A little refreshing randomness from around the globe
A border dispute has become a daily party.
India and Pakistan share a single border that cuts straight through the town of Wagah: the eastern half sits in India, and the other half in Pakistan. Border conflicts killed countless people in both countries back in 1947 - and decades later, skirmishes still kill thousands.
At the sound […]
Buzkashi is Afghanistan’s national sport: it involves whips, horses, and a dead calf.
The calf itself has been beheaded, cut off the knees, soaked in cold water for twenty-four hours to make it tough, and occasionally filled with sand. It is placed into a shallow hole, and a circle of quicklime is drawn nearby: this circle […]
Land mines have never been so educational.
The founder of the Cambodian Land Mine Museum, Aki Ra, was an orphan and a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge. Receiving his first rifle at the age of ten, he himself laid hundreds of mines. He joined the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia in 1994, where he […]
Your old computers have to go somewhere.
In all likelihood, they end up in Guiyu, China. This obscure Chinese rice village is now the e-waste capitol of the world - a place where bona fide mountains of keyboards and circuit boards tower over its inhabitants. The water here is undrinkable - it has been for years.
Most […]
Cabbages and Condoms is for sex education first, and eating second.
Instead of a post-meal mint, diners receive condoms. The food is quite excellent, along with their lovely beer garden. There is even nearby parking, which is somewhat of a rarity in Bangkok. The restaurant was founded by Mechai Viravaidya, an Australian-born Scot/Thai man who has […]
Yuri Gagarin left the earth in 1961, from the middle of the Kazakh desert.
The Baikonur Cosmodrome was the Russian capital of space travel: 6717 square kilometers, dozens of launch pads, and a 1500-kilometer rocket test range. Spaceship parts would arrive by train. Nowadays, although still in service, the Russian space program is surrounded by acres […]
Come for the food, stay to beat your waiter.
At the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, China, the clientele are allowed and even encouraged to take our their daily frustration and rage in a mostly harmless fashion: by attacking specially trained employees. The customers may rant, smash glass, or perhaps even kick some shins […]
Beat your wife in India, and you’ll be beaten back. By a mob of women in pink saris.
They are the Gulabi (’Pink’) Gang, in one of India’s northern states and poorest regions. Theirs is an area comprised of 20% untouchables, beset by drought and unemployment, and targeted in the past for a massive jobs-for-work […]
Chinese zombies devour life force. George Romero’s zombies only eat brains. That’s the difference.
‘Zombie’ isn’t actually the word. The literal translation of Jiang Shi comes out as ’stiff corpse.’ But in English, the best translation reads, ‘Hopping Vampire.’ They hop, because Chinese undead suffer from rigor mortis. They are also blind, and depend on their […]
Chittagong is where supertankers go to die.
One supertanker can carry about two million barrels of oil, which is about as much crude as Hong Kong consumes in a week. At the end of their life, half of these behemoths - provided they don’t go out with more of a bang, like the Exxon Valdez - […]
