Jan 13th, 2012 at 5:30PM:
This fellow is from one of Singapore's more unusual attractions - the Haw Par Villa theme park, also called Tiger Balm Gardens. Originally built in the 1930s by the creators of Tiger Balm to showcase Chinese folklore and mythology, the park is known for its bizarre and gruesome Ten Courts of Hell with such creepy statues and dioramas as a human-faced crab and bloody dismembered torsos ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
bizarre posts
Photo of the Day: Singapore's unusual theme park
Jan 13th, 2012 at 5:30PM:
This fellow is from one of Singapore's more unusual attractions - the Haw Par Villa theme park, also called Tiger Balm Gardens. Originally built in the 1930s by the creators of Tiger Balm to showcase Chinese folklore and mythology, the park is known for its bizarre and gruesome Ten Courts of Hell with such creepy statues and dioramas as a human-faced crab and bloody dismembered torsos ...The Obama pen: weirdest African souvenir ever?
May 16th, 2011 at 9:00AM:
Obama is big in Africa. There are Obama shops, Obama hotels, Obama t-shirts, even Obama: The Musical. A craze of naming babies Obama hit the continent when he was elected. Even better, the proud parents could fill out the birth certificate with an Obama ballpoint pen.
I came across these in a shop in Harar, Ethiopia. A friend of mine worked for his campaign, so it seemed the perfect gift. The ...Human castles may make UNESCO World Heritage list
Nov 15th, 2010 at 11:00AM:
You gotta love Spain. Not only do they like having giant tomato fights and getting chased through the streets by bulls, but they build giant castles out of people.
That's right. Not content with having some of the best castles in Europe, the Spaniards like constructing living towers up to ten people high. Called a castell, the tradition originated in the region of Catalonia in the 18th ...
Using slime mould to improve transportation
Nov 6th, 2010 at 9:00AM: "What idiot designed this highway?"
I've asked myself this question on more than one road trip. Sometimes the most straightforward journey can be slowed down thanks to bad highway planning. Now it turns out that slime mould may be an efficient designer of transportation routes. Slime mould resembles a giant amoeba that sends out networks of tubes to grab food from distant locations. Scientists ...Best ESL video ever: Japanese diarrhea aerobics
Oct 25th, 2010 at 2:30PM: Teaching English as a Second Language can be a great way to see the world. You actually get paid to be immersed in a foreign culture and spend all your time speaking with the locals!
Here in Madrid most of the Anglos I know are English teachers, but they all complain that it can sometimes be hard to engage students. That may be because they're teaching in a traditional classroom environment, ...The Purgatory Museum
Sep 14th, 2010 at 10:00AM: I'm not sure what I'm looking at.
A rectangular slab of wood bears two burn marks--one in the shape of a cross, the other resembles a human hand. Nearby are other items--a shirt, a prayer book, a pillow--all with burns that look like they've been made by fiery fingers.
I'm in Rome's smallest and strangest museum, the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio, the Little Museum of Purgatory. Housed in the ...Man arrested in Mexico smuggling 18 monkeys in his pants
Jul 20th, 2010 at 3:00PM: Are those monkeys in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
A Mexican man was arrested upon arrival in Mexico City after flying from Lima, Peru with 18 titi monkeys strapped around his waist. While the monkeys traveled in his luggage, Roberto Sol Cabrera placed the endangered monkeys into socks that fit into a waist girdle "to protect them from X-rays," though two of the monkeys did not ...Trinkets and treasures: Istanbul on and off the beaten path
Jul 13th, 2010 at 4:30PM:
The tourist season in Istanbul is well underway, bringing hordes of tour buses and groups into Sultanahment (the Old City) each day, perhaps even more this year as the Turkish city is currently one of Europe's Capitals of Culture. Whether you are planning your first visit or your tenth, here is a look at some of the most touristed spots, why you should fight the crowds to see them, and where you ...Finding the expat community and what travelers can learn from them
Jul 6th, 2010 at 1:30PM: No matter how well-traveled you are, moving to a foreign country and living as an expat is a whole new ballgame. Your priorities and standards change, and hours that you may have spent as a traveler in a museum or wandering a beach are now spent in as an expat search of an alarm clock or trying to distinguish between eight types of yogurt. You become like a child again: unable to speak in complete ...Parents' worse nightmare: Their child is in trouble overseas
Dec 4th, 2009 at 12:30PM: For the past couple of days, two stories have been appearing in various forms in the media--one splashier than the other, but both are what parents nightmares are made of. These are the situations they hope they don't get a phone call about. One is about Amanda Knox, the college student who is in an Italian jail waiting to see if she will spend years there if she's found guilty for murdering her ...Low flying pelican and cell phone vs million dollar car: car loses
Nov 14th, 2009 at 3:00PM: Earlier this week, a pig on an airport runway in Zimbabwe wrecked a plane and panicked passengers as the plane was taking off. On Wednesday, it wasn't a pig that created a travel brouhaha. It was a low flying pelican--plus a cell phone.
Evidently, as the pelican made a low flying move in front of a million dollar sports car--a Bugatti Veyron, the man driving this expensive beauty became startled ...Gadling's 13 stranger than strange sites for Friday the 13th
Nov 13th, 2009 at 5:30PM: Happy Friday the 13th! Tributed to being an unlucky day thanks to wives tales, religion and mythology, this is a day when people might think about altering their travel plans. The thought is, why push your luck? Franklin D. Roosevelt was one such person. He never traveled on the 13th. He even died on April 12, 1945. That, my friends, was on a Thursday. That is kind of strange, no?
In honor of a ...Plane hits pig on runway and passengers panic
Nov 11th, 2009 at 9:30AM: It wasn't a wolf's huffing and puffing that led to the demise of a pig on the runway at the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe last Tuesday. Nope, it was a MA60 60-seater attempting to take off. The wild bush pig may or may not have seen the Air Zimbabwe plane coming. But, come it did.
Poor pig. Poor plane. Poor passengers--and poor flight attendant who had to yell, "'Evacuate!'" after the ...Man accidently ejects himself from plane
Nov 7th, 2009 at 10:30AM: digg_url = 'http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Man_Accidently_Ejects_Himself_From_Plane'; This is a what NOT to do story if you're ever in a Pilatus PC-7 Mk II. Do not, I repeat, do not, use the black and yellow handle located between your legs to steady yourself. Not even if you're pretending to be Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun. Pull on that handle and you'll find yourself out of the plane before you ...Greyhound bus driver heads wrong way: Where's a GPS when you need one?
Nov 6th, 2009 at 2:30PM: tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/06/greyhound-bus-driver-heads-wrong-way-wheres-a-gps-when-you-nee/'; tweetmeme_source = 'Gadling';
Greyhound bus drivers generally don't make national news. Pilots who overshoot airports, however, end up having their story told over and over again on about every entertainment vehicle there is. How many places did you hear or read about the ...Pilots and crew brawl at 30,000 feet because of a flight attendant
Oct 5th, 2009 at 6:30PM:
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.gadling.com/2009/10/05/pilots-and-crew-brawl-at-30-000-feet-because-of-a-flight-attenda/'; tweetmeme_source = 'Gadling';
The wide open skies turned into the Wild West on an Air India flight when the pilots and crew started fist-fighting. The plane was heading to New Delhi from Sharjah, UAE when the altercation that had started before the plane took off heated up.
...Farmer in Bangladesh kills more than 83,000 rats and wins a color TV
Oct 3rd, 2009 at 2:30PM:
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.gadling.com/2009/10/03/farmer-in-bangladesh-kills-more-than-83-000-rats-and-wins-a-colo/'; tweetmeme_source = 'Gadling';
I've seen a rat scurry across a New York City street at night. It looked like a small cat. Startling. Rats in New York are one of the city's long-standing jokes. The idea of the 83,450 rats that one farmer in Bangladesh killed over the last nine ...Gondola accident at Busch Gardens in Florida: Football player tumbles
Jul 19th, 2009 at 2:30PM: We've covered amusement park accidents in the past. Here's another one. In an unfortunate mishap at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida a football player from the University of Southern Florida found his good deed costing him. Maikon Bonani was working at the gondola ride when he thought the door of one of the cars wasn't latched as it was leaving the station.
With quick thinking he grabbed onto ...Are Americans the only stupid travelers? Travel agent stories
Jun 29th, 2009 at 2:00PM: "A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, "Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?"
This is only one of the stupid things an American has said to a travel agent. At Strangeplaces.net, there is a slew of side-splitting funny stories that travel agents have recounted. Some of them are so stupid, they ...83-year-old lands plane on expressway
Jun 22nd, 2009 at 1:30PM: Imagine. There you are driving along an expressway in South Florida. You're checking the rear-view mirror and side-view mirrors, watching the distance between you and the cars in front of your car, smoothly navigating traffic. You're doing a swell job, and then there's a surprise--something you weren't planning on. A yellow object comes into view. A large yellow tropical bird, perhaps? Your heart ...
