From Wikitravel

This is an archive of items that have been displayed on Wikitravel:Discover. The archive is maintained by User:DiscoverBot, which will insert old items right after the tag <!--START-->. Alas, the bot is not smart enough to create new months, so please help it out.

Last updated on 04 Oct 2006 01:02:05

Contents 1 September 2006 2 August 2006 3 July 2006 4 June 2006 5 May 2006

September 2006

• One of the highlights of the Whole Enchilada Festival, an annual event in Las Cruces, New Mexico (USA), is the preparation of the world's largest enchilada.
• While visiting the Golden Triangle in Thailand you can visit the national hall of opium.
• Hot-Horse, a chain of fast-food joints in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is famous for their giant horsemeat burger.
• Little Brewster Island, in the Boston Harbor Islands off Massachusetts, is the scene of the oldest continuously used lighthouse site in the United States.
• The town of Happy Adventure, Newfoundland owes its unusual name to a pirate who successfully sought refuge there.
• The yearly Port Festival of Hakodate, Japan is famous for its ceremonial Squid Dance.
• Lonkero, a classic Finnish drink, means "tentacle", and this mix of gin and grapefruit juice glows under ultraviolet light.
• The Great Chedi of Wat Dhammakaya in Rangsit, Thailand is covered with 300,000 golden Buddha statues.
• As a white bird had been instrumental in locating a suitable site for a new fortress (dzong) in northern Bhutan, both the fortress and the town that grew around it were called Jakar - white bird.
• The "Atomic City" of Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA hosts a winery operated by a former nuclear weapons scientist.
• Among the sights available to visitors to the Capuchin Church in Brno, Czech Republic is an exhibit of mummified monks.
• Harrod's, the world famous and respected department store in London, opened its Christmas section in early August, with just 139 shopping days to go until the big day.
• Legend states that the city of Guangzhou was founded by five celestial beings who rode into the area on rams carrying sheaves of rice. Due to this legend, the city is often referred to as Yangcheng - the City of Rams.
• The name Bangalore is derived from the original Kannada, benda kaal ooru, meaning boiled beans - a name bequeathed on the city by a king who received baked beans when lost in the area.
• One of the exhibits at the world's only Lenin Museum, in Tampere, Finland, is a sofa that Lenin slept on.
• Souvenir T-shirts from Minot, North Dakota, USA bear the motto "Why not Minot? Freezin's the reason!"
• The Croft Institute, a bar in Melbourne, Australia, is decorated to look like a high-school chemistry laboratory.
• The tallest dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, USA rise over 750 feet above the valley.
• A popular dish in the Everest region of Nepal is rikikul - a thick pancake made of grated potatoes and smeared with yak butter.
• The most populous urban area in the world is greater Tokyo in Japan, with a total population of around 35,000,000.
• Every Sunday before Labor Day Cincinnati hosts a race between 100,000 rubber ducks as part of Riverfest.
• The foundations of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, USA are anchored 60 feet underground.
• Having been established as early as between 8,000 to 10,000BC, the Syrian capital of Damascus is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.
• Tired of crowds? Visit Mongolia. With only 4.5 people per square mile, it is the least densely populated country in the world.
• The Belle Isle island park in Detroit, Michigan, USA is the site of the world's largest lighthouse made of marble.

August 2006

• The murals by artist Sir Frank Brangwyn that now hang in Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, Wales were originally intended for the House of Lords, but were considered too frivolous to display there.
• Museu Carmen Miranda, in the Zona Sul district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contains a number of giant hats piled high with fruit famously worn by the singer.
• Coffeeshops in Amsterdam, Netherlands, do not sell coffee, instead they are a legal place to buy soft drugs, such as marijuana and hash.
• At 3870m, the bakery-cum-cafe outside Tengboche Monastery in the Everest region of Nepal is purportedly the highest commercial bakery in the world.
• Visitors to Rugby, North Dakota, USA can see the cairn marking the geographical center of North America.
• The Peak District of England was for many years home to a colony of feral wallabies, although they're probably now extinct.
• Between 1920 and 1927 the City of Cincinnati spent millions of dollars building a subway system that has never been used.
• Bhutan is the only country in the world to use a GNH (Gross National Happiness) index instead of the usual GNP index to indicate the country's progress.
• The Cape of Good Hope in South Africa is not the most southern tip of Africa, as widely assumed. The most southern point of the continent is the Cape Agulhas.
• The world's tallest building, Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan, is built in eight sections because the number eight represents prosperity in Chinese culture.
• The world's first passenger railway was a horse-drawn carriage that ran on rails. It was called the Mumbles Train and plied an 8-km route along the foreshore in Swansea, UK.
• A traditional treat from the Japanese town of Hamamatsu is a cookie containing eel bones.
• Mate, the national drink of Paraguay, is traditionally drunk through a metal straw called a bombilla.
• Bangkok's six-zone True Urban Park netcafe cost over $1 million to build, and features a live DJ and a flower shop.
• Some residents of the Lake District of England speak with a regional dialect called Westmerian.
• Bandung, Indonesia has been dubbed "flower city" since the colonial Dutch era, but the title celebrates not plants, but the beauty of its female inhabitants.
• The Singaporean island now known as Sentosa, Malay for "paradise", used to be called Pulau Blakang Mati — the island of death from behind.
• Framingham, Massachusetts, USA is the site of a furniture store containing an IMAX theater.
• The lighthouse at Cape Spear National Historic Site in St. John's, Newfoundland occupies the easternmost point of land in North America.
• Medical tourists travel to Bangkok, Thailand for, among other things, sexual reassignment surgery.
• The Balinese festival of Nyepi, also known as the Day of Absolute Silence, is celebrated by staying indoors with the electricity turned off.
• Mud Island, a park in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, contains a replica of the Mississippi River that visitors can remove their shoes and wade through.
• The small town of Iga in Japan is the birthplace of both haiku poet Matsuo Basho and ninja leader Hattori Hanzo.
• Ostello Olinda, a travelers' hostel in Milan, Italy, is on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital.
• A park in Monterey (California), USA has a playground with grounds and equipment designed by Hank Ketcham, creator of the Dennis the Menace comic strip.
• The quill pen of the statue of Anonymus in Budapest is a minor object of veneration among Hungarian writers.
• Singapore's theme park island Sentosa once housed Chia Thye Poh, the world's longest-serving political prisoner after Nelson Mandela.
• Guest rooms in the Sokos Hotel Viru, a landmark in Tallinn, Estonia, were formerly bugged by the KGB (but not any more!).
• Vienna's zoo, the Haus des Meeres, is housed partly in a World War II flak tower.
• The nicknames of Jakarta, Indonesia include Queen of the East, Pearl of the Orient and White Man's Graveyard.
• One of the many annual festivals in Austin, Texas, USA is Eeyore's Birthday Party, after the Winnie-the-Pooh character.

July 2006

• Helsinki's SpåraKOFF Bar Tram is a pub on wheels that travels through the city; the fare entitles the passenger to one beer as well as transportation.
• The Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium is a fountain that commemorates a young boy who, depending on the legend, either defused a bomb or drove away enemy troops by urinating.
• Visitors to the Kōgan-ji Temple in the Toshima district of Tokyo can pray, among other things, for a swift and painless death so they won't burden their relatives in old age.
• The myriad small streets and alleys crisscrossing the center of York, England, and dating to medieval times, are known locally as snickelways.
• The lowest point in the African nation of Lesotho is 1400 meters above sea-level, making it the highest lowest point of any country in the world.
• The temple of the Sun God in Konarak, Orissa India has highly erotic stone carvings on its walls.
• The Youth Hostel in Ottawa, Ontario Canada is the old city jail.
• Comino, the least populous of the islands comprising Malta, has only 8 permanent residents, but does feature a hotel.
• The slogan of the Perth Garlic Festival, held annually in Perth, Ontario (Canada), is "It's Chic To Reek".
• A popular activity in White Sands National Monument is sledding, despite the fact that there is no snow.
• Singapore's national symbol is the water-spewing half-cat, half-fish Merlion, but in local slang to Merlion means to vomit.
• The Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns National Park's "Big Cave" is reached by an elevator that descends 600 feet from the visitor center.
• The Midnight Sun Baseball Game, an annual event in Fairbanks, Alaska, has been held for over 100 years with a 10:30 p.m. starting time, without ever needing to use artificial lights.
• The head of the statue of the Lindwurm, a prominent landmark in Klagenfurt, Austria, is based on a fossilized rhinoceros skull discovered nearby.
• The children's museum in San Jose (Costa Rica) is located in an old prison.
• Australia's Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island and is home to about 150 dingoes.
• The Colorado Adventure roller coaster at Phantasialand near Cologne is sponsored by Michael Jackson.
• The San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico is the oldest church building in America.
• Over 700 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea, but the visitor can basically get by with Tok Pisin, a "pidgin" tongue.
• The Isle of Skye, Scotland holds an annual music festival on the grounds of an old, little-used airfield.
• Public transportation in the town of Carbondale, Illinois, USA is via a bus system called the Saluki Express.

June 2006

• A popular and useful souvenir from Fraser's Hill, Malaysia is a pair of leech socks.
• Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA has museums devoted to rattlesnakes and to the history of the atomic bomb, with full-scale (unarmed!) models.
• Garth Castle – the "new castle" that Newcastle upon Tyne is named for – was built in the 13th century.
• The northernmost airport in the world is Barneo, built on the Arctic ice each spring, drifting roughly 1° due south of the North Pole.
• Hotel Adnis in Osaka, Japan offers a Hello Kitty-themed bondage room.
• Frankenmuth, Michigan, USA is home to the largest all-Christmas store in the world (more than 7 acres); open year-round... but not on Christmas Day.
• All but a few of the residents of the Pitcairn Islands are descended from the sailors who executed the famous mutiny on the Bounty.
• Hanover, Germany hosts an annual rubber duck race.
• Because residents of Washington (D.C.), USA pay federal taxes but don't have a voting member of Congress, their license plates bear the slogan Taxation Without Representation.
• Tioman is a small Malaysian island with no cars and few roads, but you can hike through the woods following power lines.
• The name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales is not the longest place name in the world.
• Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, is only 90 miles west (and nearly 2.8 miles up) from the lowest point, in Death Valley.
• The Line Islands of Kiribati lie "in the future" from the rest of the world, starting each day an hour before any other country does.
• Fronts of houses in Berchtesgaden, Germany, are painted colorfully, mainly with scenes of the nearby mountains, but one with a panel featuring monkeys.
• Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA contains a winding staircase that appears to stand without any support.
• Crossing Antarctica on ski to reach the South Pole takes about 65 days one way.
• The 2003 version of Munich's famous Oktoberfest involved the consumption of over 6 million liters of beer.
• Husavík, Iceland is home to the Icelandic Phallological Museum, featuring phallic specimens from whales, seals, and land mammals.
• Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, USA is the home of a climbing gym constructed out of an old grain elevator.

May 2006

• The Parasitological Museum in Meguro, Tokyo, a popular date spot, showcases a tapeworm over 10 meters long.
• The temple of Sala Kaew Ku in Nong Khai, Thailand is packed with bizarre concrete statues over 20 meters tall and enshrines the sculptor's mummified corpse.
• The Saptohoedojo Art Gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia counts both Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama among its customers.
• The Wakamiya Hachiman-gū Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan is dedicated to a mythical phallus called Lord Big Iron Penis.
• Marmots should not be eaten during the Mongolian summer, as they may carry the Bubonic Plague.