Panama: the “Chiva” buses. Privately owned, loosely regulated semi-regular buses. But since they were in competition with each other, the way to attract customers was to…paint up your bus! They all start as red and white Bluebird school-buses, but then the drivers go crazy. Lights inside and outside, curtains in the windows, and the obligatory cheesy TV/movie star on the back door. Sly Stallone as Rambo is on at least fifty buses, as is Chuck Norris. The finishing touch is huge, unecessary chrome exhausts like on semi trucks. On the BACK of the bus, about 40 feet from the engine!
Kathmandu: For some reason the local getaround device has evolved into something like a lawnmower engine attached to a seat, but the front wheel is waaaaaay out in front attached to these very long forks. Anyone else seen these? It’s been several years since I was there, but I remember these as having the front wheel (singular) about 7 feet in front of the handlebars.
Japan: Having to put your hotel key in the little receptacle by the door in order for the lights to work. I’ve encountered this in other places recently, but Japan was the first place I saw it.
Germany: I never heard the proper term for those toilets until now. I always thought of them as “display” toilets. As in display your work for you…gross.
Cairo: Getting into a cab at night to return to the hotel and having the cab driver turn off the headlights to save the bulbs!:eek:
My obligatory pizza experience was in Italy (actually Catania in Sicily)…the “pepperoni pizza” came out covered in…peppers.
Brazil: In the capital of Brasilia, we go to one of the “Carnivore”-like resaurants. As they keep bringing out different meats on skewers they eventually get to a skewer of chicken hearts. Chicken hearts! 50 of them on one skewer!
Oh yes, the Asian bug restaurants. There is a special roadside restaurant in Phitsanulouk Thailand that specializes in these multi-legged horrors. On the menu are:
Locusts, rather like a Pringles with legs. They are all crunch.
Crickets, My daughter loves these things barbecued. I suspect she likes them so much because of the look on my face when I see their little legs sticking out of her mouth. Oh, the horror!
Mang Da. A barbecued rice beetle and considered a delicacy. Think of a two-inch, black, cockroach on steroids. Huge damn bugs that smell funny!
Large spiders with the fur toasted off of them. As to taste, I have no idea and refuse to investigate. S
Last but not least, barbecued scorpions. Large, coal black scorpions, complete with pincers and sting and looking like a meal from hell.
In Lima Peru, my wife and I were on a “collectivo” bus that was a converted school bus. I noticed when boarding the bus that there was a strong odor of diesel fuel. The bus continued through traffic when I sensed that the bus engine was running VERY rough. I saw the bus driver grab a plastic tube that was running to a 5 gallon plastic paint bucket on the floor next to him and move it around a bit. The engine ran “better”. The bus was running on diesel fuel from this paint bucket! :eek:
That and the barbequed cui (guinea pig - tastes like chicken).
In Egypt you don’t even get toilet paper. I had to go to the bathroom in the airport and then there was this little lady that would sell you toilet paper. So I declinded her offer and then after I washed my hands she kept nagging me about having to pay for washing my hands. So then me and my friends ran off and she chased us.
The next year I returned and brought my OWN toilet paper!
I had a similar experience in Italy. There are huge packs of stray dogs living in Pompei. They followed us all over the city, always staying about 20 feet back. I remember my mom was really freaked out by it(and she loves dogs!), but I just thought it was funny.
Yes, that’s it: Pompeii! Ever since SmackFu mentioned gangs of stray dogs, I knew I’d seen something like that in Italy, but couldn’t recall where. It was Pompeii, indeed–they’re running up and down the streets, wherever tourists are. I thought it was funny that the dogs are the only things that still live there (OK, the only large mammals that still live there).
I’m also quite fascinated with the colonies of feral cats that live in the Colosseum, as well as at other ancient sites of Rome. Since seeing them, I’ve decided that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, and if we get to choose what our next lifeform will be, I’d like to be a “Colosseum kitty.”
At a rest stop in Germany, I went to the restroom and into one of the stalls and took care of business. When I finished, as I was pulling up my pants, the toilet cleaned itself! It was awesome! First, a black box that was behind the toilet seat automatically moved forward so that it covered the back part of the seat. Then the entire toilet seat rotated slowly around in a circle so that every part of the toilet seat ring passed under the box, which was cleaning the seat. Once the entire seat had been cleaned, the box withdrew to its position behind the seat.
And how about my two all-time Japanese favorites… the political trucks that drive around with someone screaming out their message over a loudspeaker, and the ever present hot sweet potato trucks and their screaming whistle (this is really annoying when they choose to park in front of your residence at 11:00pm and hawk their wares!).
The hot and cold coffee in the machines is great, but something else that can be purchased in vending machines on the STREET is not so great… purportedly used panties from high school girls. Quite sick, but more than acceptable in Japan. Even after living there for almost 15 years, that one still disturbed me.
LMAO. The first time I saw it my question was “What in the world is a Pocari and why would I want to drink it’s sweat?”. My wife explained that it was similar to gatorade, just another sports drink. My kids still love it and anxiously await the care packages from grandma which always contain a half gallon jug of the concentrate.
Absolutely not. When I was in Paris (winter 2000-2001), there was always dog poop on the sidewalks, and my then-girlfriend (who lives there) was always disgusted by the fact that people didn’t clean it up. When it was raining out, you really had to be careful about where you were stepping.
Not too much strange stuff in Paris though; the homeless men selling roasted chestnuts, and the public pay toilets (only strange to we americans, I imagine).
DocJCS stole my story about the political trucks, but I can still give you my Japanese pizza story. At this American-style restaurant (which kept the very bizarre hours of 10 am - 5 am, btw), I got a pizza with no tomato sauce. Instead, they gave you a little side dish of diced tomatoes. Most bizarre.
The oddest thing I remember about the Irian Jaya province of Indonesia (I think it’s called West Papua or just Papua now) was seeing women in the marketplace selling individual cloves of garlic – that they had peeled with their teeth! (How do I know? Because one of them was usually sitting under the table preparing the next batch for sale!
Corn pizza? Eggplant pizza? Ordinary. Here in Oaxaca they put grasshoppers on pizza. Grasshopper tacos, tamales, plates of fried grasshoppers when you order a beer. The local semipro baseball team is called “Chapulineros” which means grasshopper catchers.
Also, you know the worms in mezcal? Go into the public market and lots of little Indian women run up and shove plates of the worms, roasted or raw, in your face and ask you to try a few. So far I have been able to resist the temptation.
By the way, I understand that in Japan they eat jellyfish. Does anyone know how they’re prepared?
I’ve been to Taiwan twice, the last time in 1989. On that visit, I was at a dinner that had an unusual dish – rooster testicles! To my everlasting regret, I was too chicken (heh heh) to try them.
In Taiwan I had a somewhat unusual dish. It was called “night chicken.”
NO! Not that sort of ‘night chicken’ you perverts!
This is a fowl with black colored flesh. According to folk superstition, it helps to prevent gray hair. It had a distinctly different flavor, although that may have been due to the sauce it was served in.
I’ve seen it in raw form a couple of times at the large Chinese market I frequent. I may have to give it a shot one of these days. Anybody out there have a recipe for it? I would be especially grateful if someone could post the Anglicized terminology for this bird and dish so that I might track it down online.
PEOPLE IN TAIWAN ALERT!
To all you other people in Taiwan right now. Make sure to visit (if I have the name right):
Shu Hai Fu Long (The Dragon that Swims in Four Oceans)
These little fast food pot sticker (kuo teh) shops are fabulous. Get a bowl of their hot and sour soup and a dozen or two of their famed potstickers and you are ready to rumble. I still kick myself for going to other eateries and wasting my time. For all of $5.[sup]00[/sup] US you can eat like a king. Just be sure to bring your own bottle of beer from a nearby 7-11. I always brought my own little bottle of roasted sesame chili oil to make a dipping sauce too. Good eats, says me.
The best dim sum (Shanghai style) that I had in Taipei was at Din Tai Fung (TEL: 23218927~8), their dumplings were excellent. Make sure to hit the weekend jade market under the freeway as well.
Nothing very wacky about that, to me. I just had it last week. Black chicken soup is such an everyday dish here in Singapore. Our grandmothers make us drink it when you have the flu cos they say it’s more nutritious than normal chicken.
How about Pig’s Brains? Some Singaporean parents believe that pig brains helps to develop the brain and have been forcing their children to cramp down as many bowls as possible when examinations are just around the corner.
First, let me observe that getting somewhat unusual pizza toppings or eating pizza done in the pre-Americanization fashion hardly counts as whacky.
Whacky are bug parts and the like. Bloody plebes got no standards.
Indeed, one of the many Egyptian habits that are inexplicable. Now, try this on a cross country bus speeding down the autostrada at maybe 120 km/hr in the dead of night, with no lights on. Fucking wonderful.
On taxis in Cairo, you seem to have missed the better part: the non-meter meters. The metering rates have not been reset since the 1970s, so they’re utterly meaningless. It is the habit in Cairo to jump out of the cab and then thrust in through the window your guestimate of the proper payment. Innocent foreigners who pay inside the cab are routinely badly ripped off.
Regretably I recall getting into a physical fight with a taxi driver over the fare once. A trip I knew the proper going rate on, but as I was showing someone around Cairo – I rather despise acting as host and tour operator for visitors so it always makes me grumpy – and riding back from the Khan, I got the tourist price. This enraged me insofar as I had made it clear to the driver I knew what the hell the damn rate was – addressed him in his own damned dialect as well. Still tried to pull the game on the rich foreigner. As I was not a fine mood, it badly degenerated.
Nothing like getting into a shoving match iwth a taxi driver surrounded by a crowd of angry or amused Egptians. I’m afraid my guest was horrifed though.
