101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [54]
Then each and every one of them will rest his head on her chest and smile as he takes a picture of himself, happy at last.
Interestingly, the massive Consumer Electronics Show and the porn show hit Vegas at the same time. The reason is that the porn show used to be part of CES (I’m not kidding). After all, the porn industry tends to be keenly interested in consumer electronics. Also, many CES attendees are keenly interested in porn.
BRENDAN BUHLER is a writer and staff reporter at the Las Vegas Sun.
Chapter 85
The World Bog Snorkelling Championships
Don’t be scared if you see a snorkel tube rising from the murky depths of a bog while taking an otherwise relaxing walk in the Welsh countryside. You’ve likely stumbled upon a training session for the annual World Bog Snorkelling Championship, held each year in a specially designed course on a farm on the outskirts of Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales.
The site of the competition is quite scenic—it’s even been designated as an area of “Special Scientific Interest” due to the rare and protected animals and plants that live nearby. But there is nothing pretty about the snorkeling competition. Originally started by the tourist board, it takes place in two sixty-yard trenches dug out of the peat bog. Protected animals and plants share space with hundreds of participants and spectators who gather on the banks to watch contestants race through the murky water, clad in everything from normal swimwear to wet suits to the occasional inflatable sumo wrestling costume.
As befits such a serious competition, there are, of course, strict rules: competitors are only allowed to compete in one of the two bog trenches, bog assignments are not transferable, and according to official guidelines, “No recognized swimming stroke may be used and lifting the head is allowed purely for orientation purposes.”
If all that still leaves you wanting more, you’re in luck: there’s also a bog snorkeling triathlon.
Fotograferen.net/Wikipedia Commons
Chapter 86
Your College Campus Four Months After You Graduate
Don’t be that guy.
Chapter 87
A North Korean Gulag
The word “gulag” originally was an acronym for a Soviet bureaucratic institution called the Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerei—the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps. Like any Soviet bureaucratic institution, these original gulags were not fun places to visit—and while the word’s definition has since expanded to include any forced labor camp, it still indicates a place that you don’t want to experience firsthand.
North Korea provides some particularly good examples. Humanitarian groups condemn its “reeducation” camps for starving, torturing, and abusing prisoners, some of whom are there for crimes as small as listening to foreign radio shows. According to the Wall Street Journal, prisoners sometimes serve their entire sentences in the clothes they were wearing when they were seized—one woman had to bind her feet in rags after being arrested in high heels.
It’s hard to imagine, but North Korea’s kwan li so penal camps are reputably even worse than its labor camps. Kwan li so camps are home to North Korea’s political prisoners, and are thought to hold somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people, some of whose so-called political offenses are as trivial as sitting on a newspaper containing a photograph of Kim Jong Il. Even worse, North Korea doles out punishments collectively, meaning that if one person in your family does something wrong, up to three generations of your entire extended family can be punished. The Hermit Kingdom is no doubt a fascinating place to see, but if you visit, make sure to play by its rules.
Chapter 88
Disaster City
Strolling through Disaster City on an otherwise pleasant Saturday, you’re likely to be accosted by a bloody, screaming woman begging you to save her children from a collapsed strip mall or come across