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Forgotten Perfume’s Sheep Placenta AIDS Soup (aka Ugliest Menu of 2012?)Sure, every restaurant may have a maggot-filled dish called Insect Story, and what's a Chinese restaurant without a Jaco 
India’s Incredibly Cool Hand-Drawn Movie PostersRamachandraiah prints movie posters for a living. He's done it ever since 1971, when he bought an ancient lithograph pr 
A Sweet New Batch of Indian Movie PostersI'm away from Bangalore, back in Beijing, but I just got some lo-res photos of the new batch of 20" by 30" hand-drawn li 
The 38th Reich: Korean Nazi CosplayA couple of days ago, I posted my favorite pictures of cute Korean cosplay girls -- but that's the light-hearted side of 
The Cockiest Shrine in BangkokAt Bangkok's Goddess Tuptim Shrine, there's something prickly going down.
At this veritable penis park, there a
Extraordinary Eats, Lost in Translation
Forgotten Perfume’s Sheep Placenta AIDS Soup (aka Ugliest Menu of 2012?)
Sure, every restaurant may have a maggot-filled dish called Insect Story, and what's a Chinese restaurant without a Jacopetti-inspired Monkey Head offering (even if it is just a bowl of fried mushrooms). I don't know, however, of a single other Beijing restaurant that boasts acquired immune deficiency syndrome sheep placenta soup. That's right: AIDS soup, the most ...
Our Weird Projects, Sweet Movies and Wild Books
A Sweet New Batch of Indian Movie Posters
I'm away from Bangalore, back in Beijing, but I just got some lo-res photos of the new batch of 20" by 30" hand-drawn litho-printed Sandalwood/Kannada movie posters, and they're fantastic! (If you missed reading about Raju, who draws a new movie poster every three hours, and the 1901 litho machine they're printed on, go ...
Our Weird Projects, Sweet Movies and Wild Books
India’s Incredibly Cool Hand-Drawn Movie Posters
Ramachandraiah prints movie posters for a living. He's done it ever since 1971, when he bought an ancient lithograph press. He keeps it in a factory north of Bangalore, far from the English town where it was built 111 years ago. Most movie posters here are lavish. They're digitally-printed, full-color, and reach up to 30 ...
Offbeat Museums, Theme Parks
Chinese Freak Shows: An Age-Old New Years Tradition
Two-headed ladies! Ladies with tails! Big-headed ladies and snake-eating ladies and elephants, too! All this, for only 75 cents! Every year, for Chinese New Year, these tents appear across the country. This one was in rural Shanxi Province. Outside, an old lady counted her renminbi in the cold. ...
Strange Tourism, Theme Parks
Don’t Forget Your Cute Tiger Pictures
After the horrors of the tiger park, I neglected to mention the cute photo ops at the end of the tour. I mean, how awesome is this vertical line of tigerocity? After taking the picture, the employee wrenched the doped-out cub from our cuddle. He shoved it in a medium-sized tupperware storage container. He clipped on ...
Strange Tourism, Theme Parks
Small Children Feeding Live Animals to Tigers in a Chinese Zoo
In northern China there's a tiger park. Like so many things in China, it's nothing like you might expect. To start with, there's a menu at the gate. These aren't animals to take home and domesticate. They're fodder. Victims to be released on your tour. "Let's get a cow," I said. Michelle just ...
Holy Curiosities, Somewhat Perverted
The Cockiest Shrine in Bangkok
At Bangkok's Goddess Tuptim Shrine, there's something prickly going down. At this veritable penis park, there are whoppers, dongers, cocks and dicks, carved-off woodies and sleek shiny johnsons in stacks. Every last one is circumcised. Even the cocks of cocks. Known locally as the Chao Mae Tuptim, this overgrown shrine is tucked--ever so discretely--behind ...
Cute & Kawaii
Bangkok’s Sweetest Secret Dance Party
Bangkok is awesome. Pad thai, ping pong balls, reclining buddhas. But nowhere is sweeter than this hidden corridor of Central World Mall, where crowds of high school kids practice their sweet dance moves every weekend. Each gang brings their own routines and own MP3 players. Any reflective surface--shop windows, aluminum panelling, ...
Life in Miniature
Great Hillbilly Roadside Puppets from Sri Lanka
These Sri Lankan puppets, a tradition of the coastal village of Ambalangoda, embarrassingly look more like my Kentucky and Carolina kin than anything else. At about five bucks each, we couldn't resist walking away with a bagful. But my favorite was a gorgeous four-foot-tall devil puppet. It was too big for our bag, but ...
Strange Tourism, Sweet Movies and Wild Books
Porn, Rats, and Antique Projectors at Sri Lanka’s Classic Cinemas
We heard there were rats in The Liberty. That it smelled like urine. That the sound was awful. But it's the most famous cinema in Sri Lanka's capital, a 1955 Art Moderne beauty, and how could we turn that down? So we wore socks. Rats don't like socks. It's been modified, ...
Life in Miniature
Monitor Lizards on the Road
The bus ahead screeches to a halt, and we swerve into a ditch. "Iguana," says our tuktuk driver with a grunt. I've never seen an iguana like this. This was more like a dinosaur or a dragon. It could probably eat a small child. (Komodo Dragons maybe used to eat pigmy elephants.) "Can you ...
Copyright Carelessness, Extraordinary Eats
Sri Lanka’s Strangely Familiar Fast Food Chains
Old Galle may be protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site, but that hasn't stopped fast food chains from sprawling around the town. Oh, don't worry, they all appear to be Sri Lankan, but they are strangely familiar...
Strange Tourism
Our Favorite Kim Jong Il Stories…
I'm very happy, and a little sad, but I know Kim Jong L'il will do a fine job furthering his father's legacy of madness. In the meantime, here's some of my favorite AO Kim Jong Il pieces: - Did you know Kim Jong Il was already a master equestrian marksman at the age of five? - At birth, ...
