, there’s now a reptile cafe to satisfy the desires of those who live a petless lifestyle but still want periodic cuddling with their favorite critters.
Comments Off This video is named Move. It’s part of a trilogy of videos from director Rick Mereki, director/producer Tim White, and actor Andrew Lees. They traveled 38,000 miles to 11 countries in 44 days and produced three videos. The others in the trilogy are Eat and Learn. Click “more” to see them.
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National Geographic Traveler magazine has announced the winners of their 2011 photo contest! First place went to the photo shown here, taken by Ben Canales at Crater Lake National Park. Read the story behind the picture, and see ten other amazing winning photos at NatGeo (do not miss the Viewer’s Choice winner). Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Ben Canales)
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