volunteering, interesting opportunities for, 207–208
vomitorium, the truth, 126–127
W
wakame sake, 66
Wales, 202–203
Wall Drug, 42–44
Walt Whitman Cinnabon franchise, 79
Washington state, 180–181
waterfalls, falling off of, 120,
wave pools, crowded, 85–86
White Shark Café, 157–158
Whittier, Alaska, 87–89
whores, plastic, 123
Wiener’s Circle, 137–138
Winchester Mystery House, 20–22
Winchester, Sarah, 20–22
wounds, licking open, 230–231
Wyoming, 74–75, 190–191
Y
Yamaha Rhino, 146–147
Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, 114
Yellowstone, 190–191
YMCA dance, by coersion, 76–77
yoga, Bikram, 230–231
Yucatan peninsula, xiv, 213–214
Yungas, 165–167
Z
Zabbaleen, 140–141
Zhongdian, 114
Ziploc bag, urinating in a, 15
Zoroastrianism, 25
Copyright
101 PLACES NOT TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE. Copyright © 2010 by Catherine Price. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Price, Catherine, 1978–
101 places not to see before you die/by Catherine Price.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: “A spirited, ingenious, tongue-in-cheek guide to some of the least appealing destinations and experiences in the world”—Provided by publisher.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-06-178776-8
1. sc22 2010004502
* * *
EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN:9780062000040
10 11 12 13 14 ID/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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*Not kidding.
*Steps 2 and 3 may be combined.
*It’s actually not. Measured from base to summit, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller, if mostly underwater.
*Not to be confused with Vatican City.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Testicle Festival
Chapter 2 - An Underpass in Connaught Circle, New Delhi, at the Moment When Someone Puts a Turd on Your Shoe
Chapter 3 - Euro Disney
Chapter 4 - Ibiza on a Family Vacation
Chapter 5 - The Beijing Museum of Tap Water
Chapter 6 - A Bathtub Filled with Beer
Chapter 7 - An Overnight Train in China on the First Day of Your First Period
Chapter 8 - Grandpa and Grandma, Koh Samui, Thailand
Chapter 9 - The Winchester Mystery House
GUEST ENTRY: The Worst Places in the Encyclopedia—A. J. Jacobs
Chapter 10 - Hell
Chapter 11 - A Buzkashi Match
Chapter 12 - Your Boss’s Bedroom
Chapter 13 - An Overnight Stay at a Korean Temple
Chapter 14 - Pamplona, from the Perspective of a Bull
Chapter 15 - The Gloucester Cheese Rolling Competition
GUEST ENTRY: The Worst Meal in Barcelona—Michael and Isaac Pollan
Chapter 16 - Wall Drug
Chapter 17 - Bart
Chapter 18 - A Stop on Carry Nation’s Hatchetation Tour
Chapter 20 - Rush Hour on a Samoan Bus
GUEST ENTRY: The Tupperware Museum—Mary Roach
Chapter 21 - An Outdoor Wedding During the 2021 Emergence of the Great Eastern Cicada Brood
Chapter 22 - (Tr)Action Park
Chapter 23 - A Giant Room Filled with Human Crap
Chapter 24 - Kingman Reef
Chapter 25 - Naked Sushi
Chapter 26 - Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Chapter 27 - Times Square on New Year’s Eve
Chapter 28 - The Double Black Diamond Run at Powderhouse Hill
Chapter 29 - The Double Black Diamond Run at Corbet’s Couloir
Chapter 30 - The Beast
Chapter 31 - The Grover Cleveland Service Area
Chapter 32 - The Room Where Spam Subject Lines Are Created
Chapter 33 - Anywhere Written About by Nick Kristof
GUEST ENTRY: Experiences That Nick Kristof Does Not Think Are Worth Having Before You Die—Nick Kristof
Chapter 34 - The Tokyo Summerland Wave Pool, August 14, 2007, 3
Chapter 35 - Mid-January in Whittier, Alaska
Chapter 36 - Onondaga Lake
Chapter 37 - Mount Rushmore
Chapter 38 - Amateur Night at a Shooting Range
Chapter 39 - Ciudad Juárez
Chapter 40 - The World’s Skinniest Buildings
Chapter 41 - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
GUEST ENTRY: The Customs Office at the Buenos Aires Airport—Rebecca Solnit
Chapter 42 - Any Hotel That Used to Be a Prison
Chapter 43 - The Top of Mount Washington in a Snowstorm
Chapter 44 - The Bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole
Chapter 45 - The Inside of a dB Drag Racer During Competition
Chapter 46 - Shangri-La
Chapter 47 - Body Farms
Chapter 48 - An AA Meeting When You’re Drunk
Chapter 49 - Jupiter’s Worst Moon
GUEST ENTRY: Splitting the Czech—J. Maarten Troost
Chapter 50 - Picher, Oklahoma
Chapter 51 - Tierra Santa Theme Park
Chapter 52 - A Vomitorium
Chapter 53 - Medinat al-Fayoum, Egypt, Accompanied by Your Own Security Detail
Chapter 54 - The Steam Room at the Russian & Turkish Baths
Chapter 55 - The Blarney Stone
GUEST ENTRY: Mexico City on the First Day of the Swine Flu Outbreak—Michael Baldwin
Chapter 56 - The Wiener’s Circle
Chapter 57 - The Top of Mount Everest
Chapter 58 - Garbage City
Chapter 59 - Stonehenge
Chapter 60 - The Khewra Salt Mines Mosque
Chapter 61 - Anywhere on a Yamaha Rhino
Chapter 62 - Chacabuco, Chile
Chapter 63 - The New South China Mall
GUEST ENTRY: Sumqayit, Azerbai
jan—Lisa Margonelli
Chapter 64 - An Island off Germany’s East Coast, January 16, 1362
Chapter 65 - Fucking, Austria
Chapter 66 - The White Shark Café While Dressed as an Elephant Seal
Chapter 67 - The Sidewalk Outside the Roman Coliseum During the Crazy Gladiator’s Shift
Chapter 68 - Any Place Whose Primary Claim to Fame Is a Large Fiberglass Thing
Chapter 69 - The Path of an Advancing Column of Driver Ants
Chapter 70 - The Road of Death
GUEST ENTRY: Adventure of the Beagle, the Musical—Eric Simons
Chapter 71 - Cusco, If You Are Albino
Chapter 72 - Manneken Pis
Chapter 73 - An Old Firm Derby While Wearing the Wrong Color T-Shirt
Chapter 74 - The Annual Poison Oak Show
Chapter 75 - The Inside of a Chinese Coal Mine
Chapter 76 - The Seattle Gum Wall
Chapter 77 - Varrigan City
Chapter 78 - The Inner Workings of a Rendering Plant
Chapter 79 - An Airplane After It Has Been Stranded on the Runway for Eight Hours
Chapter 80 - The Amsterdam Sexmuseum
Chapter 81 - The Next Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano
Chapter 82 - The Shores of Burundi’s Lake Tanganyika When Gustave Is Hungry
Chapter 83 - Ancient Rome on or Around the Night of July 18, 64
Chapter 84 - Nevada
GUEST ENTRY: Fan Hours at the Las Vegas Porn Convention—Brendan Buhler
Chapter 85 - The World Bog Snorkelling Championships
Chapter 86 - Your College Campus Four Months After You Graduate
Chapter 87 - A North Korean Gulag
Chapter 88 - Disaster City
Chapter 89 - The Inside of a Spotted Hyena’s Birth Canal
Chapter 90 - Gropers’ Night on the Tokyo Subway
Chapter 91 - The Yucatán Peninsula When a Giant Asteroid Hit the Earth
Chapter 92 - Monday Morning at the DMV
Chapter 93 - Black Rock City
GUEST ENTRY: Burning Man—Jennifer Kahn
Chapter 94 - The Bottom of a Pig Lagoon
Chapter 95 - Sohra, India, 10
Chapter 96 - The Thing
Chapter 97 - Four Corners
Chapter 98 - Russia’s Prison OE-256/5
Chapter 99 - A Bikram Yoga Studio
Chapter 100 - The Traveling Mummies of Guanajuato
Chapter 101 - The Top of the Stari Grad Bell Tower
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright
About the Publisher