Where's the weirdest / most odd place you've been to?

JohnCleary

Inspired by the "Cities you'd never return to" thread, thought it'd be interesting to see if people have been to any off the beaten track / dodgy / weird places around the world.

For me:
1) Bangkok Central Prison (Bangkwang) aka. The Bangkok Hilton
I had a dark obsession to get into (and get out again!) one of the world's most notorious prisons. So, to get deep inside, I pretended I was a journalist writing a blog on various aspects of Thailand. This got me deep'ish inside, but not right into the bowels. Certainly enough to scare the sh1t out of me.
I then went to visit my 'friend', Peter Allan, a 34 year old Australian sentenced to life for trying to export almost .5 kg heroin from Bangkok to Sydney. My 45 mins spent with him were something i'll never forget.
I obviously have no pics from this, all I was allowed was a pen and paper.

2) Pripyat, Ukraine
This is the city (almost 50k inhabitants) that was evacuated during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. We also visited the reactor itself, Chernobyl town and finally Pripyat city. Highly recommended, again another experience i'll never forget.
(Can share some pics of this tour and Kiev if interested)

Come on AH, show your adventurous side.

NachoBusiness

Carlow.

Heisenberg1

Holyhead.

callaway92

A shop in Camden Town called Cyberdog. It was bizarre really. Kinda like taking LSD and walking into a banging nightclub created by Kriss-Kross in the early 1990s. Haven't been the same since.

darkpagandeath

Black Mesa

Tabnabs

Al Başrah Oil Terminal. 30 miles off the Iraqi coast.

We traded empty plastic water bottles for Iraqi money with Sadam Hussain's face on it. The Iraqi lads liked to keep some sort of eagles as a pets. They also had a small boat circling the terminal with the call to prayer on loud speakers. And it was 46 degrees when we were there. We were there to bring a multi million dollar cargo of Iraqi oil to the USA, part of the bull**** UN Oil-for-Food Programme

All very mad max kind of dystopia.

pmasterson95

Castlebar

Specialun

Kerry

scdublin

Egypt - I was around 16 when I went and just found it so scary and backward (compared to what I was used to and not really fully understanding the various levels of poverty etc). People were pestering and leering at us and I just felt so uncomfortable.

Tory Island - Friendly place but in an odd Father Ted type of way. The people were a bit odd...I'm told most of them would have been inbred but not sure how accurate that is.

mathie

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Carlow.

Heisenberg1 wrote: »

Holyhead.

pmasterson95 wrote: »

Castlebar

Specialun wrote: »

Kerry

AH. Nothing if not consistent.

biko

Rijeka before 1989? when the wall fell.
I remember it as a black and white movie from the Soviet archives. Weird and scary.

Mesrine65

The Hill of Crosses, Siauliai in Lithuania was weird.

It is estimated that there are around 55,000 not only modest crosses, but huge crucifixes, statues of Lithuanian heroes, statues of the Virgin & the Saviour & thousands of rosaries & effigies brought by Catholic pilgrims.

No one knows for certain when the tradition of leaving crosses began, although it is believed that the first crosses were placed on the former fort Jurgaiciai Domantai after an uprising in 1831.

It is one of the most renowned pilgrimage places in all the country & it’s a symbol of desire for freedom, national pride & piety.

http://i0.wp.com/unusualplaces.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hill-of-crosses2.jpg?zoom=1.5&resize=749%2C498

Mr. CooL ICE

Wroclaw, Poland. Although the city centre was nice and everybody was friendly, the taxi journey to and from the airport was mental. There was a surreal mix of traditional pretty houses and brutalist soviet concrete monstrosities of apartment blocks in no particular order with a road system that just didn't make any sense. Turn a corner and there's a giant sculpture of a steam train riding vertically.

Also, the Isle Of Man. Arriving there in the most pathetic little cigar with wings possible, you could see the weird 3-legged swastika IoM logo cutout into a field below you. When being taxied to the terminal, you were passing random old airplanes on the side of the runway that were rusted and falling apart. Standing outside a pub for a pint and two women park up in their brand Audi R8, get out in their pyjamas and go in for a pint before driving away again. Odd place.

Deathwish4

In all seriousnessnessness the answer is Cork.

There's just something about the people down there. Very strange.

NachoBusiness

mathie wrote: »

AH. Nothing if not consistent.

What? I'm serious.

I was only in it once, and that was enough. Was on my way back from a Springsteen gig in Kilkenny two summers back. It was around midday and I was feeling hungry, so I thought feck it, I've never been in Carlow before so sure might as well stop there and get something to eat. I find this place right in the centre of town and park in their car park. Soon as I get out I feel it: errieness and something about everyone that I just couldn't figure out. They'd look at me briefly and then look away as if they had known I was coming and weren't happy about it.

Anyway, I go inside and I order something and the waitress's eyes are like death. Pure emptiness. Almost bovine esque. When she walked away she walked like a person wearing a neck brace might. I finish up, leave a nice large tip (fcuk it I think it might bring her to life) and I make my way into the town. Needed a new car phone charger and so I went to the local CPW. Walk up to the counter and the fcuker behind it has the God damn dead bovine eyes as the chick in the bar. I ask him if he has a car charger for an android and in a monotone voice says 'Let me check in store room' and turned around as if he was wearing a neck brace. When he came back out I'd say I was around the Wicklow area.

Menas

On our Honeymoon we accidentally spent a night in a 'Dry county' in Arkansas.
Marriage nearly ended there and then.

mathie

NachoBusiness wrote: »

What? I'm serious.

I was only in it once, and that was enough. Was on my way back from a Springsteen gig in Kilkenny two summers back. It was around midday and I was feeling hungry, so I thought feck it, I've never been in Carlow before so sure might as well stop there and get something to eat. I find this place right in the centre of town and park in their car park. Soon as I get out I feel it: errieness and something about everyone that I just couldn't figure out. They'd look at me briefly and then look away as if they had known I was coming and weren't happy about it.

Anyway, I go inside and I order something and the waitress's eyes are like death. Pure emptiness. Almost bovine esque. When she walked away she walked like a person wearing a neck brace might. I finish up, leave a nice large tip (fcuk it I think it might bring her to life) and I make my way into the town. Needed a new car phone charger and so I went to the local CPW. Walk up to the counter and the fcuker behind it has the God damn dead bovine eyes as the chick in the bar. I ask him if he has a car charger for an android and in a monotone voice says 'Let me check in store room' and turned around as if he was wearing a neck brace. When he came back out I'd say I was around the Wicklow area.

A restaurant with a less than enthusiastic worker.
A shop with a less than enthusiastic worker.

Such levels of dddness and weirdness than not even H.R. Giger could summon from the very depths of his imagination.

5rtytry56

Borris an Ossary. In the old days when bus eireann stopped there on the way to Limerick.
Depressing. Best thing for me was always to keep plunked in the bus eireann coach.

Sassandra, Cote D'Ivoire, and Kampala, Uganda. In both locations I was struck by the poverty interspersed with wealth. Cote D'Ivoire was more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. Kampalas high rise skyline at night looked completely at odds to the sprawling shanties surrounding the modern architecture of the city centre. I've never seen more scooters and motorbikes in my lfe.

Interslice

JohnCleary wrote: »

2) Pripyat, Ukraine
This is the city (almost 50k inhabitants) that was evacuated during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. We also visited the reactor itself, Chernobyl town and finally Pripyat city. Highly recommended, again another experience i'll never forget.
(Can share some pics of this tour and Kiev if interested)

Come on AH, show your adventurous side.

I thought this documentary on radioactive wolves was interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agvI3JrcoVA

The weirdest place I've been is probably a underwater tunnel in the burren that went back inland from the sea about 50m. Really small and only a few spots too turn around. Couldn't see anything on the way back from all the silt we kicked up and had too just use a bit of blue rope to guide myself back into the light! Remember thinking it's very weird being under the sea and the land at the same time, with people walking around above us.

I was invited to a local fishermans wedding in indonesia. Took part in all these odd dances and sat about eating buffalo stew and rice with my bare hands with the locals. Tasted rank but had to be done! Thing went on for days including a big ceremony where they chop up the buffalo apocalypse now style. And not a drop of alcohol to be had.

nc19

Morocco

Links234

callaway92 wrote: »

A shop in Camden Town called Cyberdog. It was bizarre really. Kinda like taking LSD and walking into a banging nightclub created by Kriss-Kross in the early 1990s. Haven't been the same since.

Love that place

I got a few nice bits of clothing and some accesories from there.

Sleepy

Never been to anything all that outlandish but for the sake of contributing:

Back in 2007 I spent a couple of nights in Bratislava. A few of us in the hostel persuaded a local girl who worked there to bring us on an unofficial pub crawl with the express purpose of scoring a bag of weed. Ended up in the Students Union during their Freshers Week; a mafia bar that was decorated like a strip club in a mid-eighties movie and where drinks were twice the price of any other place we'd been that night. There was hardly anyone there and we left after a single round. Creepy spot. Finished the night off, and achieved our goal, in a speakeasy run out of someones street level apartment. They served us a round of free shots on arrival explaining that it'd take a few minutes to "wash enough glasses for all of us". There was all of five of us in the group. Only time in my life I've ever had a dealer explain the possible outcomes of being found in possession of a small amount of grass. Seems Slovakia isn't a good place for ents!

On the same trip, I visited the Cemetery of the Nameless that featured in Before Sunrise. An eerie, yet strangely romantic spot.

On another trip in 2010, I found myself drinking cans of beer in a squat bar in Slovenia. It was a pretty cool place, an entire block of a European capital city that had been taken over by squatters who'd decorated it with graffiti, wind-chimes and sculptures made out of scrap metal. A really beautiful urban space that's no doubt been turned into a shopping centre by now.

TrustedApple

Me and the father still talk about this to this day. 2 different odd places we ended up on this trip.

There back in 2006 me and the father where on the way back from holidays in Italy he's from there and we drive there from Ireland.

So we got into Paris at about 11.30pm at night and it was to late to stay with my uncle as he would be a 80 year old man and did not wont to wake him up.

We turned off about 15KM from Paris and tried to get a hotel in about 12 different places and no luck what so ever in getting a room anywhere.

So we went to the next town and magically we walk into the hotel and we asked do they have a room and magically they said we could have our pick not a good sign at all. A reg room was 100 and the grand suite was 107 with inducing breakfast the next morning so we said why not lets get the suite so we went to the room and it was all dark everywhere down to it and i was like ok .... we got into the room and it was well 5 double beds in the room and i said to the father where the hell are we ? LoL. So we got into our beds and outside where here fighting in french and was like grand and next min there was gun shots and i just felt we where going to die LoL.

Then we hit england the next day and needed to get a hotel again so we pulled into one of these motorway hotel rooms and we went to the counter to get a room. So we where like its a bit of dump but its 1am LoL. So we went up the stairs to our room and well there was rain running down the walls and loads of mould every where and then we got to the top and seen loads of cats running across the hallway and we both turned to each other lets go LoL.

I could go on for hours about all the bad hotels we ended up staying in when the father used to drive to Italy and back

FTA69

Fauzhderhat in Chittagong, Bangladesh; it's where ships go to die. Oil tankers and massive factory fishing boats from all over the world converge on this port to be broken up. Ships the size of small towns get dismantled in days with tens of thousands of workers swarming over it like ants, stripping it bare. In the space of weeks there's literally nothing left and all the metal is melted down into reinforced steel bars and shipped off. The conditions are utterly abysmal and dozens of workers are killed every week, including many children. I'd to bribe a guard to get in on a Friday (Islamic sabbath) when it was a bit quiet but got lobbed out again after twenty minutes. Insane gaff though.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/shipbreakers/gwin-text

Another one is Pashupatinath in Nepal, an ancient temple in Kathmandu where people bring their dead to be cremated. I was watching one family for hours as they held their service and encountered a few sadhus, Hundu holy men. These holy men wear no clothes, put ash on their faces and have massive dread locks. They are also constantly stoned out of their head on hash which they view as a sacrament. These sadhus began to do this mad repetitive dance around the stone dais where the corpse was being anointed. The eldest son then placed oil in the corpse's mouth and proceeded to set fire to the body's face while a load of monks started to light the pyre. Half way through the blaze the corpse seized in the heat and sat up while the monks tried to push it back down with a bamboo cane.

Definitely a mad spectacle when you're monged out of your nut.

Jawgap

Kerguelen - even harder to get to than the Antarctic!

Company I was working for got a contract with a French government department that ended up with myself and a colleague travelling there. Two weeks of work and another three waiting to get taken off by ship.

It's a long way from nowhere!