Dutch Artist Turns Dead Pet Into ‘Catcopter’

by Laurel Miller on

The Wright Brothers were true visionaries, able to turn mankind’s dream of flying like a bird into reality.

It’s only fitting then, that a deceased cat be allowed to soar like the pigeons he once yearned after. Dutch artist Bart Jansen has created a fitting tribute for his beloved pet, Orville (his brother’s name is, of course, Wilbur), who was hit by a car. Jansen created the “Orvillecopter,” a remote-controlled helicopter that’s “half-cat, half-machine.”

Before you denounce Jansen as a sadistic kook (like PETA has in a public statement; though, how one can be a sadist by having an already dead animal stuffed is beyond me), watch this CNN video interview of him talking about his art project/tribute.

Orville used to lie at the front door watching birds, and so, Jansen explains, he decided what better way to honor his cat than by allowing him to fly the skies? Notes Jansen, “After a period of mourning, he received his propellers posthumously.”

I recently wrote of my love of all things slightly macabre, including taxidermy, so naturally I think the Orvillecopter is about the most awesome thing ever. For those lucky enough to be in Amsterdam, the Orvillecopter is on display at the KunstRAI Art Festival. To see the flying object in question, check out the video below. Fly the friendly skies, Orville.


Museum Month: JEATH War Museum, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

by Laurel Miller on

History has never been my favorite subject, but once I began traveling in earnest, I discovered something. If I visited a destination, I usually became obsessed with its history or indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this in time to save the downward trajectory of my GPA when I was a student, but it’s made me sound infinitely more worldly in daily life.

I found the JEATH War Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, purely by accident. Anything historical pertaining to war is a subject I normally avoid – I’m a girl like that – with the exception of the “Platoon” soundtrack. Thus, the most I knew about “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” which is located in Kanchanaburi, is how to whistle the tune. The town and bridge are actually located at the confluence of the Rivers Kwai Noi and Kwai Yai, at the headwaters of the Maeklong (Mekong).

I ended up there because I had a few days to kill prior to flying home, and it’s less than a two-hour bus ride west of Bangkok. Kanchanaburi sounded peaceful, and is a popular getaway for backpackers and Thai urbanites. The main activities are dining in the many “floating restaurants” on the river, taking cooking classes, hiking in beautiful Erawan National Park and sightseeing (more on that after the jump).

I ended up meeting two fun Australian girls at my riverfront guesthouse, and we proceeded to spend the next three days together. On our first afternoon, I asked them how they’d ended up in Kanchanaburi, and they told me they were there to visit the JEATH War Museum and pay tribute. I looked at them blankly.

“The what?” I asked. They looked at me with pity, thinking, like millions of Aussies before them, that the American educational system is an abysmal failure (no argument there).

“The Japan, England, America, Australia, Thailand, Holland War Museum,” one of the girls said patiently. “Y’know, it’s dedicated to the thousands of Allied POWs who died while constructing the Bridge and Death Railway from 1942 to 1943.”

Cue crickets chirping.The girls, to their credit, didn’t make fun of me, but instead explained that the JEATH Museum details a tragic episode in Australian (and, to a lesser degree, Kiwi) military history, and it’s something that schoolchildren learn about at a young age. Within the hour, we’d rented bikes and were pedaling through stultifying heat and humidity to the museum.

The JEATH Museum is located at Wat Chai Chumphon temple, and is housed in an exact bamboo replica of a POW sleeping hut. Inside is a horror house of relics, photos, letters, and descriptions of events and forms of torture carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army, as well as depictions of daily life for the POWs. We spent hours there, alternately sickened and fascinated by how 60,000 Allied prisoners and 180,000 Asian laborers were tortured and forced to labor under unspeakable conditions. Sixteen thousand men were worked to death or perished from starvation, dysentery, or other disease.

According to the museum’s website, the photographs on display were taken of “real situations by either Thai’s or POWs. There are also many real accounts written by former POWs, their relatives, friends, and authors that interviewed the many prisoners that suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.”

Like the Holocaust and other genocide museums and concentration camp memorial museums, the JEATH museum is testimony to man’s ability to perpetrate atrocities against his fellow man. I suppose it’s also a tribute to man’s ingenuity when it comes to inventing new and exciting ways to torture other humans, as well as a nod to the resilience of the human body and man’s will to live. Ultimately, I believe museums such as this are also about man’s capacity to forgive: we saw visitors of all nationalities at JEATH, including many veterans.

In the days that followed, I grew obsessed by the story of the POWs. I took a ride on the famed Death (also known as the Thai-Burma or Burma) Railway, and visited Hellfire Pass, a cutting through sheer rock that earned its name due to the fatalities its labor incurred. It’s said that by night, the flashlights of toiling POWs resembled a scene from hell.

I’ve since told dozens of people about the museum and the events that occurred in the region during the Second World War. While I’ve obviously met Americans who know about the Bridge and Railway, none have been aware of the POWs and loss of life that occurred. My assumption is that because only 356 Americans died – as compared to over 2,800 Australians – it’s not considered one for our history or schoolbooks. It’s a shame, because despite the tragedy, it’s a part of human history that should be remembered, both in tribute and as a warning.

The JEATH War Museum is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Click here for more information on visiting Kanchanaburi; you can purchase inexpensive bus or mini-van tickets at many guesthouses, backpackers and travel agencies in Bangkok. On a more pleasant note, Kanchanaburi is a lovely town, and the region is definitely worth a visit for its more bucolic charms.

Click here to watch an episode of Gadling’s “Travel Talk” on Kanchanaburi.

[Photo credits: bridge, Flickr user David McKelvey; sign, Wikipedia Commons; train, Flickr user nova031]

Photo Of The Day: Turkish Tulips

by Meg Nesterov on

April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes. We’re getting plenty of rain this month in Turkey, but we’ve had flowers. April is the big month for tulips in Istanbul, and you can see them planted all over town as 11.5 million were planted for this year’s season. I took today’s photo at Emirgan Park, one of the prime viewing spots of the Istanbul Tulip Festival. There are over 100 varieties planted in Emirgan Park alone, many in interesting patterns like the nazar evil eye, a major symbol of Turkish superstition.

You probably associate tulips with Holland, but it was Ottoman Turks who first cultivated them and introduced them to the Dutch in the 17th century. Today, Turkey is trying to reclaim the flower, growing millions of tulips with a goal of becoming an exporter again by 2014. Along with fresh flowers, you can see the influence of the tulip in the shape of the Turkish tea glasses, and as legend has it, the shape of the sultan’s turbans.

Have a springtime photo to share with us? Add it to the Gadling Flickr pool for our next Photo of the Day.

Edam Is Much More Than Cheese In Holland

by Chris Owen on

Edam is a city in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland that is famous as the original source of the cheese with the same name. Recently, we spent a day in Edam walking cobblestone streets, sampling fresh cheeses made daily and enjoying a city that looks today much like it did decades ago.

“Edam is a city with a rich history. It began in the 12th century, when farmers and fishermen settled along the little Ye river. With that, ‘Yedam’ was a fact. This primitive settlement developed into an increasingly prosperous town well into the 17th century,” says Edam.com, a website devoted to the city.

Edam cheese was the most popular cheese in the world from the 14th to 17th centuries, especially at sea and in the colonies far away. Sealed in wax, the Edam cheese could mature very well so it was easy to bring along to eat while traveling. We brought some home too, sneaking right through customs, while drug-sniffing dogs were on the prowl for tourists that might have visited Amsterdam, where marijuana is virtually legal.

Legend has it that Edam cheese became even more popular when used as bullets for cannons. “True or not, it is a fact that the Edam cheese is very strong, big and round and has the same shape as a bullet. Edam cheese thanks its name to the harbor where the cheese was sold most (harbor of Edam),” adds Edam.com.

The Edam cheese of today is not the same cheese as the original. Since the 19th century Edam is no longer made from full milk but from partly skimmed milk. The fat percentage of the Edam cheese is lower (40%) than the fat percentage of similar Gouda cheese (48%). Over the years, Edam replaced the strong-flavored farmer’s product with a softer, factory-made cheese.

In Edam, architecture that dates back to the 12th century wraps around shops selling everything from Dutch chocolate to Tulip bulbs and fresh flowers as we see in this photo gallery.

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Today, Edam is visually much like it has been for decades and serves as a bedroom community for residents commuting back and forth to Amsterdam. Walking through a very quiet Edam, it was hard to believe that the city was once a bustling whaling port with more than 30 shipyards. Now, still covered with narrow streets, small bridges and canals, tourism is the major economic force but cheese still the major export and star of the show.

Edam’s Kaasmarkt (cheese market) event is one of five in the Netherlands and once sold 250,000 rounds of cheese. Reenactments of markets for tourists have Dutch cheese farmers who traditionally brought their cheeses to town to sell. During the market, teams of official guild cheese-porters, identified by differently colored straw hats associated with their company, carried the farmers’ cheese on stretchers, which typically weighed about 160 kilograms (about 350 pounds).

Buyers then sampled the cheeses and negotiated a price using a ritual system called handjeklap in which buyers and sellers clap each others’ hands, shout prices and agree on a price. Once a price is agreed, the porters carry the cheese to the weighing house and scale of their company as we see in this video.



The cheese shops have free samples for tasting along with an assortment of touristy souvenirs ranging from Dutch chocolate, wooden shoes (still used by some) and hand-crafted dolls to cheese slicers. All can be shipped back to the United States legally.

Photos: Chris Owen

Video of the Day: flying like a bird

by Elizabeth Seward on

We all want to fly. We have all wanted to since we were children who realized that humans do not fly and birds do. Today’s video of the day features Dutch engineer Jamo Smeets successfully flying like a bird. Our concept of travel, and the related transportation necessary, is basically based on the bird. Humans aren’t born with wings so we invented the airplane. Because of the airplane we have modern day travel. But what if we could all fly ourselves? Granted, this video demonstrates a type of flying that couldn’t yet carry us far distances but maybe one day this technology will evolve. Smeets developed this project for eight months prior to testing the technology at a park in The Hague on March 18, 2012. Check it out.