One thing that surprised me on my trip to India was that bamboo was still commonly used for scaffolding. I was blown away by the gigantic structures I saw being built — skyscrapers, statues, modern office buildings — that were covered in a bamboo skeleton, rather than the metal I was used to seeing in the United States. But no matter how unsettling it may be to look at, bamboo is used for a reason: it’s strong, extremely lightweight, and very flexible (as you’ll see in the photos). Check out this gallery of crazy bamboo scaffolding across Asia — I hope you’re not afraid of heights!
The Price of Gas Around the World
The next time you pull into the station for a fill-up, keep this in mind before you curse the prices: People elsewhere have it a lot worse than we do in America (and we tend to gripe about it the most, it seems!). Take Asia for instance — Hong Kong averages a whopping $6.30 per gallon, with Seoul, South Korea, not too far behind. Europe also pays well above what we do in America. London, Berlin, Oslo, and Paris are all well above $6 a gallon. On the low end of the spectrum, places in the Middle East like Kuwait City and Tehran, Iran, pay under 79 cents for their gas. Big surprise there!
The lowest, however, is reserved for Caracas, Venezuela. 17 cents per gallon! [via]
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The World’s Most Expensive Cities
Mercer, a human resource consulting company, has compiled a list of the most expensive cities in the world based on a cost of living survey which “measures the comparative cost of over 200 items” in each city. Two years in a row Moscow has topped the list, followed by London, Seoul, and Tokyo. Here’s the top 10:
Most of the locations on the list were in Europe, taking thirty of the fifty spots, with six in the top 10. New York and L.A. are the only two from the United States in the top fifty. For the full list, head to Mercerhr.com. [via]
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