Hospital-themed restaurant in Latvia. Check in like a patient and order up a meal

by Jamie Rhein on

Here’s another unsual restaurant that joins the ranks of off beat eateries like the Toilet Restaurant in Taiwan.

In Riga, Latvia, folks who head to the restaurant Hospitalis check in as if they are patients in a hospital. Once seated in the midst of operating tables, medical equipment and other hospital related paraphenelia, nurses wait on them.

The nurses are not real nurses, just dressed that way. Kind of. Their attire looks more like the va va va voom variety than the nurses who wear sensible shoes. Also, they can play the violin.

By the looks of the menu, this is not a restaurant with everyday food either. The offerings tilt toward the creative and interesting, particularly if you like fish.

In this recent post about Hospitalis in Jaunted, Victor Ortis, who lived in Riga after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, describes the drinks as being served in beakers and test tubes and the food in flasks and operating room dishes.

Although it doesn’t sound as if Ortis has eaten here, he surmises that the fact Hospitalis exists might indicate that Latvia has moved up in the culinary world from the days he ate a “Flake Burger–a thin, nondescript slice of meat on a waffle.

The photos are from Hospitalis’s website. The nurses were playing the violin during the restaurant’s opening.

Woman snagged at airport for packing banana plants in her underwear

by Jamie Rhein on

I suppose if you’re flying domestically in the U.S. and had three banana plants in your underwear while going through a security check, particularly if you’re female, you’d attract attention. But, after discovering you were packing banana plants and not a pistol, you might be allowed to walk on your merry way.

Although, just how well one could walk is another issue. Seriously, if you had three banana plants in your underwear, could you walk?

In the airport in Sydney, Australia, according to this story published in the Sydney Morning Herald, if you have even one banana plant in your underwear, you’d be in a whole mess of trouble. A whole world of trouble. More trouble than you probably ever imagined.

You’d be in trouble even if the plant was not in your underwear but tucked under your arm like a rolled up newspaper–Or if you were wearing it like a hat.

It’s illegal to bring banana plants into Australia no matter how you are carrying them. Banana plants carry nasty ailments that sound as if they could be sexually transmitted diseases.

“Better not, I have black sigatoka disease,” one might say. Or how about “fusarium wilt?”– or “moko disease?”

The woman apprehended by customs officials at the airport in Australia was trying to smuggle the plants in from Samoa. Although she doesn’t have any funky sounding diseases, she could be looking at 10 years in jail and a $66,000 Australian dollar fine for threating Australia’s banana industry.

Die and be reborn in a temple in Thailand: It only takes a minute and a half– and a coffin

by Jamie Rhein on

One of my favorite things to do in Thailand is to have a hand and foot massage. I feel rejuvenated afterward and it only takes 30 minutes. Plus, the massage is cheap and accessible. Hand and feet massage establishments are plentiful.

Here’s another way to rejuvenate in Thailand. At Wat Prommanee in Nakhon Nayok, about 60 miles north of Bangkok, you can climb into a big pink padded coffin for a few moments, and then climb out as a new person.

With high demand in the wanting-to-become-like-new-again department, visitors to the temple, hundreds of them, wait in line for their re-birthing experience. There are nine coffins, so it’s a stream-lined process. Monks, who also chant a dirge, tell people when to get in and get out.

The New York Times article, where I found out about this new opportunity to slough off the old and attract the new, provides these examples of what it is that gets people to climb into a coffin.

  • need for relaxation
  • prosperity
  • get rid of bad luck (the guy who said this had had a car accident and a break in.)
  • to win a soccer game (An entire soccer team showed up)

If traveling with your family, bring them along.

By the way, getting reborn isn’t free. It costs about $5. You can also pick up an amulet to take home.

If you do go, according to the article, don’t stand too close to the coffins while waiting your turn. You don’t want the bad karma being released from the people in the coffins to go right into you.

I’m wondering what happens if a person refuses to get out because a minute and a half just isn’t enough. Could you keep paying more money to stay in longer? Or do you have to get out, go to the end of the line and do it again?

Turkmenistan’s “Door to Hell”

by Jeremy Kressmann on

We’ve previously reported here at Gadling on the intriguing, surreal and downright bizarre tourist attractions of the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan. Now today comes further “fuel” for the country’s already odd reputation. Website English Russia is reporting on what local residents have dubbed the “Door to Hell” – a cavernous, flaming pit outside the small town of Darvaza which has been continuously burning for more than 35 years.

While Biblical alarmists might point to the “Door of Hell” as yet another sign of a coming apocalypse, the phenomenon apparently has a scientific explanation. According local residents, geologists were digging in the area for gas deposits and stumbled upon a huge underground cavern. The geologists apparently concluded the cavern was filled with poisonous gas, and decided (as any sane rational scientist might do) that they should light the cavern on fire to burn off the excess. The hole has been burning for more than 35 years since. Though there’s some debate on English Russia about whether this flaming pit is actually located in Uzbekistan, some further investigation confirms it is indeed in Turkmenistan.

Perhaps the “Door to Hell” won’t help put Turkmenistan back on your list of 1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die, but if you’re a Satanist, energy company executive or just plain curious, maybe it’s worth the long trek out to Central Asia.

Odd Statues from Around the World

by Brett Atkinson on

Weird statues are usually the end result of a city councillor with too much time and other people’s money on their hands. Some of the planet’s oddest statues include a giant Optimus Prime from Transformers and the kids jumping into the Singapore River outside the Fullerton Hotel.

Check out those and other odd and offbeat constructions here, and let me know any that have been overlooked, especially from your neck of the woods.

Some of most poignant and imposing statues I’ve seen are at Statue Park in Budapest. While other former Communist countries destroyed their statues of Lenin, members of the Proletariat, and brave Socialist soldiers, Hungary moved them to a park on the egde of Budapest.

Click here for an article I wrote about Statue Park, or read more travel information about Budapest.

News via Oddee and pic of Statue Park thanks to nicol_b on Flickr.

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