The Royal Clipper (destination360.com)

A lot of people believe that bigger is better. This view certainly applies to the sailing segment of the cruise business, where two rival companies are constructing the largest and most expensive sailing vessels to ever ply the seas. Star Clippers, which has a fleet of authentic re-creations of classic 19th-century clipper ships, currently operates the world’s largest and only five-masted sailing ship built since the early 1900s. The Royal Clipper, a design inspired by the legendary tall ship Preussen, is 134 metres long, comes equipped with 42 sails and carries 227 guests in romantic and luxurious style. However, by 2010, the majestic Royal Clipper will be relegated to third place in the sailing stakes.

On April 5, 2010, German-based Sea Cloud Cruises will launch the maiden voyage of the Sea Cloud Hussar. Measuring 136 metres long and 17 metres wide, with a total sail area of more than 4,000 square metres, it will be the largest three-masted ship ever built. The vessel will have 69 luxury cabins and boast room for 136 passengers and a crew of 90. After completing its 12-day maiden voyage from Malta to the Greek port of Piraeus, the Hussar will travel along the Cote d’Azur and sail to the German port of Hamburg, which it will enter on June 26, 2010, after completing a musically themed voyage from Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium. The ship will dock in Venice on September 3, 2010, followed by a journey to the Arabian Peninsula in early December. Tickets for the maiden voyage start at $5,976 per person.

Not to be outdone, Star Clippers recently announced it is building an even larger and more expensive vessel. Extending an astounding 157 metres and weighing 7,400 tons, the as-yet-unnamed barque will be 48 per cent larger than the Royal Clipper. The five-masted giant will carry 37 sails for a total of 6,350 square metres of sail surface area; its rigs will soar 65 metres above the waterline and the open sundeck area will be an expansive 2,500 square metres. The ship, which will make its debut in 2010, will have room for 296 passengers and 140 crew, feature three swimming pools on the top deck and house a two-level dining room that can hold all 296 passengers in one seating.

There will also be a private dining room for smaller groups, a piano lounge, a two-level “tropical bar,” a dive/sports bar, a forward observation lounge, library, spa and gym. A retractable marina on the stern will provide access for watersports. One of the swimming pools will have a glass bottom, allowing light to filter down into the piano lounge and dining room. The aft pool, meanwhile, will feature a swim tube that extends down into the dive/sports bar and into the library that will be used for scuba training.

But big doesn’t only apply to sailing ships. Here are the remaining Top 10 travel-related “World’s Largest.”

2. World’s largest museum attraction

The amazing Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri, was built half-scale to the original. Towering 30 metres above Country Highway 76, it holds 400 priceless artifacts in 20 galleries from the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The structure is anchored in water to create the illusion of the Titanic at sea, and the 90-minute, self-guided tour is designed to give guests the sensation of being one of the passengers on Titanic’s 1912 maiden voyage. As visitors step through an iceberg into the early 1990s world of this historic re-creation they are given a passenger boarding ticket, bearing the name of an actual Titanic passenger and the class they were travelling. Guests learn the individual stories of their adopted namesake and in the Titanic Memorial Room discover whether their ticketed passenger survived or perished. The museum opened in 2006 and has already welcomed more than a million visitors.

3. World’s largest aquarium

onearthtravel.com

Whale sharks, the world’s largest fish, are kings of this 30-million-litre tank. But once visitors to Atlanta’s Georgia Aquarium have seen Ralph and Norton–the only whale sharks on display outside of Asia–they will still have about 100,000 fish to go. Shaped like an abstract cruise ship looming over Olympic park, the aquarium was bankrolled almost exclusively by a $200-million gift from Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus. Size-wise it has no serious rival. By comparison, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium–the largest indoor aquarium in the U.S. for decades–has just 19 million litres and about 20,000 fish. More than just a monstrous tank, however, the Atlanta site also boasts a “4-D” movie theatre, which shows films with 3-D animation and other special effects, and a banquet hall that can serve a sit-down dinner for 1,100, catered by a company owned by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.

4. World’s largest shopping mall

When it opened in 2005, the South China Mall in Dongguan, China, crushed all rival mega malls with 6.5 million square feet of retail space and seven different wings – with theme areas based on Amsterdam, California, the Caribbean, Egypt, Paris, Rome and Venice, and, of course, an amusement park. But customers did not throng to the gigantic emporium. Today, it is not only the world’s largest mall but the world’s emptiest, with fewer than a dozen stores scattered through a space designed to house 1,500, making it a dusty, decrepit complex of buildings marked by peeling paint, dead light bulbs and dismembered mannequins.

5. World’s largest dinosaur

Standing adjacent to the Visitors Centre in Drumheller, Alberta, a fiberglass-and- steel Tyrannosaurus Rex rises 26 metres and weighs 66 tons. Travellers from as far away as Africa and Australia have climbed the behemoth’s 106 steps, plodding past the prehistoric mural paintings that decorate its belly, to be spit out inside a toothy mouth. There, they are rewarded with a choice view of the Red Deer River Valley and its eerie badlands landscape, where so many dinosaur bones have been unearthed. Cheesy as it may sound, the T-Rex blends in with the rest of the dinosaur statues stationed throughout the town in parks, on street corners and even busting out of the local IGA’s brick facade.

6. World’s largest casino

roongthongtour.com

Thousands of Chinese poured into the Venetian Macao resort, built by U.S. operator Las Vegas Sands, when it opened in August 2007. Macau is the only place in gambling-mad China where casinos are legal, and business is booming. Last year, gaming revenues surpassed those of the iconic Las Vegas Strip. The Venetian Macao promises to push the numbers even higher. It boasts 3,000 hotel suites, 1,150 gaming tables, 7,000 slot machines, 350 shops, a 1,800-seat conference centre and a 15,000-seat entertainment arena. If the Venetian succeeds, according to analyst estimates, it will help double Macau’s annual gaming income to $13.7 billion by 2010.

7. World’s largest place name

This Maori name for a hill, 305 metres high, located near Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, is so absurdly long that I won’t attempt to reproduce it here. The 85-letter-long place name is a combination of the words taumata (brow of a hill), whakatangihanga (music making), koauau (flute), o (of), tamatea (name of a famous chief), turi pukaka (bony knees), piki maunga (climbing a mountain), horo (slip), nuku (move), pokai whenua (widely travelled), ki (to), tana (his), tahu (beloved). Therefore, it means: the summit of the hill, where Tamatea, the man with the big knees who slid down, climbed up and swallowed mountains, known as land eater, played on his flute to his loved one. Nowadays, the moniker has been abbreviated to Taumata.

8. World’s largest hotel

Until recently, the MGM Grand in Las Vegas held this title, but First World Hotel in Pahang, Malaysia, has now secured the crown. Located in the mountain gambling resort of Genting Highlands, about 40 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, this three-star hotel has 6,118 rooms (1,000 more than the MGM) in its dual 23-storey towers. One thing you are not going to hear at the First World: “Sorry, all our rooms are full.” But with its pulsating lime-green, canary-yellow and fire-engine-red colour scheme, the hotel is unlikely to ever win any awards for design. The sizeable premises incorporate a theme park and a half-million square feet of shopping space. There are 32 check-in counters with 64 terminals located in the hotel lobby, and the laundry department manages an incredible production of 40 tons worth of laundry per day.

9. World’s largest swimming pool

latimes.com

Do a few morning laps here and you’ll be in intensive care. The new San Alfonso Del Mar resort, situated about 130 kilometres west of Santiago, Chile, has been recognized as having Earth’s largest crystalline pool by the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s actually a saltwater lagoon that runs for more than a kilometre between the ocean and several apartment buildings. Its surface area is eight hectares, roughly equivalent to 6,000 standard backyard pools. It took five years to build and cost nearly $2 billion and the annual maintenance bill is $4 million. It easily dwarfs the next biggest pool–the Orthlieb in Casablanca, Morocco–which is 150 metres by 100 metres. The pool utilizes a technology developed by the Chilean company Crystal Lagoons, which uses water pumped from the Pacific Ocean that is then filtered and treated for supply to the pool.

10. World’s Largest Miniature Village

Visiting Madurodam is like Gulliver being let loose in Lilliput. Located in The Hague, in the Netherlands, it’s a model of a Dutch town on a 1:25 scale, composed of typical Dutch buildings and landmarks as found in various locations in the country. This major tourist attraction was built in 1952 and has been visited by tens of millions of visitors since. The miniature city was named after George Maduro, a law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces as a member of the Dutch resistance and died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. In 1946 Maduro was posthumously granted the honour of Knight 4th-class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest honour in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, because he had distinguished himself in the Battle of the Netherlands against German
troops. His parents donated the money to start the Madurodam project.

2. After John Lennon’s death in 1980, the graffiti-covered “John Lennon Peace Wall” became a shrine for the youth of which city?
A. Amsterdam
B. Prague
C. New York
D. Liverpool

3. You are having a meal in Honduras and the waiter brings you a dish of “bamboo chicken.” What are you eating?
A. Skunk
B. Ocelot
C. Parrot
D. Iguana

4. In which Asian country will you find the mysterious “Plain of Jars”?
A. Laos
B. Iran
C. Turkey
D. South Korea

5. Which American city dyes its river a bright shade of green every year for St. Patrick’s Day?
A. Boston
B. Chicago
C. Pittsburgh
D. Charleston

6. The icon of the Black Madonna is the most important shrine in which country?
A. Brazil
B. El Salvador
C. Poland
D. Portugal

7. Maxwell House Coffee was named after a hotel in which American city?
A. Detroit
B. Atlanta
C. St. Louis
D. Nashville

8. Ian Fleming, the British novelist who created James Bond, spent his winters writing the Bond novels at Goldeneye, a home that he designed and built on what island?
A. Jamaica
B. Sicily
C. Majorca
D. Bermuda

9. In which Muslim country can you observe a spectacular festival called Fantasia, where armed men on horseback perform acrobatic tricks and fire their muskets at a full gallop?
A. Egypt
B. Morocco
C. Yemen
D. Afghanistan

10. What famous American bridge has appeared in such movies as X-Men: The Last Stand, Vertigo, A View to a Kill and Interview with a Vampire?
A. The Brooklyn Bridge
B. The Golden Gate Bridge
C. The Verranzo Narrows Bridge
D. The Royal Gorge Bridge

11. Which Caribbean island group is the fifth-largest banking centre in the world and home to more registered businesses than people?
A. British Virgin Islands
B. Barbados
C. Cayman Islands
D. Bahamas

12. The 1982 movie The Year of Living Dangerously, starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, was set in which Asian nation?
A. The Philippines
B. Burma
C. Indonesia
D. Singapore

Answers

1. C. Kenya
Quite possibly the only place in the world where you can feed and photograph the giraffe over your breakfast table, and at the front door, and even from a bedroom window. The Giraffe Manor is an elegant, personally hosted, small and exclusive hotel, famous for its resident herd of giraffe. Built in 1932 by Sir David Duncan, the lodge is situated on 140 acres of land just a few kilometres from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. In 1974, Jock Leslie-Melville, grandson of a Scottish earl, and his wife Betty, who also founded the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife (AFEW), bought the Manor. They then moved five babies of the highly endangered Rothschild giraffe to their property where they were successfully reared and now have their own babies. When Jock passed away, Betty decided to open her house, now called the Giraffe Manor, to visitors. As well as the giraffe, the property is home to many species of birds, large families of warthogs and the elusive Bush Buck.

2. B. Prague
John Lennon was a pacifist hero to young Czechs. After his death in 1980, the “John Lennon Peace Wall,” at the backside of a fourteenth century churchyard in Prague, became a place for the youth of Czechoslovakia to write their views. In 1988, the wall was a source of irritation for the then communist regime of Gustav Husak. Young Czechs would write grievances on the wall and this led to a clash between hundreds of students and security police on the nearby Charles Bridge. The movement these students followed was described ironically as “Lennonism,” while Czech authorities described these people variously as alcoholics, mentally deranged, sociopathic, and agents of Western capitalism. A running battle developed between the police whitewashers and dissident graffiti writers until November 1989, when Communism collapsed in the former Czechoslovakia’s non-violent “Velvet Revolution.” The Lennon Wall has since become a tourist attraction.

3. D. Iguana
Iguana meat is popular throughout much of Latin America, where consumers willingly pay more for it than for fish, poultry, pork, or beef. To fill the demand, several iguana species are hunted by rifle, slingshot, trap and noose; they are even run down by trained dogs. Villagers catch them for food for the family; professional hunters snare and sell them to vendors. The meat tastes somewhat like chicken, and iguanas are often referred to as gallina de palo, “bamboo chicken” or “chicken of the tree.” The lizard meat is typically cooked in a spicy stew.

4. A. Laos
The hundreds of huge carved rock jars that litter Laos’ mysterious Plain of Jars, date from the Neolithic period. They stand up to 3.25 metres high and weigh up to 13 tonnes. Historians still debate their origins and purpose. When French archaeologist Madelaine Colani excavated the jars in the 1930s, she discovered some contained bronze and iron tools and bracelets, along with glass beads, while the rest appeared to have been looted. These items led Colani to theorize that the jars were funerary urns, holding cremated remains. This theory has been strengthened by the more recent discovery of underground burial chambers.

5. B. Chicago
For over 40 years, the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers turn the Chicago River a bright emerald green for the annual St. Patricks Day Parade celebration. Bill King, the administrator of Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day committee, says that “the idea of dyeing the Chicago River green originally came about by accident when a group of plumbers were using fluorescein dye to trace illegal substances that were polluting the river.” According to the event organizer’s official site, it takes 40 pounds of vegetable dye to create a carpet of green that lasts four to five hours. Of course, they don’t dye the entire river with that–just one section a couple of blocks long. Interestingly, the vegetable-based dye replaced an oil-based dye. Environmentalists lobbied for the change, arguing that oil-based dye was hardly an eco-friendly substance to be shovelling into a river.

6. C. Poland
The Black Madonna in the Paulite Monastery of Jasna Gora (Czestochowa) is visited by millions of pilgrims annually. The painting came to Poland in 1384, probably from the east, perhaps even Jerusalem. Legend traces the icon’s origin back to St. Luke who, it is said, painted it on a cypress table top from the house of the Holy Family. Nobody knows when people began venerating the painting as an icon, but it was already thought miraculous when it was brought to Poland. When the sick or ill prayed to it for health, they often were healed. When Polish kings or monks prayed to it for military victories, they won. In 1655, 3,000 Swedish troops besieged the Jasna Gora monastery. Defending it were just 170 soldiers, 70 monks and 20 noblemen. The monks and their troops won. This inspired the rest of the nation to rebel and the Swedes were routed. This “Miracle at Jasna Gora” was attributed to the intervention of the Mother of God, and her painting. When the Russians were at Warsaw’s gates in 1920, thousands of people walked from Warsaw to Czestochowa to ask the Madonna for help. The Poles defeated the Russians at a battle along the Wisla (or Vistula) River. During World War II under German occupation, the faithful made pilgrimages as a show of defiance. That spirit deepened during the years of Soviet-enforced communism, when all government attempts to stop the pilgrimages failed.

7. D. Nashville
In the early 1900s, Nashville entrepreneur Joel Cheek perfected a special coffee blend, which became the house blend of the Maxwell House, a city hotel. When he began selling it to the general public, he adopted the hotel’s name as the brand. In 1917, Cheek began using a “Good to the Last Drop” slogan to advertise Maxwell House Coffee. In 1920, the Cheek family sold the brand to General Foods, which made wide use of the slogan. For several years, the ads made no mention of Theodore Roosevelt as the phrase’s originator. By the 1930s, however, the company was running ads that claimed that the former president had taken a sip of Maxwell House Coffee on a visit to Andrew Jackson’s estate, The Hermitage, near Nashville on October 21, 1907, and that when served coffee he had proclaimed it to be “Good to the Last Drop.” Today, Maxwell House claims that the slogan was actually written by Clifford Spiller, former president of General Foods Corporation and did not come from a Roosevelt remark. The phrase remains a registered trademark for the product and appears on its logo.

8. A. Jamaica
Ian Fleming, the British intelligence officer turned turned spy novelist, spent winters on Jamaica’s north shore at his Caribbean getaway for almost two decades and wrote 10 of his James Bond novels there. Fleming borrowed the name of his famous spy from James Bond, the author of A Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies. As for the name of his home, Fleming said in an 1964 interview: “I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I’d been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defense of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye.” The estate is now the centrepiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.

9. B. Morocco
Also referred to as the Aiin Aouda (Mock Horseback Battle), Fantasia is an annual equestrian performance and celebration of traditional folklore that takes place in Meknes each July. This horse-riding spectacle includes hundreds of charging horsemen (and women) wearing traditional clothing. The performance consists of a group of horse riders, wearing traditional clothes and charging along a straight path at the same speed so as to form a line, at the end of the ride (about 200 hundred metres) all riders fire in the sky using old gunpowder guns. The difficulty of the performance is synchronization during the acceleration especially during firing so that one single shot is heard. Each region in Morocco has one or several fantasia groups, called serba, totaling thousands of horse riders nationwide. Performances are usually during local seasonal, cultural or religious festivals.

10. B. The Golden Gate Bridge
This fabled, orange-hued San Francisco bridge has appeared in many movies since it opened on May 28, 1937, with the world’s longest suspension span. Why you may ask isn’t this city landmark painted gold? Because the term “Golden Gate” actually refers to the Golden Gate Strait which is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The orange colour, called International Orange, was chosen in part because of its visibility factor. Advection fog, a low, ground-hugging fog, is prevalent in San Francisco Bay. The bright colour helps drivers as well as ships see their way. The colour was also chosen because of its natural blend to the warm landscape of the area.

11. C. Cayman Islands
Not only do these remote British-run islands comprise the fifth largest banking centre in the world, they also tout the highest standard of living in the Caribbean with the average annual income of approximately $42,000. The Caymans have more registered businesses than its 65,000 inhabitants, and are home to 279 banks with $1.5 trillion in banking liabilities. The Cayman Islands has become a successful offshore financial centre because of the high quality service providers, reputable law firms, as well as the Big Four accounting auditors that operate from the islands. Today, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks have subsidiary or branch operations in the Caymans.

12. C. Indonesia
The Year of Living Dangerously is about a love affair set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. The plot follows a group of foreign correspondents in Jakarta on the eve of an attempted coup by the so-called 30 September Movement on September 30, 1965, and during the beginning of the violent reprisals by military-led vigilante groups that killed hundreds of thousands. The film was banned from being shown in Indonesia until 1999. The title The Year of Living Dangerously refers to a famous Italian phrase used by Sukarno for the title of his National Day speech of August 17, 1964. The movie also starred Linda Hunt as the male dwarf Billy Kwan, Gibson’s local photographer contact, a role for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Photo Credits:

#1: travellingboard.net

#2: flickr.com

#3: flickr.com

#4: newsday.com

#5: flickr.com

Icelandic Phallological Museum: Husavik, Iceland
This museum’s bizarre goal is to collect penis specimens from every mammal in Iceland, including several species that are endangered or currently extinct in Icelandic waters. The museum houses 245 specimens displayed like hunting trophies, embalmed in formaldehyde, or dried in display cases. The collection includes specimens of sperm, humpback and even the giant blue whale, polar bears, various kinds of seals and walruses and even tiny mice and other rodents. The strangest item is the penis of the “Icelandic Christmas Lad”, donated by a former mayor of Reykjavik. It is believed that “Icelandic Christmas Lad” refers to one of Santa’s toy-making helpers. Sigurour Hjartarson, a former teacher, is the founder and director of the museum. Hjartarson says he founded the museum so people from all over the world could “undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion.”

Dog-Collar Museum: Kent, England
Although it is hard to believe that there’s a demand for this sort of thing, this museum, located inside of Leeds Castle, attracts more than 500,000 visitors every year. The dog collar collection counts over 100 unique items that present the history of canine-wear starting from early medieval times to the Victorian Age. The dog collars were originally gathered by Irish medieval collector John Hurt and his wife Gertrude, and were donated to Leeds Castle in 1979, as a tribute to the castle’s last private owner, Lady Baillie, a major dog lover. The antique dog collars tell 500 years of canine history, from early, 15th century dog collars, filled with spikes to protect the neck of hunting hounds against wolves, boars and bears, to glamorous leather and velvet baroque collars of the 18th century. Engraved silver collars from the last century, some fashioned by leading silversmiths of the day, form an interesting section. Many come in pairs joined by short chains, such as those presented to Top and Tabinet engraved “The Property of Earl Talbot. The Winner of the Great Champion all aged (Puppy) stakes for all England 32 Dogs at 20 guin’s each at Ashdown Park. Dec 14th 1838.” Other inscriptions are less formal. An 18th century English brass collar simply states; “I am Mr Pratt’s Dog, King St, Nr Wokingham, Berks. Whose Dog are You?”

Mutter Museum: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Mütter Museum was founded to educate future doctors about anatomy and human medical anomalies. Today, it serves as a valuable resource for educating and enlightening the public about our medical past and telling important stories about what it means to be human. On display are some 20,000 objects showcasing gruesome human health anomalies including a wax model of a woman with a human horn growing out of her forehead, a five-foot-long human colon that contained over 40 pounds of fecal matter, and the petrified body of the mysterious Soap Lady, whose corpse was turned into a soapy substance called adipocere. The museum also houses a collection of 2,000 objects extracted from people’s throats, a malignant tumour removed from President Grover Cleveland’s hard palate, the conjoined liver from Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker and a growth removed from the thorax of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Museum of Medieval Instruments of Torture: Prague, Czech Republic
This educational exhibit with historical explanations in six languages showcases an extensive collection of torture devices, many of which originated during those wonderful years known as The Inquisition. These replicas of the originals will send a shiver down the spines of all who contemplate the horrors unleashed upon mankind in the name of religion, war or just plain old sadism. Aside from knuckle-crackers and cat-o-nine tails, torture devices utilizing fire and plenty of needles await you, iron maidens, and saws meant to separate bodies in half–lengthwise. And if your head’s not screwed on right, the Spanish garrotta chair will fix that for you, literally driving a screw right through you skull.

The Burlesque Hall of Fame: Las Vegas, Nevada
Formerly known as Exotic World, the museum historically was located on the site of an abandoned goat farm in Helendale, California. It documents the history of burlesque from its 19th century origins through its golden age in the mid 20th century, and displays artifacts commemorating historic burlesque performers such as Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr, Chesty Morgan and Tempest Storm. Exotic World originated as the private collection of retired exotic dancer Jennie Lee founder of the League of Exotic Dancers and former “Bazoom Girl” (a moniker she earned for effortlessly twirling tassels on both her bosom and behind). It’s currently curated by retired burlesque performer Dixie Evans, who often personally leads tours through the exhibits. Unique individual items include ivory fans used by Sally Rand, gloves and a black velvet shoulder cape worn by Gypsy Rose Lee, a heart-shaped couch owned by Jayne Mansfield and the cremation ashes of Miss Sherri Champagne.

Sulabh International Museum of Toilets: New Delhi, India
“Unlike body functions like dance, drama and songs, defecation is considered very lowly.” So begins a 1995 paper written by Dr. Bindeswar Pathak, the founder of this New Delhi museum as well as the Sulabh International Social Service Organization. Ostensibly part of a sanitation crusade, the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets follows the toilet’s historical pipeline from 3,000 B.C. to the present. What began as a hole in the ground—and remains a hole in the ground in some parts of the world has come a long way in terms of design, comfort and plumbing. The museum offers fun facts (Louis XIV purportedly used to relieve himself while holding court), examinations of toilet customs from around the world, and arts and literature (from poems to painstakingly crafted chamber pots).

Serial Killer Museum: Florence, Italy
Who needs to visit galleries crammed with the world’s greatest art when you can listen to a man with a creepy robotic voice describe the crimes of John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy in infinitely gory detail? As well as offering the chance to buddy up with waxworks of Charles Manson and notorious cannibals, Florence’s most bloodthirsty attraction also investigates methods used to track down the killers–from blood sample analysis to psychological profiling–and the methods of dispatching them. That means mock-ups of gas chambers and electric chairs. The displays include waxwork models of notorious serial killers, often in an environment associated with their case. Gacy is dressed as a clown in a mock-up of his living room, with the bones of his victims buried beneath. Ed Gein, the inspiration for both Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon and Norman Bates in Psycho, is in his shack, creating his perfect woman out of the skin of his victims.

Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum: Plano, Texas
Back in the 1980’s Michael Bohdan paid $1,000 for the largest cockroach in Texas, which got him an invitation on The Tonight Show. That started the roach craziness and before he knew it, the bug exterminator found himself on a tour judging a cockroach dress-up contest. After the tour ended, all the funny-dressed bugs were to be thrown away, but Bodhan decided to keep them and put them on display in Plano. And that’s how the Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum was born. Ever since, the bug-control master has been killing roaches and adding them to his collection. Now the collection features more than 25 dressed-up bugs, including Marilyn Monroach, David Letteroach and Ross Peroach and Liberoachi, a dead cockroach dressed up in a suit and wearing a mink cape, playing a tiny piano. There are also some live Madagascar Hissing Roaches. More than a little intimidating, they are four inches long, over one inch thick and make a hissing noise when they’re disturbed. The Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum also offers its guest some very special snacks–barbecue-flavoured Worm Snacks (dried roach larvae).

Photo Credits:

#1: news.com.au

#2: scienceroll.com

#3: cpa.psu.edu

#4: msnbc.msn.com

Cabbages and Condom caused quite a sensation when it opened in 2002, but is has since been surpassed by other more extreme fetish restaurants, which are now popping up all over the globe. Here are a few of the crazier ones.

Edible Excretions
If you happen to be in Taiwan and want to indulge in a different type of culinary experience, check out the Modern Toilet, which bills itself as the world’s first toilet themed restaurant. I’m not sure the world really needs something like this, but evidently it’s a big hit with the Chinese. The concept is simple and sickening. Diners sit on acrylic toilet seats and eat out of toilet-shaped bowls (both the Asian squat-style and the traditional Western style). Menu items include chicken curry, pasta, fried chicken and Mongolian hot pot, as well as shaved-ice desserts with names like “diarrhea with dried droppings” (chocolate), “bloody poop” (strawberry) and “green dysentery” (kiwi). Modern Toilet owner Wang Zi-wei got his idea from the Japanese robot cartoon character Jichiwawa, who loves to play with poop and swirl it on a stick. Inspired by that image, Wang began selling chocolate ice cream swirls on paper squat toilets. Customers loved them and wanted more edible excretion experiences, so he opened Modern Toilet in Tapei in 2004. The chain now has seven outlets in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong and one in Shenzhen, China.

Bombs Away
At Buns & Guns in Beirut, Lebanon, everything is about war-–from the decor and sound effects to the names of the menu items. Chefs sporting battle helmets while realistic-looking weapons and ammunition decorate the counters, and camouflage netting hangs from the ceiling. As you eat, a continuous loop of rifle fire, mortar fire and explosions plays in the background. Manager Yussef Ibrahim says that the theme reflects the mood of the city during Lebanon’s 2006 war with Israel, and that while some patrons may find it disturbing, most are amused. Diners can order a “rocket-propelled grenade” (chicken on a skewer), “Claymore” pizza, an M16 Carbine meat sandwich, a Mortar burger or a Terrorist meal (which happens to be vegetarian).

Naked Sushi
In Japanese nyotaimori literally means “female body plate.” A nude woman lies atop a platform or table dressed only with leaves in strategic places. Sushi and sashimi is served atop the model, using the leaves as serving plates. The leaves are necessary to insulate the sushi from the model’s body heat, which would warm it up and spoil its quality. The history behind this Japanese custom is muddled. Some sources quote it as a long-standing tradition; others claim it was introduced by the Yakuza gangsters. Whatever its roots, it is not openly advertised today in Japan, but a cheaper and less esoteric version is making the rounds in Tokyo. At these nyotaimori restaurants, an edible body, with dough for “skin” and sauce for “blood,” is wheeled into the room on a hospital gurney and placed upon a table. The hostess begins the meal by cutting into the body with a scalpel and then patrons dig in, operating on the body to reveal edible “organs.”

Black is Black
In Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Opaque group offers dining in the dark, literally. The entire restaurant is enveloped in complete blackness. After ordering your meal outside, you are led to your table and helped to navigate through a three-course dinner with the assistance of blind waiters. Supposedly by denying one’s sight, other senses, most notably your sense of taste, is heightened. The first pitch-black restaurant, Blindekuh (the Blind Cow), which opened in Zurich, Switzerland in 1999, had the goal of “creating jobs for the blind and handicapped people.” The concept has since spread to Paris, London and Sydney and Beijing, although at many of these places, the sighted staff wear night-vision goggles. In Beijing, the Whale Inside Dark Restaurant is not only about heightening the sense of taste, but lowering social inhibitions. It’s popular with Internet daters, who meet on matchmaking Web sites that are sprouting throughout China.

Just What the Doctor Ordered
Considering how much people complain about hospital food, it’s a minor miracle that Hospitalis is a success. Founded by three doctors, this strange restaurant in Riga, Latvia, is completely white, looks clinical and has loads of medical equipment for the purpose of decoration. The bar resembles an old pharmacy, while the drinks come in beakers and test tubes and the food in operating-room dishes. Patients are attended to by leggy nurses sporting red wigs, skimpy starched uniforms and stethoscopes. Your table could either be a gynecological consultation bed or a trolley. As an added bonus, customers can be tied up in straight jackets.

Tiny Portions
Dwarves of the East is the name of a popular café in the fashionable area of Nasr City in Cairo’s suburbs. The gimmick here is the staff—all of them are midgets. The café’s owner, Ahmad Al Kilani, no stickler for political correctness, was prompted to open the establishment after a friend of his complained that he had been sacked from his job as a mechanic because he was too short. As Al Kilani said in an interview, “I call the café Dwarves of the East to highlight the fact that these people are part of our world and society.”

Soviet Kitsch
St. Petersburg’s contribution to restaurant madness is Zov Ilicha, loosely translated as Lenin’s Mating Call. Only a few years ago, opening a joint like this would have meant a stint in prison. Now it is considered a must-see. Statues of Joseph Stalin, Felix Dzerzhinsky and Vladimir Lenin can be found on the walls and windowsills, and even hanging upside down from the mirror ceiling. One of the bar’s two rooms, which are both painted in red and black tones, also contain a few unsavoury paintings and various phallic parallels with the Kremlin towers, while TV screens play speeches by Soviet leaders interspersed with soft porn scenes. The dining hall is divided into two sections–Soviet room and the other, anti-Soviet room. The Soviet room has Lenin portraits on the wall and offers a classic Soviet menu with the local Russian favourites. The anti-Soviet room has parody posters and references to liberalization, sex and drugs and offers bourgeois dishes such as fondue and crab. The waitresses are dressed in sexy Communist Party Pioneer uniforms with naughty red high heels, red fishnets and “hammer and sickle” garters.

Haute Cuisine
Anyone with a feat of heights or a weak bladder is advised to avoid Dinner in the Sky, a Belgian-based based novelty restaurant which uses a crane to hoist its diners, table, and waitstaff 50 metres into the air. The structure can accomodate 22 guests, who are strapped into leather seats that are secured to a dining table. The centre of the table has a walking platform that allows room to serve food, take photos, conduct a meeting or do a product presentation. Since its founding in Brussels in 2007, the concept has spread to other parts of the planet, including Las Vegas, where a Dinner in the Sky had its grand opening on New Years Eve 2008. With local officials’ blessings, the platform can be transported to just about anywhere the crane can maneuver. The restaurant belongs firmly in the special-occasion category, however. The cost for eight hours is about $11,500—not including catering.

Six Feet Under
Want to dine inside the world’s largest coffin? Welcome to Eternity, a restaurant in Truskavets, Ukraine, near the Polish border. The restaurant is a windowless, 20-metre-long coffin, six metres wide and six metres high. The decorations correspond to the theme–-funeral wreaths, black shrouded walls and human-sized coffins. Consistent with the chilling atmosphere, a single candle burns on each table. Morbid diners can browse the funeral paraphernalia before ordering from a menu that includes “Nine Day” and “Forty Day” salads–named after local mourning rituals–and an ominous-sounding dish called “Let’s meet in paradise.” The idea of opening the eatery came from the director of a local undertaking firm, who believes this is a great opportunity to attract more customers as well as more tourists.

Photo Credits:

#1: americandigest.org

#2: saynotocrack.com

#3: flickr.com

#4: odditycentral.com

#5: wordpress.com

The outrageous idea arose from the mind of Geoffrey Pyke, an eccentric British scientist who worked as an advisor to Lord Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations. In 1942, Pyke began wrestling with one of the Allies’ most daunting problems. In the mid-Atlantic, beyond the range of the land-based aircraft, was a stretch of ocean where Allied shipping was being cut to pieces by the merciless German submarine fleet. What was needed, Pyke decided, was a means of providing air cover for the merchant ships. His solution was icebergs that resembled aircraft carriers. The platform would melt eventually, of course, but Pyke believed that a large enough piece of ice would last at least a few months—longer if it were insulated on the outside and cooled from within by a refrigeration system. Better yet, the platform couldn’t be sunk; and even if damaged by torpedoes or bombs, repairs could be made simply by freezing new chunks of ice into place. In battle, the ice ships could put their onboard refrigeration systems to effective use by spraying super-cooled water at enemy ships, icing their hatches shut, clogging their guns and freezing enemy sailors to death.

Winston Churchill was receptive to the idea. After reading the formal War Cabinet report on the Habbakuk project in December 1942, Churchill shot back a memo stamped Most Secret. “I attach the greatest importance to the prompt examination of these ideas,” he wrote. “The advantages of a floating island or islands, even if only used as refuelling depots for aircraft, are so dazzling that they do not need at the moment to be discussed.”

But before the plan could be put into anything even close to reality, Pyke had to solve one fundamental problem: ice melts. Early in 1943, two researchers employed by Pyke discovered that by mixing wood pulp, sawdust, or cotton wool with water and freezing the slurry, they could create a substance that still floated nicely but was much stronger and less brittle than plain ice. It could be shaped with ordinary woodworking tools and it melted much more slowly than ice. The material was dubbed pykrete in honour of Pyke.

Pyke excitedly showed the stuff to Mountbatten, who was so similarly afflicted that he rushed into Winston Churchill’s bathroom and in a scene that sound like something out of Monty Python, dropped a block of the stuff in the PM’s bath water. Churchill’s bath may have been ruined, but he gave Mountbatten the go-ahead. Pyke was ordered to produce pykrete in large quantities to test and perfect it. Utmost secrecy was required, so he set up shop in a refrigerated meat locker in a Smithfield Market butcher’s basement; his “shop assistants” were disguised British commandos. The work was carried on behind a protective screen of massive frozen animal carcasses.

The butcher’s backroom soon produced enough samples for Mountbatten and Churchill to take their pykrete show on the road. Mountbatten unveiled the invention at a tense secret meeting of the Allied chiefs of staff at Quebec City’s Chateau Frontenac Hotel in August 1943. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the Pykrete. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of U.S. Admiral Ernest King and ended up in the wall. Mountbatten’s unorthodox demonstration had the desired effect.

In the winter of 1943, Allied scientists began constructing a 1,000-ton, 18-metre-long, nine-metre-wide prototype on Patricia Lake to gather information about how it could be insulated and cooled. The ice ship was disguised with a tin roof to make it look like a boathouse. Although the vessel would move slowly, and the enemy could hardly fail to see it coming, this hardly mattered. “Surprise,” Pyke theorized, “can be obtained from permanence as well as suddenness.” The experimental craft proved seaworthy and its immense hull was as strong as Pyke had predicted, but Mountbatten eschewed the scientist’s reports for a more direct testing method: hauling out a shotgun and vainly trying to blow a hole in the side of their precious prototype.

The engineers managed to keep the model frozen during the entire summer of 1943. Unfortunately, the astronomical cost of deploying a full-size ship quickly became apparent. In the end, the HMS Habbakuk was never built. Land-based aircraft were attaining longer ranges, U-boats were being hunted down faster than they could be built, and the U.S. was gaining numerous island footholds in the Pacific–all of which contributed to a reduced need for a vast, floating airfield. The prototype was abandoned and when the ice ship finally thawed, its skeleton of wooden forms and refrigeration equipment sank to the bottom.

In the 1970s, the remains of the Habbakuk were found by divers and studied by University of Calgary underwater archaeologists. Later, in 1989, a plaque to commemorate the strange ship was erected on Patricia Lake’s southern shore. However, the plaque offers no clue to the fate of Geoffrey Pyke. After the war, eager to convey his unconventional ideas, he wrote and broadcast. He campaigned against the death penalty and for government support of UNICEF. But the more he thought about trying to achieve a better world, the more pessimistic he became–it seemed that human nature was antithetical to innovation in general and his ideas in particular. He was widely mocked in the media of the time, and a sense of gloom overtook him. On February 21, 1948, Pyke committed suicide by consuming sleeping pills.

Photo Credits:

 #1, 2: darkroastedblend.com

#3: cabinetmagazine.org

#4: discoveralberta.com

1. Niagara Falls, Ontario: 12 to 14 million. Admittedly the numbers are boosted by the natural wonder’s close proximity to the U.S. The Americans have their own falls on the other side of the border, but that section is puny compared to Canada’s crescent-shaped Horseshoe Falls, which is 53 metres high and 792 metres wide. This is where the serious thunder happens, and where the daredevils go over in barrels. Interestingly the first person to take the tumble was a woman: Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old Michigan school teacher. Her death-defying plunge, on October 24, 1901, was a publicity stunt. Edson survived, bleeding, but amazingly unharmed. Soon after exiting the barrel, she said, “No one should ever try that again.” Unfortunately, the fortune she hoped to make from a lecture tour was never realized, as her manager was a con-man who took everything she owned. Since Taylor’s historic ride, 14 other people have intentionally gone over the Falls in, or on a device, despite her advice. Some have survived unharmed, but others have drowned or been severely injured.

2. Harbourfront Centre, Toronto: 12 million visitors. This 10-acre site on the city’s waterfront includes shops, restaurants, green space, art performance venues, an ice skating rink, a marina and an extensive boardwalk. For my money, the best part of the Toronto harbourfront is the ferry that takes you to Centre Island and away from the city.

3. Granville Island, Vancouver: 12 million. Granville Island’s unique design has become a model for other cities. Arranged around an industrial theme this cozy urban enclave of theatres, restaurants, shops and artists’ studios, shares pace with a renowned public market. According to the people who keep track of these things, 71 percent of the annual visitors to Granville Island hail from outside B.C.

4. Stanley Park, Vancouver: 8 million. Officially established in 1888 and measuring 405 hectares, it is the largest city-operated park in Canada and the third largest in North America. In fact, it is more than 10 per cent larger than New York City’s Central Park. Stanley Park has an estimated half million trees, some that reach as tall as 76 metres and many of which are hundreds of years old. There are approximately 200 kilometres of trails and roads in the park, including a picturesque park-circling seawall.

5. Le Vieux Port de Montreal (Old Port), Montreal: 7 million. Like Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal’s major tourist draw is a waterfront complex that combines, shopping with cultural attractions and green space. The 10-acre landscaped area on the St. Lawrence River features a huge open-air skating rink, IMAX cinema, a marketplace, a science and technology centre, museums, churches, a botanical garden and a biosphere.

6. Exhibition Place, Toronto: 5 million. Exhibition Place features 192 acres of parkland and is the centre of festivals, trade shows and other events in Toronto. The site holds a number of permanent tenants and is home to many annual fairs and shows. The largest of these is the annual Canadian national Exhibition or “EX,” an 18-day fair that takes place at the end of summer. Although no one keeps the numbers, I’d venture this is the Canadian tourist attraction where the most people have thrown up.

7. The Forks, Winnipeg: 4.5 million. This nine-acre landscaped site in the heart of downtown Winnipeg is situated at the historic juncture of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. There are plazas, gardens, and shops and restaurants made from converted railway stalls, plus a riverside promenade.

8. Banff National Park, Alberta: 3.3 million. Climbing, skiing, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling, golfing–there’s a lot to do in Banff National Park, and all of it with an awe-inspiring backdrop. The park also has abundant wildlife with 280 species of birds and 56 species of mammal. The first day I camped in the park a big black bear walked through the campsite swatting ice coolers. We jumped in the car and rolled up the windows, but a couple of cocky Americans threw rocks at him and shouted insults. Luckily for them, the bear ambled off.

9. Canada’s Wonderland, Vaughan, Ontario: 3.25 million. Our country’s most popular theme park boasts 200 attractions and 65 thrilling rides, a 20-acre water park, live entertainment and North America’s greatest variety of roller coasters. The park recently added its 15th coaster, Behemoth, which it claims is Canada’s biggest, tallest and fastest. Behemoth is more than 5,300 feet long and climbs 230 feet with a 75 degree drop and reaches screaming speeds of 125 kph in 3.9 seconds.
  
10. Le Vieux-Quebec (Old City), Quebec City: 3.02 million. Quebec’s Old Town is the only North American fortified city north of Mexico whose walls still exist. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, as the “Historic District of Old Quebec.” Founded in the early 17th century by French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the city celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2008, and its history shows. In Quebec’s Upper and Lower Towns, above and below the cliff, you can find at least 11 architectural styles, ranging from Classical Revival to International Style. The area is also home to the Plains of Abraham, where a pivotal battle between the French and English in 1759 shaped the future of North America.

Photo Credits:

#1: ioniclodge31.ca

#2: flickr.com

#3: familyvacations.com

#4: nature.desktopnexus.com

#5: vacationrentals.vrcd.com

I was just reading about how the Nile River may not be the world’s longest river, a geographical fact we all had hammered into our heads in grade school. The Nile has been measured at 6,693 kilometres (4,160 miles), making it slightly longer than the Amazon, which is 6,436 kilometres (4,000 miles) long. But researchers in Brazil are now reporting that the Amazon is actually longer. The claim follows an expedition to Peru that established a new starting point further south, which puts the Amazon at 6,800 kilometres (4,250 miles). The Amazon is now said to begin in an ice-covered mountain in southern Peru. Researchers travelled for 14 days, sometimes in freezing temperatures, to establish the location at an altitude of 5,000 metres.

While this watery issue remains in dispute, most of the world’s other longest record-holders appear to be more definite. Let’s take a closer look at some of the longest things, and lest you get the wrong idea, I am not talking about arcane stuff such as the longest toenail, hotdog, conga line or Hollywood marriage. No, consistent with the theme of this blog, this list concerns travel, tourism, transportation or geography.

World’s longest non-stop passenger airline flight: On December 10, 2005, a Boeing 777-200LR dubbed the Worldliner completed the longest non-stop passenger airline flight, covering 21,602 kilometres from Hong Kong to London in roughly 22 hours and 40 minutes. The Boeing also captured the record for the long stay aloft by a passenger airline plane. Onboard were eight pilots, including Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann, Boeing’s first woman test pilot. Although the plane had 301 seats, there were only 27 passengers aboard. There were a couple Boeing executives; several Boeing 777 engineers; representatives from General Electric and a dozen journalists.

World’s longest corn maze: If you happen to be in Liberty, Missouri, and have an urge to get lost check, then check out the Liberty Corn Maze, which ranks as the world’s longest. Each year, using a GPS, they create a new maze in the corn with a particular theme. In 2005 the maze had a NASCAR theme; in 2006 it was dedicated to baseball’s Kansas City Royals; the 2008 design was a salute to the Kansas City Zoo. The Liberty Corn Maze boasts more than 30 kilometres of trails, but don’t worry, if you get lost one of the “corn cops” will help you out.

World’s longest sandy beach: Virtually unknown by western travellers, Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the world’s longest natural sandy beach, runs for an unbroken 125 kilometres alongside the Bay of Bengal. Besides the endless vista of sand there are towering cliffs, surfing waves, rare conch shells, colourful pagodas and Buddhist temples. It derives its name from Captain Cox, a British naval officer. But more poetically the beach is also known as Panowa, meaning “yellow flower.”

World’s longest canyon: This gigantic gash in the ground is found in China. It’s called the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon and it out-canyons Arizona’s Grand Canyon by 50 kilometres, checking in at 496 kilometres in length. It’s also the world’s deepest canyon, reaching depths of 5,382 metres compared to 5,133 metres for the Grand Canyon.

World’s longest zip line: If you’re itching to tackle the world’s longest zip line just make your way to Sun City, South Africa. Stretching an exhilarating two kilometres, the Pronutro zip 2000 is not only the world’s longest zip line, it’s also the highest at 280 metres, as well as the fastest, with riders reaching stomach-turning speeds of over 140 kilometres per hour.

World’s longest street: Starting from Lake Ontario, splitting Toronto into east and west, and finally ending in Rainy River, Ontario, Yonge Street is the longest street in the world. Officially measured at 1,896 kilometres, the street began its history as a trail for the Huron Indians, then was used by European explorers. It was named Yonge Street in 1793, after Sir George Yonge.

World’s longest walk: On Christmas Day 1969, Arthur Blessitt left Los Angeles on a walk and took his 40-pound, 12-foot cross with him. He is still walking and carrying his cross and spreading his message about God everywhere he goes. To date, the eccentric evangelist has visited all 50 U.S. states, all seven continents and 315 nations, while covering more than 61,000 kilometres. He has walked through 52 countries at war and been arrested or jailed 24 times. He has travelled constantly with his second wife, Denise, since their marriage in 1990. To learn more about Blessitt’s 40-year journey, visit his website: www.blessitt.com/

World’s longest apartment building: The Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria, is the world’s longest Gemeindebauten, which in German means “municipality building,” a residential building constructed by a municipality, usually to provide low-cost housing. The Karl-Marx-Hof was built from 1927 to 1930 and measures over 1.1 kilometres in length and has enough room to house about 5,000 people.

World’s longest heat wave: Generally a heat wave is considered to be the number of days with the temperature reaching or exceeding 100 °F or 37.8 °C. This unwanted record goes to the town of Marble Bar in Western Australia. From October 31, 1923 to April 7, 1924, the temperature broke the 100 °F mark for a scorching 160 consecutive days.

World’s longest streak of rain: Next time you’re complaining about the weather take some heart from the following record. Kaneohe Ranch, in Oahu, Hawaii, reported 247 straight days of rain from August 27 1993 to April 30, 1994.

World’s longest railroad: Extending a formidable 9,446 kilometres from Moscow to the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific Coast, the Trans-Siberian Railway covers over one third of the circumference of the Earth. Czar Alexander III designed the railroad in 1891 to give Russia an accessible port on the Pacific. It was not completely finished until 1916. The cost of construction was 1.4 billion rubles (equivalent to what it cost Russia to wage World War I) and the lives of uncounted thousands of slave labourers. Oddly, though the trip spans seven times zones, the train itself and the official schedule stay on Moscow time. The week-long epic costs about $500 for a first-class ticket.

World’s longest windsurfing journey: You need to be crazy and feel at home on the water to set this record. Evidently Flavio Jardim and Diogo Guerreiro qualify. From May 17, 2004 to July 18, 2005, these two intrepid Brazilians wind-surfed an astounding 8,120 kilometres from Chui to Oiapoque on the Brazilian coast.

World’s longest road tunnel: If you’d like to take a drive through the longest road tunnel in the world get yourself and your car over to Norway where you will find the Laerdal Tunnel. Built between 1995 and 2000 at a cost of $125 million, the tunnel covers 24.5 kilometres and runs from Laerdal to Aurland. It was opened on November 27, 2000.

World’s longest staircase: Feeling full of vim? The Niesen funicular (basically a tram) in Switzerland rises up to an altitude of 2,336 metres. Next to the Niesen funicular is an outdoor service staircase, with a mind-boggling 11,674 steps. Though the staircase is normally only used by staff, it is opened to 200 people for one day a year for the Niesenlauf stair run. And quite an ordeal it is, with competitors high-stepping through cloud, rain or even snow, even though the race takes place in June. The record for the event is one hour two minutes for men and one hour nine minutes for women, which seems remarkably fast considering the number of steps is equivalent to climbing the CN Tower 4.5 times.

World’s longest lightning bolt: Most lightning bolts are a modest few kilometres in length. However, there have been much longer ones. The longest bolt ever recorded stretched an electrifying 190 kilometres near Dallas, Texas. It was an example of positive lightning, a rare form of lightning that originates from positively charged regions of the thundercloud. Also known colloquially as “bolts from the blue,” positive lightning is also believed to have been responsible for the 1963 in-flight explosion and subsequent crash of Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707.

World’s longest earthquake: A massive quake that hit Sumatra in Indonesia on December 26, 2004, measured 9.3 on the Richter Scale and lasted 10 minutes. Earthquakes usually last only a few seconds, which indicates the force of this one. The energy released by it equalled the power of a 100 gigaton bomb. This quake also created the longest fault ever recorded in the sea floor, a rupture extending for 1,288 kilometres. The earthquake is believed to be the second largest ever recorded. Nearly 300,000 people lost their lives in the disaster.

World’s longest national anthem: Do the Greeks actually sing this? “Ode to Freedom,” originally written as a poem by Dionysios Soloms in 1823 and composed by Nikolaos Mantzaros in 1828, was adopted as the Greek national anthem in 1864. The anthem is 158 stanzas long.

World’s longest sea-spanning bridge: Some 600 experts spent nine years working on the design of this masterpiece of modern architecture. China’s Hangzhou Bay Bridge is an S-shaped stayed-cable bridge with six lanes of traffic in both directions The 36-kilometre long bridge, which opened in May 2008, spans the mouth of Hangzhou Bay in the East China Sea, linking the commercial capital of Shanghai and the port city of Ningbo. A 30-storey observation tower and a hotel and conference centre are going to be built in the middle of the span.

World’s longest continuously inhabited city: Cities may come and go, but Damascus remains. Recent excavations have shown that the Syrian capital was inhabited as early as 8,000 to 10,000 BC, although it was not written about as an important city until about 4,000 BC.

World’s longest continuous taxi fare: Ada Beal was a wealthy spinster with a rich appetite for adventure. Charlie Heard was a working-class taxi driver, with a wife and four children. In the early years of the Depression, the two Australians settled on a most remarkable business deal. He was sitting in his taxi in Geelong, a town near Melbourne, when Ada approached him and asked if he would be interested in a long fare. The fare turned out to be much longer than he expected. Ada told Charlie that she wanted to go across the continent to Darwin and back. On June 20, 1930, Miss Beal, wearing her trade mark fur coat, along with two female friends, set out in Heard’s 1928 Hudson soft top. The three-month road trip took them from Victoria’s Great Ocean Road to Darwin, via Warrnambool, Adelaide, Port Augusta and Alice Springs, then home again down the east coast, a total of 11,500 kilometres. Miss Beal reportedly paid Heard £300 for his trouble, which equates to about $20,000 today. He used the money to buy a petrol station. On the 78th anniversary of the trip on June 20, 2008, five of Heard’s grandchildren re-created the journey in a restored 1929 Essex, a close match to the original car.

Photo Credits:

#1: vaughanwylie.com

#2: suobil.com

#3: lifeclever.com

#4: contractjournal.com 

A sports reporter covering the Euro 2008 soccer tournament arrived late for his Air Dolomiti flight from Verona to Vienna. Angered when the staff for Air Dolomiti told him he could no longer board the flight, the man did what any of us would do: he called the airline on his cell phone and made a bomb threat so the flight would be delayed. The bogus threat closed air traffic at the airport for several hours while the bomb squad searched the airplane. But shortly after his anonymous call to the police, the German journalist went back to the check-in counter to say he had heard the plane was no longer preparing to take off. Since no public announcement had been made as to the flight’s status, the man quickly became the prime suspect. Police then interviewed the reporter and found, of course, that he used his cell phone to make the bomb threat. 

A pilot with the Turkish airline Anadolujet was fired in September after he left the cockpit to use the bathroom and left the controls of the Boeing 737 in the hands of a 15-year-old boy. Well, at least that’s the official line the airline is giving. The captain says he merely let the boy sit in his seat while he went to the restroom; the co-pilot was actually the one in control of the plane. How did the teen get into the cockpit? He was apparently a plane junkie, had practiced on a flight simulator, and asked if he could observe the captain and ask him questions. The pilot agreed and invited him back to the cockpit. The captain landed in trouble after he snapped a picture of the kid sitting in his seat. You guessed it: the picture went on the Internet.

A stubborn German flier nearly died from alcohol poisoning at a Nuremberg airport security checkpoint after he chose to drink a litre of vodka instead of getting rid of it. European security rules stipulate that passengers may take only a small amount of liquid onboard with them in their carry-on luggage. But the 64-year-old German man, who was on his way to Dresden from Egypt, refused to comply. He also balked at his other options–put the vodka in his checked luggage or send it home. Instead he downed the entire litre at the security checkpoint. According to local police, he “was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function.” The man was sent to a local clinic for treatment.

Startled airport employees in Bromma, Sweden, called police in July after a dwarf suddenly hopped out of a large suitcase at the check-in counter. Police discovered that it was a stunt being filmed by a hidden camera for a comedy program on private television network Kanal 5. Police spokesman Mats Eriksson says airport staff decided against filing charges even though they were “shocked and humiliated” by the prank. Kanal 5 spokesman Dan Panas told Swedish news agency TT that the show was meant to be “provocative and entertaining.” He said the intent was not to make fun of dwarves, but to make entertainment out of “extreme situations.”

On a flight from New York to Georgetown, Guyana, in July, a first-class passenger got angry at seeing economy passengers being allowed to exit before him- so he opened an emergency door and slid down the chute. The man appeared to be intoxicated, the Associated Press reported, perhaps unnecessarily.

In May, a Tokyo Customs officer secretly slipped 124 grams of hashish into a piece of luggage belonging to a traveller from Hong Kong. It was expected that the sniffer-dogs who work at Narita International Airport, would find the drugs. But the canines failed to locate the contraband and the passenger cleared customs and left the airport with his souvenir intact. At this stage the dog handler who had made the initial mistake “panicked” and informed his superiors. The Tokyo Customs Department then frantically sought help from airport officials to track down the traveller at his Tokyo hotel and recover the hashish, which had a street value of $10,000. Japanese customs officials are banned from using travellers’ luggage for training practices (normally a training suitcase is used), but one worker admiited that it was common practice. “We want to improve the sniffer dogs’ ability, so we have practiced this way several times in the past.” The officer who lost the drugs was suspended from duty for three months, while two others had their salary cut by 10 percent for three months. The head of Tokyo Customs was also given a verbal warning for failing to oversee the operations, and eight other senior officers were either warned or given temporary pay cuts. The dogs apparently escaped punishment. Said Tokyo Customs spokesman Kazutoshi Takahashi, “We are deeply sorry that such acts have happened.”

Jerome James was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in September for smuggling three endangered banded iguanas from Fiji. While that may seem like a fairly routine bust at first glance, his hiding place was definitely different. James wears a prosthetic leg, which he had hollowed out and stuffed with the iguanas before wearing it back to the U.S.

A homeless chef who lived at London’s Gatwick Airport for three years was jailed in August 2008 for repeatedly breaking an antisocial behaviour order banning him from the airport. Anthony Delaney, 43, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison, had moved to Gatwick in 2004 and ate, slept and showered there in a manner similar to Tom Hanks’s character in the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal. He would only leave Gatwick once a fortnight to make the 12-mile walk to collect his Jobseekers’ Allowance and survived on cheap sandwiches and food voucher handouts from genuinely delayed passengers. He slept in disabled toilets and spied on staff to find out the security code for the showers, and he dodged armed police by learning their patrol routine. But in 2006 he was barred from entering the airport until 2011 after he was convicted of stealing from passengers and an airport store. Over the next two years Delaneywas caught breaking the antisocial order three times, and in January 2008 he was jailed for 95 days. He was released immediately because of the time he had already spent on remand, and within a few hours he was found at Gatwick again, breaking the order for a fourth time. On June 3 he broke the order again and was arrested.

Italian women carrying luggage containing the skeletal remains of a man who died in Brazil 11 years ago were stopped by Munich airport police during a stopover on their journey from Sao Paulo to Naples. “Airport security spotted the skull and bones when the suitcase was put through the x-ray machine,” said police spokesman Christian Maier. One of the women was the dead man’s sister and she explained to officials that it had been her brother’s wish to be buried in Italy. After showing his death certificate, the Italian bone smugglers, aged 63 and 62, were allowed on their next flight to Naples. “We questioned the women and they produced a valid death certificate showing he had died 11 years ago of natural causes. As they were not violating any German laws they were allowed to continue their journey to Italy,” said Maier.

A senior pilot with Cathay Pacific Airways was fired for an “unauthorised low-level flypast” of a new Boeing 777-300ER in Seattle in January 2008. Ian Wilkinson had just taken off from Everett Airport bound for Hong Kong with about 60 passengers on board, including Cathay Pacific chairman Christopher Pratt, when he suddenly returned to the airfield for a low-level flypast with the landing gear up. News sources say Wilkinson had obtained permission from the tower for the stunt, but not from his employers. While onlookers applauded the daring low-level pass, the plane’s passengers were said to be “stunned into silence.” When footage of the Top Gun escapade later found its way onto the Internet, it revealed Wilkinson had taken his jet down to a mere 30 feet above the runway. Following the incident, Cathay Pacific issued a notice to all cockpit crew reminding them of the company’s policy for conducting fly-bys.

Photo Credits:

#1: abcnews.com

#2: pbase.com

#3: people.tribe.net

#4: orientaltrading.com 

1. Burning Man, a bizarre, eight-day festival dedicated to radical self-expression, takes place annually in Black Rock Desert in which U.S. state?
A. California
B. Utah
C. Colorado
D. Nevada

2. What is the only country to feature a building on its national flag?
A. Panama
B. Lebanon
C. Cambodia
D. Albania

3. If you travel to Spain you will likely find yourself offered tapas (small dishes of food) to eat. What is the English translation of tapas?
A. Tokens
B. Appetizers
C. Lids
D. Jewels

4. Covering an area of 55,000 square kilometres, the Selous Game Reserve is the world’s largest game reserve. In which country is it located?
A. Botswana
B. Kenya
C. Tanzania
D. South Africa

5. A wind known as “the Fremantle Doctor” cools the west coast of what country during the summer months?
A. India
B. Australia
C. Portugal
D. Ireland

6. The Great Wall of China is one of the world’s most amazing man-made constructions. If you began the wall in Vancouver, B.C., approximately how far eastward would it extend?
A. To Calgary
B. To Winnipeg
C. To Toronto
D. To Halifax

7. Which country has the largest number of active volcanoes?
A. Indonesia
B. Guatemala
C. Japan
D. Iceland

8. The song “The Girl From Ipanema” launched the Bossa Nova craze in the early 1960s. Ipanema is a district in which South American city?
A. Rio De Janeiro
B. Buenos Aires
C. Montevideo
D. Sao Paulo

9. What does the “Red” in Moscow’s Red Square refer to?
A. The colour of Communism
B. It symbolizes the blood shed by Soviet soldiers
C. It means “beautiful” in old Russian
D. The colour of the Kremlin’s brick walls

10. Women are still not allowed to drive in which country?
A. Kuwait
B. Libya
C. Afghanistan
D. Saudi Arabia

11. Where will tourists encounter soldiers clad in vivid red, blue and yellow uniforms, known as the Swiss Guard?
A. The Vatican
B.  Luxembourg
C. Monaco
D. San Marino

12. Table Mountain, a popular destination for hikers, climbers and cavers, is a major landmark in what African city?
A. Nairobi, Kenya
B. Khartoum, Sudan
C. Cape Town, South Africa
D. Rabat, Morocco

13. New Zealand was named after a region in which European country?
A. Germany
B. Portugal
C. Sweden
D. The Netherlands

Answers

1. D. Nevada
Launched as a free bonfire party with 20 participants on San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986, the Burning Man festival has since evolved into massive tribal gathering in the desert in northen Nevada. Last year’s event attracted 50,000 people who paid from $210 to $295 to get through the gates. Because of the variety of goals fostered by attendees, known as “Burners,” Burning Man does not have a single focus. Features of the event are subject to the participants and include community, artwork, absurdity, decommodification and revelry. At the end of the festival, a large, wooden effigy of man is burned.

2. C. Cambodia
The design of the Cambodian flag consists of three horizontal stripes–the top and bottom are blue and of equal size; and the centre stripe is a larger red one with a white emblem representing the towers of Angkor Wat in the middle of it. The famous temple was built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II, who although he governed a Buddhist country, wanted to use Hindu concepts such as king-as-incarnation-of-gods to legitimate his rule. The temple was thus dedicated to Vishnu and constructed as a Hindu temple. It was converted for use as a Buddhist temple in the 14th or 15th century when Hinduism became unfashionable.

3. C. Lids
According to culinary lore, the concept of tapas began in Spain at least a century ago, when barmen started putting a slice of bread over a glass of beer or wine to keep the flies out of the drinks (“tapa” means “lid”). Patrons found these lids to be quite tasty, and would often choose their favourite bar by the quality of its tapas. Accompanied with a wide variety of wines, the concept of tapas has since evolved into a complete dining experience.

4. C. Tanzania
The pristine reserve, a World Heritage Site since 1982, covers about six per cent of Tanzania’s land surface. Larger than Switzerland, it is the world’s largest game reserve and second only to the Serengeti in its concentration of wildlife. It is also the sanctuary of the biggest elephant herd in the world, about 32,000. However, due to its remote location, and because it is most easily accessible only by small aircraft, Selous attracts few tourists, although hunting safaris are popular.

5. B. Australia
The cooling afternoon sea breeze which occurs during summer months in coastal areas of Western Australia was named the Fremantle Doctor because it appears to come from the nearby coastal city of Fremantle, and it brings welcome relief from the broiling hot temperatures. However, it is almost certain that the term Fremantle Doctor has its origins in Fremantle’s dark past. At Catherine Point, a short distance south of Fremantle, crematoriums were established during the colony’s early days to dispose of the corpses of those who had fallen prey to illness. It is reported that the Doctor was named in honour of the wind which blew the stench of burning human flesh inland across the settlement.

6. D. To Halifax
China’s Great Wall extends some 6,400 kilometres (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along a path that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 kilometres in total, which is longer than the distance from Vancouver to Halifax. At its peak, this structure was guarded by more than one million men. It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of two to three million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.

7. A. Indonesia
The volcanoes that dot Indonesia’s island arc give it its ominous nickname, “The Ring of Fire.” The country can claim 167 of the 850 active volcanoes known in the world. Krakatoa, which blew up in 1883, may be the most famous volcanic event in modern history, but another Indonesian volcano, Tambora, which erupted in 1815, was even more violent, killing 71,000 people. The most active volcanoes in Indonesia are Kelut and Merapi on Java island, and both have been responsible for thousands of deaths. Since AD 1000, Kelut has erupted more than 30 times, while Merapi has erupted more than 80 times.

8. A. Rio de Janiero
Ah, the cool sounds of the Bossa Nova. “The Girl From Ipanema” was inspired by a real person, a striking five-foot-eight-inch teenage brunette named Heloisa Pinto, whom the song’s composers–Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes–used to watch as she strolled past the popular Veloso Bar, attracting wolf whistles from the regulars. The Veloso Bar, renamed “A Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl From Ipanema) by its owners, still exists in Ipanema, an upscale neighbourhood in Rio.

9. C. It means “beautiful” in old Russian
Nothing epitomizes Moscow, Russia’s vast and ancient capital, like Red Square or Krasnaya Ploschad, as it is known in Russian. An enormous 400 by 150 metres, it lies in the heart of Moscow and on its four sides stand the Kremlin, GUM Department Store, State Historical Museum and St. Basil’s Cathedral–the centres of government, commerce, history and religion. The square is also home to Lenin’s tomb, a gleaming granite mausoleum to the revered founder of Socialism. The name of Red Square derives neither from the colour of the bricks around it nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the word krasnaya originally meant beautiful in old Russian. It only came to mean red in more modern times. The word was originally applied (with the meaning “beautiful”) to Saint Basil’s Cathedral, and was later transferred to the nearby square.

10. D. Saudi Arabia
Women in Saudi Arabia are subject to very strict regulations. They cannot vote, they must be covered from head to toe in public, they are not permitted to travel unaccompanied by male relatives, and although there is no specific law to forbid it, they cannot obtain driving licences, because for a woman to drive is considered sinful. The ban on female drivers was recently extended to cover golf carts.

11. A. The Vatican
One of the oldest military corps in the world, the Pontifical Swiss Guard has been protecting the Pope since 1506. Although most tourists see the Guards in their famous multicoloured dress uniforms complete with a helmet similar to that worn by the Spanish conquistadors, and assume they are merely ceremonial soldiers, they are actually a competent modern force. Each member of the Guard has served his time in the regular Swiss Army before being allowed to join on a sponsorship from his local canton and they all train with modern weaponry. The size of the unit has fluctuated over time, but since 2003 it has consisted of 134 men.

12. C. Cape Town, South Africa
Table Mountain forms a prominent landmark overlooking the city of Cape Town in South Africa. The mountain’s flattened summit is often covered by clouds or mist spilling over the top to form the “table cloth.” A Portugese explorer named Antonio de Saldanha was the first European to climb the mountain in 1503 and he named it Table Mountain.

13. D. The Netherlands
The islands of New Zealand were named by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642. Tasman originally named it Staten Landt, believing it to be part of the land of that name off the coast of Argentina. When that was shown not to be so Dutch authorities named it Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch. The two major seafaring provinces of the Netherlands at the time were Holland and Zeeland, and originally the Dutch explorers named the largest landmass of Oceania and the two islands to the southeast respectively, New Holland and New Zeeland. New Holland was later replaced by the name Australia, but the name New Zealand remained in place.

Photo Credits:

#1: flickr.com

#2: faqs.org

#3: paulnoll.com

#4: img.dailymail.co.uk

Before I get to the world’s murder rankings, it’s worth noting that Baghdad, which many would nominate as the world’s most dangerous city, is not at the top of the list. In fact, there are about a dozen American cities with a higher murder rate than Iraq’s capital, and if you add assaults and rapes to the index, even more U.S. urban centres rank higher on the danger scale. The lesson? Always keep in mind how media coverage can skew the facts. For those who are curious I have listed the 10 most crime-ridden American cities according to the 2008 Congressional Quarterly Report, which calculates crime using six categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft.

1. New Orleans, Louisiana
2. Camden, New Jersey
3. Detroit, Michigan
4. St. Louis, Missouri
5. Oakland, California
6. Flint, Michigan
7. Gary, Indiana
8. Birmingham, Alabama
9. Richmond, California
10. North Charleston, South Carolina

Now on to the world’s heavyweights. According to a recent report published by the well-respected Foreign Policy magazine, here the five most dangerous cities based on murders per capita. Surprise! Three of them are major tourist destinations.

Caracas, Venezuela
Population: 3.2 million
Murder rate: 130 per 100,000 residents 
Caracas has become far more dangerous in recent years than any South American city, even beating out the once notorious Bogotá. What’s worse, the official homicide statistics likely fall short of the mark because they omit prison-related murders as well as deaths that the state never gets around to properly “categorizing.” The numbers also don’t count those who died while “resisting arrest,” suggesting that Caracas’s cops—already known for their brutality against student protesters—might be cooking the books. Many have pointed the finger at president Hugo Chavez, whose government has failed to tackle the country’s rising rates of violent crime. In fact, since Chávez took over in 1998, Venezuela’s official homicide rate has climbed 67 percent from 4,550 to 13,156 in 2007, an average of 36 murders per day—mostly due to increased drug and gang violence. Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, who recently resigned as interior minister, claimed in July that homicide has dropped 27 percent since January—but experts say he’s just playing with numbers. As for Caracas, whose crime-infested barrios continue to expand, some speculate that its actual murder rate is closer to 160 per 100,000.

Cape Town, South Africa
Population: 3.5 million
Murder rate: 62 per 100,000 inhabitants
A European bastion in the heart of turbulent South Africa, picturesque Cape Town nonetheless has the country’s highest murder rate. The city’s homicides usually take place in suburban townships rather than in the more upscale urban areas that tourists visit. According to the South African Police Service, most of the area’s violent crimes happen between people who know one another, including a horrific case last year in which four males doused a female friend in gasoline and lit her on fire. Occurring just outside city limits, the incident apparently happened after the assailants had taken hard drugs, the use of which has risen along with Cape Town’s violent crime rate. The whopping 12.7 percent rise in the city’s murder rate from 2006 to 2007 has local politicians worried, especially as South Africa prepares to host the 2010 World Cup. The government has hired more police officers to prepare for the tournament, which could help cut crime in soccer-fan hot spots. But until better efforts are made to police Cape Town’s poverty-stricken townships, it’s unlikely that the murder rate—an average of six per day—will see any major drop.

New Orleans, United States
Population: 220,614 to 312,000; estimates vary due to displacement of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Murder rate: Estimates range from 67 (New Orleans Police Department) to 95 (FBI) per 100,000
With its grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing and a high incarceration rate, the Big Easy has long been plagued by a serious epidemic of violent crime. Hurricane Katrina didn’t help. Since the storm ravaged the city in 2005, drug dealers have been fighting over a smaller group of users, leading to many killings. On just one four-block stretch of Josephine Street, in the city centre, four people were murdered in 2007 and 15 people shot, including a double homicide on Christmas day. A precise murder rate is hard to pinpoint because the population is swelling quickly, approaching its pre-Katrina numbers. Whether you use New Orleans’s own figures or the FBI’s, however, the city remains the most deadly in the U.S., easily surpassing big, bad Detroit, which had 46 murders per 100,000 people in 2008. New Orleans posted the highest crime rate of any U.S. city last year, with 209 murders and more than 19,000 reported criminal incidents. This marks the third stright year that the homicide rate has increased, up from 162 in 2006 and 209 in 2007.

Moscow, Russia
Population: 10.4 million
Murder rate: 9.6 per 100,000 (estimate)
Moscow’s murder rate is paltry compared with that of Caracas or Cape Town, but the city still ranks far above other major European capitals. London, Paris, Rome and Madrid, for instance, all had rates below 2 murders per 100,000 in 2006. Moscow’s homicide rate is down 15 percent this year from last, but the recent surge in hate crimes—including the deadly beating of a Tajik carpenter by a gang of youths on Valentine’s Day—suggests that the lull might be temporary. Sixty ethnically motivated killings have taken place in 2008, part of a sixfold increase in hate crimes committed in the city during 2007. Several of the murders have been attributed to ultranationalist skinhead groups like the “Spas,” who killed 11 people in a 2006 bombing of a multiethnic market. The Russian government has finally stepped up to combat the problem, assisting immigrant groups and cracking down on street hoodlums. Still, the continued rise in extremist attacks is worrisome. And we can’t forget the steady tide of contract murders of journalists, bankers and other high-profile people in the city.

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
Population: 254,200
Murder rate: 54 per 100,000 
The capital of Papua New Guinea, little Port Moresby might seem like an odd addition to this list. But its high violent crime rates, along with alarming levels of police corruption and gang activity, helped earn the city the dubious title of “worst city” in a 2004 Economist Intelligence Unit survey. With gangs called “raskols” controlling the city centres and unemployment rates hovering around 80 percent, it’s easy to see how Port Moresby beat out the 130 other survey contenders. Visitors are advised not go out after sunset and to avoid walking in many areas even duing the day. Port Moresby’s police don’t seem to be helping the crime situation—last November, five officers were charged with offenses ranging from murder to rape. In August 2008, the city’s police barracks were put on a three-month curfew due to a recent slew of bank heists reportedly planned inside the stations by officers and their co-conspirators. Rising tensions between Chinese immigrants and native Papua New Guineans are also cause for concern, as are reports of increased activity of organized Chinese crime syndicates.

Other large cities that pose definite risks to personal safety include Lagos, Nigeria; Medellin, Colombia; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; Kingston, Jamaica; and Johannesburg, South Africa. And what about Winnipeg? Although it may not rank among the world’s worst places, that New York travel writer may have had a valid point. The Manitoban capital posted the highest violent crime rate in Canada in 2007.

Photo Credits:

#1: toppayingideas.com

#2: abstrakedfiles.wordpress.com

#3: travelmood.com

#4: flickr.com

#5: destination360.com

#6: Torsten Blackwood (Getty Images)

1. At which Mayan city do tourists gather during the spring and fall to watch a snake slide down a pyramid?
A. Palenque
B. Tikal
C. Uxmal
D. Chichen Itza

2. What is the only country whose national flag is not rectangular or square, but rather the shape of two stacked triangles?
A. Nepal
B. Cyprus
C. Saudi Arabia
D. Cambodia

3. What is the world’s safest airline based on the number of miles a carrier has flown without a fatal accident?
A. Alaska Airlines
B. Qantas Airways
C. Swissair
D. AeroMexico

4. In which U.S. state are you most likely to be struck by lightning?
A. Hawaii
B. Texas
C. Florida
D. Washington

5. What country are you in if you are travelling to see a famous natural landmark that the native inhabitants call Uluru?
A. Tibet
B. Tanzania
C. Ecuador
D. Australia

6. In which city will you find the great square of Djemaa el Fna, “the gathering place of the dead”?
A. Damascus
B. Zanzibar
C. Marrakesh
D. Timbuktu

7. The well known children’s song “Here Comes Santa Claus” was inspired by a 1946 parade down a street in what American city?
A. New York
B. Boston
C. Detroit
D. Los Angeles

8. The Bay of Fires has been named the world’s “hottest” travel destination for 2009 by the international guide book, Lonely Planet. Where is the Bay of Fires?
A. Chile
B. Tasmania
C. New Zealand
D. Madagascar

9. Which country consumes the largest amount of coffee per person per year?
A. Norway
B. Italy
C. Brazil
D. The United States

10. Which country produces 60 percent of the world’s emeralds?
A. Russia
B. South Africa
C. Colombia
D. Australia

11. Considered “the religious capital of India,” this city attracts more than one million Hindu pilgrims each year. What is its name?
A. Varanasi
B. Bangalore
C. Dharamshala
D. Calcutta

12. The European colonial powers fought to gain control of the Spice Islands. What is the name by which we know these islands today?
A. The Maldives
B. The West Indies
C. The Moluccas
D. The New Hebrides

13. The skyline of what country’s capital city is dominated by the empty and dilapidated 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel?
A. Burma
B. Laos
C. Uzbekistan
D. North Korea

14. If you are driving the world’s longest highway, which country are you in?
A. Canada
B. Russia
C. China
D. Australia

15. According to Forbes magazine which city currently boasts the largest number of billionaires?
A. New York
B. Los Angeles
C. Moscow
D. London

Answers

1. D. Chichen Itza
The phenomenon that El Castillo is famous for occurs twice each year, at the spring and fall equinoxes. As the equinox sun sets, a play of light and shadow creates the appearance of a snake that gradually undulates down the stairway of the pyramid. This diamond-backed snake is composed of seven or so triangular shadows, cast by the stepped terraces of the pyramid. The sinking sun seems to give life to the sinuous shadows, which crawl down the stairs, before ultimately uniting with one of two enormous snake-head sculptures carved into the base of the stairway. Thousands of people gather to see this phenomenon, which may have been viewed by the ancient Maya as the manifestation of the god Kukulcan, the feathered serpent.

2. A. Nepal
The unusual shape is apparently owed to the fact that the flag was derived from two pennants that were used by separate branches of the Rana family, members of which served as the nation’s prime minister from 1846 until 1951. The white moon in the upper, smaller triangle represents the royal house, and the white sun represents the Rana family. Adopted as the official flag of Nepal 1962, the double pennant actually dates back to the 19th century.

3. B. Qantas Airways
Remember this exchange from the movie Rain Man? Tom Cruise says to Dustin Hoffman: “All airlines have crashed at one time or another. That doesn’t mean they aren’t safe.” “Qantas,” Hoffman replies. “Qantas never crashed.” Well, that isn’t quite right: the Australian airline suffered several fatal crashes in its early days, most involving biplanes or flying boats. However, Qantas remains the safest airline if one measures safety by the number of miles a carrier has flown without fatal accident. That said, hundreds of airlines have suffered no fatal crashes.

4. C. Florida
Florida has more thunderstorms–and thus, more lightning strikes–than any other U.S. state. Known as the “Lightning Capital of the World,” Florida averages more than 10 deaths and 30 injuries from electrical bolts per year. Approximately 50 percent of the deaths and injuries occur to individuals involved in recreational activities, and nearly 40 percent of those are water-related: boating, swimming, surfing and others.

5. D. Australia
Uluru, better known to the outside world as Ayers Rock, is one of Australia’s most recognizable natural icons. The sandstone formation stands 348 metres high with most of its bulk below the ground, and measures 9.4 kilometres in circumference. It is notable for appearing to change colour as the different light strikes it at different times of the day and year, with sunset a particularly remarkable sight when it briefly glows bright red. On 19 July 1873, the surveyor William Gosse visited Uluru and named it Ayers Rock in honour of the then-Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. Since then, both names have been used. In 1993, a dual naming policy was adopted In Australia that allowed official names to consist of both the traditional Aboriginal name and the English name. On 15 December 1993, the landmark was renamed “Ayers Rock/Uluru” and became the first officially dual-named feature in the Northern Territory. The order of the dual names was officially reversed to “Uluru/Ayers Rock” on 6 November 2002 following a request from the Regional Tourism Association in Alice Springs.

6. C. Marrakesh
The name Djemaa el Fna in Arabic could either mean “assembly of the dead” or “place of the vanished mosque” but there is nothing ghostlike about the Djemaa. It is a massive square packed day and night by locals and tourists alike and a heritage site listed by UNESCO whose cultural space is a “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.” The plaza is the centre of medina life both day and night as a gathering place and unofficial stage for street theatre. For over a millennium, the daily bill has featured acrobats, henna tattoo artists, storytellers, belly dancers, musicians, snake charmers and potion sellers. 

7. D. Los Angeles
Gene Autry, “the singing cowboy,” was inspired to write the song after riding his horse down Hollywood Boulevard in the 1946 Christmas Parade and hearing numerous children call out, “Here Comes Santa Claus!” Soon after, Hollywood Boulevard became known as Santa Claus Lane during the holiday season.

8. B. Tasmania
“White beaches of hourglass-fine sand, Bombay Sapphire sea, an azure sky–and nobody,” wrote Lonely Planet. “This is the secret edge of Tasmania, laid out like a pirate’s treasure map of perfect beach after sheltered cove, all fringed with forest. It’s not long since the Bay of Fires came to international attention, and the crowds are bound to flock. Now is the time to visit.” The Bay of Fires finished higher on the hot list than such other contenders as the Basque country of France and Spain; Chiloe in Chile; Ko Tao in Thailand; Languedoc in France; and Nam Ha in Laos.

9. A. Norway
The serious caffeine fiends are all living in Northern Europe. Although more coffee is consumed in volume by drinkers in Brazil and America, Scandinavia tops the charts in terms of per capita consumption. Norway leads all nations with 10.7 kilograms consumed by person per year, followed closely by Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

10. C. Colombia
Some of the rarest and most expensive emeralds in the world come from three main mining areas in Colombia: Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor. The green gems were mined there as far back as 1,000 A.D., long before the Spaniards arrived. Many of the gold and emerald encrusted items that the indigenous tribes created are displayed in the Museo del Oro in Bogotá.

11. A. Varanasi
Varanasi, or Benares, as it sometimes called, is one of the world’s most ancient cities. As Mark Twain wrote: “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Located in North India, in the eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh, along the left bank of the Ganges River, ”the holy city of India,” attracts more than one million pilgrims each year. For the devout Hindu, Varanasi has always been a special place, besides being a pilgrimage centre. It is considered especially auspicious to die here, ensuring an instant route to heaven.

12. C. The Moluccas
The Spice Islands are known today as the Moluccas or Maluku Islands. They lie on the equator between Sulawesi and New Guinea in Indonesia, and were at one time the world’s only source of mace and nutmeg. Because of the high value that the spices had in Europe and the large incomes that it produced, the Dutch and British were soon involved in conflicts to try to gain a monopoly over the region. The fighting for control over these small islands became very intense with the Dutch even giving the island of Manhattan to the British in exchange for a small island that gave the Dutch full control over the Banda archipelago. The Bandanese people suffered badly in the fighting with most of the inhabitants being either slaughtered or enslaved by the Dutch. More than 6,000 were killed during the Spice Wars.

13. D. North Korea
The Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea’s capital city of Pyongyang is a complete engineering failure. Standing 1,083 feet tall, with a total of 3.9 million square feet of floor space, it was planned to have 3,000 rooms and seven revolving restaurants. It would be the tallest hotel and seventh largest building in the world if it were finished. It would also have been the first building with over one hundred floors outside of New York or Chicago. The first event scheduled to be held here was June 1989’s World Festival of Youth and Students, but the hotel was nowhere near ready for that event. Its construction was plagued with problems, and after five years ground to a halt due to a shortage of funding. Work has never resumed; the project was abandoned, leaving a lonely construction crane perched on the hotel’s peak. The shell of the building is complete, but it has not been certified as safe for occupancy. There are no windows, fixtures, or fittings. The extremely poor quality concrete used in its construction has left the building sagging to such a great degree that the structure can never be finished without a massive overhaul. The hotel, which was once found on city maps before construction even began, has now been completely stricken from the official maps. Tour guides usually claim not to know where it is.

14. A. Canada
Officially completed on September 3, 1962, the Trans-Canada Highway is the longest highway in the world. Stretching across Canada from Victoria, British Columbia, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, it covers 7,821 kilometres.

15. C. Moscow
According to Forbes magazine, the Russian capital is home to 74 billionaires, with an average net worth of $5.9 billion. That’s quite a jump from just five billionaire residents in 2002. Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska is the richest of Russia’s 500 billionaires with an estimated worth at about $40 billion. Moscow knocked off perennial No. 1 city New York, which ranks close behind with 71 billionaires and an average net worth of $3.3 billion. Coming in a distant third was London with 36 billionaires.

Photo Credits:

#1: mythencyclopedia.com

#2: sacred-destinations.com

#3: sweetwatervillas.com.au

#4: wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi

Crappy Keepsakes
Researchers at the world’s largest giant panda research centre in southwest China’s Sichuan Province have come up with a novel way to profit from panda dung: they make souvenirs out of it. The staff at the Chengdu centre has sculpted photo frames, bookmarks, fans and panda statues out of the 300 tons of excrement produced by 40 giant pandas each year.An official at the facility, Jing Shimin, claims the souvenirs are relatively odour free. “They don’t smell too bad because 70 per cent of the dung is just remains of the bamboo that the pandas are unable to digest.” According to Jing, the panda dung is carefully selected, then smashed, dried and sterilized at a temperature of 300 degrees Celsius to provide clean, raw material for the manufacturers. Craftsmen then draw or sculpt figures by hand for tourists to take home. “We used to spend at least 6,000 yuan (US $770) every month to get rid of the droppings but now they can prove lucrative as half of them will be sold as souvenirs.” 

The Silent Scream
A Sacramento amusement park received so many complaints about noise that they instituted a “No Screaming” policy on its new thrill ride–-the Scandia Screamer. The Screamer is a gigantic, windmill-like contraption that sends people plunging 16 stories at nearly 70 m.p.h. Anybody who makes too much noise is immediately pulled off the ride. Operators now recite the following warning to riders: “We are required to remove you from this ride if you make any noise. If you feel you might make a noise, please cover your mouth tightly with you hand, like this (the operator then covers mouth with hand). If we hear any noise through your hand, we will remove you from the ride. So please remain silent and enjoy the Screamer.”

Stalinist Nostalgia
Visitors to Lithuania can now sample life under Soviet rule and the brutal Gulag system at a new theme park called Stalin’s World. Founded by entrepreneur (and former wrestler) Viliumas Malinauskas, near Druskininkai, about 130 kilometres southwest of Vilnius, the park allows tourists to journey back to 1984 and experience KGB interrogations and even belt whippings inside a bunker located in the woods. Organizers call it Gulag Tourism, and they believe that visiting the park can be therapeutic. “There are still many in Lithuania who are sick with Soviet nostalgia,” says one organizer, “so we’ve started this show to help them recover.” After an amiable introduction, visitors are ordered to stop smiling or thinking and are chased through an elaborate labyrinth of corridors. The smallest infraction can bring about a violent encounter with angry KGB agents. The experience lasts two hours and costs about $50. The park can serve as an interesting history lesson for younger visitors. “It was scary indeed the way they treated people,” said a young woman who had visited the park. “And people didn’t know what to do. They would do whatever they want with people and that was frightening.” 

Naked Air
A German travel agent has come up with the ultimate in no-frills flying–a charter flight for passengers who want to fly naked. Naturist holidays are popular among former East Germans, who like nothing better than to stretch out on a naked beach. “The flight can be enjoyed as God intended,” says OssiUrlaub, a company specializing in selling vacations to travellers from the former east. Enrico Hess, head of OssiUrlaub, said his business plan was inspired by the enthusiasm for naturist holiday breaks in the days of Communism. The chartered plane will fly from the city of Erfurt to the Baltic island of Usedom, returning on the same day. All passengers must board and exit the plane clothed, but will be able to get undressed aboard the flight. However, there won’t be total nudity on board. For safety reasons, the flight crew will remain clad for the duration of the flight. Nor is the flight intended to be a mile-high club orgy. “I don’t want people to get the wrong idea,” Hess told Reuters. “It’s not that we’re starting a swinger club in mid-air or something like that. We’re a perfectly normal holiday company.”

Maggot Brain
Aaron Dallas brought back an unusual souvenir from Belize-–fly larvae buried in his skull. Dallas had bleeding bumps on his head that were moving and making noises. After initially being told he was suffering from shingles, a doctor eventually found five botfly larvae living near the top of Dallas’s skull and removed them. The thumb-nail-sized larvae, living in an open pit on his head, were thought to have been placed there by a mosquito. “I’d put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head,” said Dallas. “I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy.”  Before receiving the correct diagnosis, he tried various creams and salves, but the pain only got worse. “It was weird and traumatic. I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees.” Dallas’s wife teased him about the ordeal, telling him, “I will love you through your maggots.” She even made a three-minute film titled, “Aaron’s visitors from Belize,” about the parasites. “It’s one of those things my wife loves to tell people about,” Dallas said. “It’s much funnier to everyone else. It makes my stomach turn over. It was cruel.”

Sacrifical Goats
Officials at Nepal’s state-run airline sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god whose symbol is seen on the company’s planes, after technical problems grounded one of its Boeing 757 aircraft. Royal Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing jets, had to suspend some services due the problem. The goats were sacrificed on September 2, 2007, in front of the troublesome aircraft at Nepal’s only international airport in Katmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions. The animals were beheaded with a khukuri, a traditional curved knife. “The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official. He did not explain what the problem was. Local media blamed the problems on an electrical fault. 

Snakes Alive!
Customs officers at the Cairo airport arrested an Egyptian man who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes onto a May 24, 2007, flight to Saudi Arabia. The slithery creatures were discovered in a carry-on bag after officers asked the man to open it. He told them the bag contained live snakes and warned them to keep their distance. Among the variety of serpents hidden in small cloth sacks were two poisonous cobras. The passenger said he hoped to sell the snakes to Saudis who display them in glass jars in shops, keep them as pets, or sell them to research centres. The man is accused of violating export laws and endangering the lives of other passengers.

Special Delivery Eyeball
An eyeball being transported within Australia to a hospital for transplant was instead delivered to a shocked hotel guest. The organ, sent from Queensland to Hobart, Tasmania, was packed in a foam box marked ‘Live Human Organs For Transplant.’ The box was mistakenly delivered by a taxi driver. The hotel guest received and signed for the delivery in the middle of the night. “I thought this is just too weird. I went and put it in the fridge because I didn’t know what else to do with it. It was more than a little disconcerting,” he later said. The agitated guest brought the package to the reception desk the next morning. A courier arrived shortly after and took the eyeball away. An Australian Air Express spokeswoman confirmed a “failure in an internal handover process,” which means the taxi driver was given the wrong package to deliver. She said the company sincerely regretted the incident, saying, “As soon as we discovered the error we quickly rectified that and delivered the consignment within the appropriate timeframe.” 

Crazy Ass 
A man with a donkey checking into an Irish hotel under the name “Mr. Shrek” was later arrested and charged with cruelty to an animal and lewd behaviour. Thomas McCarney told the hotel staff the donkey was a breed of “super rabbit” that he was bringing to a fair. The donkey went berserk in the middle of the night, damaging the room’s minibar and running up and down the hotel corridor. Police were called and found McCarney in his hotel room wearing a latex suit and handcuffs, the key to which the donkey is thought to have swallowed. McCarney’s lawyer said his client’s wife recently left him, and he had become increasingly lonely. “Mr. McCarney has been attending counselling at which he was told that he would be advised to get out and meet people and do interesting things. It was this advice that saw him book into the city centre hotel with a donkey.”

Idealistic Slavery
An American couple, Ron and Carla Bluntschli, announced plans to build a theme park where visitors can play the role of slaves. Guests at Memory Village will be bound and tortured at a resort in Haiti, which was a slave nation before becoming the world’s first black republic. During the course of a 12-hour day, participants would receive traditional African clothing and then be mock-kidnapped from their homelands, shackled, chained and forced to march to the slave ship (resting on a real stream), where they’d be piled in as cargo for the crossing of the Atlantic. Once the ship reached the New World, the participants would be brought to market and sold, then broken down in the quarantine and put to work on a plantation. At the end of the day, they would take part in a recreation of history’s only successful slave rebellion, which eventually led to the establishment of Haiti in 1804. The couple, who have lived in Haiti for 22 years, have set up a foundation to make Memory Village a reality and have already raised enough money to buy half the land they need.

Photo Credits:

#1: english.peopledaily.com.cn

#2: trendhunter.com

#3: esharkdesign.com 

Connecting La Paz, the nation’s capital, at 3,800 metres above sea level, and the town of Corocio in the Amazon basin, at 330 metres, the North Yungas was built by prisoners during Bolivia’s war with Paraguay from 1932 to 1935. As the only route linking northern Bolivia to the capital it has always been heavily traversed by buses, minivans, trucks, tankers, taxis and private vehicles. It is not unusual to see bus and truck drivers stop before entering the most treacherous stretches and make offerings at the roadside, burning objects and tipping beer onto the ground, beseeching the goddess Pachamama for safe passage. Then, chewing coca leaves to keep themselves awake, they are off at breakneck speeds in vehicles which should not be on any road, let alone this one.

Making conditions even more hazardous is the fog that rises up from the valley below, resulting in almost constant limited visibility. During the rainy season tropical downpours often cause parts of the road to slide down the mountain. Overhangs present the added danger of falling rock, while In several sections, waterfalls crash directly onto the road, and it can be muddy throughout.

The most treacherous section of the road consists of a series of sharp, blind curves around the mountain. A cautionary honk is usually all the warning one gets from the many trucks carrying bananas and other tropical products uphill. Because so many people have met their maker along here, volunteers known as “human traffic lights,” sometimes station themselves at the most dangerous curves and signal to the drivers if it is safe to continue around the bend. In return, they often are tipped by the drivers. As one might guess, passing often poses a serious problem. When two vehicles meet, descending drivers normally have to back up until there is enough space for ascending drivers to pass. With horrifying frequency, they back entirely off the cliff. On July 24, 1983, Carlos Pizarroso Inde drove his bus over the edge, killing more than 100 passengers in Bolivia’s worst road accident.

Although guard rails are non-existent, there are few unwritten local traffic rules to help reduce the carnage. One holds that the descending driver never has the right of way and must move to the outer edge of the road–this forces fast vehicles to stop so that passing can be done more safely. Also, vehicles must drive on the left, as opposed to the right, as is the case in the rest of Bolivia. The reason vehicles drive on the left side is because they have their steering wheels on the left-hand side. The road is so narrow that the driver has to be able to stick his head out the window to make sure his wheels are on the road.

Ironically, the road’s notoreity has made it a tourist destination for adventure-seeking foreigners eager to add “drove the world’s most dangerous road” to their list of accomplishments. In recent years, the North Yungas has also become a major attraction for extreme mountain bikers. Today, two dozen companies in La Paz that cater specifically to this cult market of adrenaline junkies. The seven-hour bike ride starts out even higher than La Paz, at 4,876 metres, and sends riders rocketing down the slope at blistering speeds on a descent to the subtropical jungle. On the way they pass rows of shrines and crosses and faded flowers marking the spots of fatal accidents. The reward for completing the terrifying trek is a T-shirt that says: “I Rode the World’s Most Dangerous Road.” The companies offering these services claim that the two-wheeled method of navigation is safer than using a vehicle. Even so, at least 13 of these daredevil cyclists have been killed on the route since 1998.

After years of empty promises, the Bolivian government is now finally finishing a new road that circumvents the worst sections of the North Yungas, but hundreds of vehicles continue to use the old dirt track as a short cut. And people continue to tumble to their deaths.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you are complaining about your daily commute.

Photo Credits:

#1,4: ssqq.com

#2,3: darkroastedblend.com

Although there is no scientific basis for Moore’s claims of leech-assisted “blood detoxification,” that didn’t stop her from seeking out and spending a good deal of money on this unusual rejuvenation therapy. She is just one of a growing number of spa goers (most of them women), who have dispensed with the traditonal massage and manicures and are now pursuing increasingly bizarre health and beauty treatments. The novelty factor is clearly a major part of the appeal. But do any of these therapies actually work? I’ll let you be the judge.

Soothing Serpents
Israel’s contribution to the world of massage tourism is a spa called “Ada Barak’s Carnivorous Plant Farm.” Among the shadows of northern Israel’s famous orange groves, Barak has long opened her home to curious travellers to see her collection of carnivorous plants and other natural oddities. When snakes became part of the exhibition, she noticed the soothing effect they had on visitors–and the snake massage was born. For 300 shekels (US$70), the spa will treat clients to what it claims is a relaxing massage to cure aching muscles and joints using six non-venomous snakes. The larger reptiles are supposedly good for deep tissue massage, while their smaller counterparts are ideal for delicate areas such as the face. (Rats balanced on one’s feet during the massage are apparently optional).

Lotta Bull
Is your hair feeling limp and uninspired? If so, then maybe what you need is a trip to Hari’s Salon in London, England. The upmarket salon uses bull semen as a protein-rich hair treatment to nourish hair follicles and brighten and repair. The bull spunk is combined with Katera root, another protein powerhouse. The mixture is massaged into the client’s tresses after it has been shampooed. Then the customer is put under a steamer so the treatment penetrates to the roots. Finally, it is blow-dried. Salon owner Hari Salem claimed he had tried hundreds of products, including wild New Zealand avocados and truffle oil, before adopting his new conditioner. “I have been searching for an organic product with a lot of protein because that is what hair is made of and lacks when it is dry. All the best treatments are protein based. Synthetic treatments are good, but they are heavy if you have fine hair and can make it look greasy. In the end, the bull’s sperm was the winner,” he said, adding that the liquid is refrigerated before use and doesn’t smell. The treatment costs $125 and uses semen from Aberdeen Angus bulls.

Dung-Faced
At the Diamond Spa at the Diamond Hawaii Resort & Spa in Maui, spa-goers looking for a little face finessing can now turn to the complexion-healing power of nightingale dung. The skin is treated with coating of dehydrated droppings, a technique used for centuries by Japanese Kabuki actors and Geisha girls to remove heavy makeup while leaving their skin fresh and supple. Nightingale droppings are said to contain natural enzymes that act as exfoliants and skin brighteners, so what looks unsightly on the ground actually makes your face look great. “The reason this product may work is the high concentration of urea in the fecal-urine combination in bird feces,” says dermatopharmacologist Brian Keller. “Urine has a lot of urea in it and it has long been used as a skin-softening agent.” Also known as Geisha Facials, the cost of a single treatment ranges between $144 and $225.

“Beam Me Up Scotty”
The newest in weight-loss therapy is the Oxy-LED Spa Capsule, a machine that looks like it belongs on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Acoording to the Med Spa Clinic in Tunbridge Wells, England, the capsule emits light in wavelengths ranging from 625 to 980 nm, that stimulate your body in such a way that you shed the pounds. It also will rejuvenate and relax you, reduce stress, increase circulation, detoxify your body, relieve pain and improve your sleep. This light therapy can be combined with other spa treatments, like the dry thermal heat and vibratory massages for even better effects. The company’s website mentions that the machine provides “intense physical stimulation,” which sounds suspiciously X-rated. A session will set you back anywhere from $130 to $200, depending upon whether you stay inside 30 or 100 minutes.

Electric Buns
Smooth Synergy Cosmedical Spa in New York City offers what it calls “the Fanny Facial.” The spa has skipped the face completely and headed directly south with a treatment that combines a body scrub, microcurrents to zap zits, and a sunless tanning application. The microcurrent therapy also helps reduce the appearance of cellulite and tones your backside. According to spa owner Nicole Contos, “The derriere is an area that is often neglected, but people are concerned about keeping it in shape and there aren’t many other spa treatments that pay attention to this area.”

Dr. Fish
Sticking your feet into a tub full of flesh-nibbling fish and calling it a pedicure is already de rigueur in several parts of Asia—but at the Sampuoton Spa in Selangor, Malaysia, the garra rufa (a small fish in the carp family that feeds on dead skin cells) is used for full-immersion purposes. The process is simple: you lounge in a heated pool for an hour while swarms of “nibble fish” snack away at rough spots and deep-clean your pores. While feeding, the fish also reportedly exude an enzyme that slows the return of skin problems like acne. The ticklish need not apply.

Midas Touch
They say that Cleopatra maintained her youth by wearing a face mask of pure gold to bed. Now in luxury-obsessed Japan, you too can gild your features and feel like a modern-day queen. This treatment, which was showcased at Beautyworld Japan 2007 by Umo Inc., is now available at some 30 salons and spas across Japan. In the 24-Karat Gold Facial, sheets of gold are applied directly to the skin. This metallic mask “hydrates, lifts and firms, fights free radicals, lightens and brightens and leaves a golden glow.” Gold leaf supposedly accelerates cell growth in the basal layer of the skin. “The effects of gold include anti-ageing. It can also remove wrinkles and blemishes that women often worry about,” said a UMO spokesperson. The price of one session, which lasts between one and two hours, runs around $300.

Yeast of Eden
“It was the dream of many men, to swim in beer, and now it’s a reality, says Mojmir Prokes, general manager of the Chodovar Beer Spa in the Czech Republic. Visitors are immersed in a hot bath of dark Czech lager and mineral water enriched with active beer yeast and dehydrated crushed herbs. The warm water opens pores providing skin with a “wide range of vitamins, proteins and saccharides” that soften and regenerate the skin. Prokes claims that “the mineral water is good for people with high blood pressure, and the hops in the beer are good for relaxing the body.” After a 20-minute soak, clients enjoy 25 minutes of bed rest, covered in a fleece quilt, and then 30 to 50 minutes of massage. One question remains unanswered though: Do you come home smelling like a bar?

Photo Credits:
#1: chinadaily.com
#2: daylife.com
#3: farm3.static.flickr.com
#4: trendhunter.com