Can't afford a trip to India to see the Taj Mahal? Don't worry: Now you can have a staycation and make the Taj Mahal in your own living room, thanks to the geniuses at LEGO.
Everybody's favorite building toy now comes in the biggest ever model kit with almost 6,000 pieces of LEGO and a plan to build a replica of the Taj Mahal. Clear a big space because the finished version comes out about three feet wide and two feet high, or .9 percent of the original height and width.
And make sure you take a long enough home vacation to finish your Indian odyssey--apparently it's so tricky that they're advising it only for over-14s, and it's only for "very experienced enthusiasts." Kind of like a trip to India, really.
A few months back we we speculated about just how unnecessary the London Ripley's Believe It or Not museum was going to be. Last week it officially opened so now we are all invited to spend a whopping £17.95 (over US$33) to see the latest collection of the weird and wonderful.
The stats say that this Ripley's has just 500 artifacts, which doesn't sound like much, but they do spread over four floors and include such local specialties as a replica of the Tower Bridge made out of matchsticks. Gotta see that (not).
We're also not sure we need to see the two-headed cow (apparently not much of a rarity--the Ripley's company has 80 of 'em) or the graphic of singer Ray Charles created out of 8,000 Post-It notes. Yes, there'll be tourists who visit this new museum, but no, we won't be among them. We have enough weird and wonderful stuff on our desk.
You've probably seen people with a shirt from Hilton Head's Salty Dog Cafe: It's the one with a dog wearing a yellow hat. The place certainly is a top tourist spot--and maybe even a tourist trap--but the island *is* for tourists. The cafe's just playing to the market.
Located within the Sea Pines Resort, it will cost you $5 for a day pass just to visit the place. Once inside Sea Pines you'll want to see the Hilton Head Island lighthouse in Harbour Town. The lighthouse was actually built as an attraction and just holds a shop inside; there's no boat protection here. Oh, if you want to go to the top, that's going to be $3.
Once you finally make it to the actual cafe at the South Beach Marina, you'll be greeted with waterfront seating. There's usually someone playing covers of popular beach tunes with people shouting out requests for their favorite Jimmy Buffet song. As the summer winds down so do the crowds, but if you want to visit when it's busy, go on October 4 and participate in the 13th Annual Oyster Roast. They're going to crack open more than a ton of oysters and cook 'em on the grill. The first ten customers even get one of those shirts.
Ripley's Believe It or Not chain of "museums" will open a location in London later this summer in August. UPI reports that the exhibits will include:
A $1 million Swarovski crystal-covered Mini Cooper, a genuine 16th-century iron maiden, a trio of shrunken human heads from Ecuador and a 13-foot-long Tower Bridge made of wooden matchsticks.
The only place fitting for such exhibit is, obviously, Piccadilly Circus. More odd exhibits will include a portrait of Princess Diana made entirely from laundry lint, the famous sweater worn by Marilyn Monroe during her last photo shoot on the beaches of Malibu, a mummified man, a genuine moon rock and a copy of "The Last Supper" painted on a grain of rice.
There are already 30 Ripley's Believe It or Not "museums" across the world. Have you been to one of these places? Are they worth your time and money? (We doubt it!)
Not that long ago we warned that some groups of Chinese tourists were still learning how to be tourists. But today we want to applaud them for catching on faster than most of us to the reality of organized tours.
This week in Macau, a group of 100 Chinese tourists loudly protested their guided tour when it didn't live up to their expectations. The tourists complained that they were being pressured into buying souvenirs; they wanted to see more historical sites instead. The conflict came to a head when their tour guides refused to allow them back on the coach to get their sweaters when they were taken to a windy beach (presumably to buy more stuff they didn't need).
Riot police had to be called in to calm the tourists down. Nobody knows what happened next, but we can only assume the guides got revenge by taking the group to the most boring historical site available.
We like to think that Machu Picchu really is a great destination, not to be detracted from just because it wound up on the biased and strange New 7 Wonders list. So it shouldn't come as any surprise to hear that tourist numbers to Peru's famous Inca ruins are rising rapidly.
Unfortunately we're not sure if this is a good thing. With tourist numbers constantly rising in the past decade--they'd already reached 400,000 a year in 2003, and 850,000 are predicted this year--they'll soon reach the one million a year mark. Disregarding peaks in tourist traffic, that means on average we'll have to share Machu Picchu with another 3,000 cameras and backpacks on the day we visit, and that makes a remote scenic ruin turn into something of a tourist trap.
Circus master and entrepreneur P.T. Barnum famously said, "There's a sucker born every minute." He meant it, too, cooking up pay-extra schemes like posting signs that read This Way to the Egress. (Once outside, you'd end up having to buy another ticket.)
We'd like to think Mr. Barnum is smiling down on us whenever a ridiculously expensive and underwhelming tourist attraction opens, wherever it is. With his penchant for animal attractions, he'd probably love this Singaporean "night zoo," where tourists pay through the nose to hear a charming British narrator describe the animals you can't see--because it's dark out!
In the zoo's defense, this could potentially have been a cool exhibit along the lines of the dark-house exhibit in your average zoo. But what's with the ridiculous narration? There's just no need for a special zoo for this. Head for the egress!
Have you heard the one about Intercourse, Pennsylvania? How about Baghdad, Florida? Sometimes all it takes to make the cash registers ring in your small town is a funny name. You can picture the road-trippers now: Hey, we gotta stop there, the pictures will be hilarious!
Vlogger Bonnie Bucqueroux shot this video in Hell, Michigan, on the big day of June 6, 2006. (That'd be 6-6-06.) But Bonnie's not the only one enjoying the cheesy puns and crap to buy in the town. Another shot-on-location Hell video adds an incredibly creepy soundtrack to the usual array of photo ops. It's a bit long, but that'll warm you up for the surprise ending. Scary!
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by amandak
