Have Hot Dog, Will Travel

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener. That is what I'd truly like to be.

For if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener, everyone would be in love with me. 

And now that little chorus is stuck in your head too. On my trip to the Walmart's near me a few days ago I was surprised to see the iconic wienermobile sitting at the entrance. Now that's a way to travel in style.

There are six wienermobiles that travel the highways throughout the year. The drivers who are hired to work from June to June of the next year are called hot doggers. They also hand out the iconic whistles which I should have stopped and picked up but forgot.

The 27 foot long vehicle was first created in 1936 by the nephew of Oscar Mayer, Carl. Since 2004 the wienermobile has been able to play the Oscar Mayer song in 21 different genres from Cajun to Rap to Bossa Nova. 

The last time I saw a wienermobile was when we visited the Henry Ford Museum. The 1952 version of the vehicle is there. This one in front of Walmart's though was a double-take moment. What a way to travel!

Soup From A Toilet Bowl?

Passersby would stop and do a double take and try to figure out just what was going on inside the Marton Restaurant. It had a very unique theme: the bathroom. According to their website, the restaurant that is now called Modern Toilet Restaurant and is a chain in Taiwan, was inspired by the manga, Dr. Slump. What is a manga, you ask? Read on.

A manga is basically a comic book series originating in Japan. There are all sorts of mangas as there are all sorts of comic book series in the U.S. The particular one that inspired the Modern Toilet Restaurant is set in Penguin Village and the inventor in the village creates a robot-girl who is desperately in need of eyeglasses thus she gets into all sorts of trouble. There are 18 volumes of the manga and the anime series developed from it has 243 episodes. The stories contain lots of puns and toilet humor and parodies of Japanese and American culture.

Back to the toilet humor. After reading Dr. Slump, the "muckrackers" as they call themselves started the toilet restaurant idea. It began mainly serving ice cream--chocolate in small squat toilet replica dishes. It has branched out since then. The fixtures in the restaurant are clear table tops set on bathtubs and of course toilets for seating. The website assures everyone that the toilets, urinals, etc., food is served in are just replicas of the real thing and have never actually been plumbed.

Well, how is the food, I wondered. So I headed over to TripAdvisor to get a first hand accounting. They have a a three green dot rating (average) and are #634 out of 9150 restaurants in Taipei. Here are a few comments:

It suits the Aussie humor: Took my mum and best mate, had a good laugh the whole time!
Then went back with the wife and her Nanna.... When the hot pot arrived and it was a toilet.... The look on her face, an 80-something year old Taiwanese lady.... Priceless.

A South Korean visitor said: You sit on toilets overtop of a clear counter topped bathtub or sink. Food is brought in various bathroom-themed dishes such as toilets, urinals, and squatters. The entire thing is good fun and worth going to at least once just for the fun of it.

Most reviewers agreed you don't go for the food. And a New York visitor said "Modern Toilet is a go there once, never come again type of restaurant." Then ended with this, "Note: Ironic that Modern Toilet does not have a sit-on toilet." I guess unless you squat well, you'd better go before you go.

Lost In Translation--Made Up For In Smiles

One of my favorite signs in English I've seen as we travel is one that was actually truth-in-advertising. In Turkey just outside of Ephesus where local merchants were displaying their wares there was a large sign hung over a display of watches. It read, "Genuine Fake Watches." Here are some signs seen by others that locals translated into English for the tourists.

• At a Budapest zoo: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.
• Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner in Japan: COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.
• On the grounds of a Nairobi private school: NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION.
• In a Mumbai restaurant: OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.
• In a Tokyo bar: SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.
• Advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist: TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.
• Advertisement for donkey rides, Thailand: WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?
• The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong: GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

Travel is never boring. I can only imagine the chuckles we English-speaking tourists bring to others when we try to speak in their language.

City Tours With A Twist

There is a tour in Cleveland I keep promising myself we are going to do someday. It's an Eliot Ness tour showing the highlights of the city in relation to one of America's great crime fighters who carried a badge instead of wearing a cape. Of course we are home to Superman too. When we travel around the world and stop in a city, we usually take a hop-on hop-off bus if it's available but in some cities there are city tours that introduce you to colorful aspects of the city you may not discover on your own.

While we thought about doing a tour of the Paris sewers, we somehow didn't manage that when we were there. We did however do the Red Light District in Amsterdam (some of it with my eyes covered). Most of the city tours you do on excursions from a cruise ship give the highlights and some historical sights but Smarter Travel.com has come up with a list of 10 Truly Unique City Tours.

The first one that strikes my fancy is the 1960s Summer of Love Tour. It's a trip down memory lane in San Francisco pointing out the important memorable spots for the hippie movement in that city. You ride in a psychedelic bus but it's "joint-free."

London, England has an unusual tour. It's led by someone who actually lives or has lived on the streets. This tour company takes homeless or past homeless folks and trains them as guides. You get the colorful stories of life on the streets and see all the historical points of interest in a whole new light.

The last tour that really piqued my interest is in Toronto, Canada with a professional photographer who not only shows you the sights but helps you set up the pictures and even takes some for you. The tour is a bit prices but comes with 50 professional digital shots for you shortly afterward. It would be nice to take a tour and have someone else snap the pictures for a change.

That's what caught my attention. Check out the article and see what tickles your travel bug.

The Travel Agency for Stuffed Toys

Afraid to fly? Not able to get around easily? Don't want to cope with jet lag? Send your favorite stuffed toy and let him do the traveling for you. The Unagi Travel Agency is a Japanese company designed just for that. You send your favorite stuffed toy to them and they take the toy on a tour of sites in Tokyo.

Once your toy reaches them, you will receive an email that it arrived safely. There will be pictures posted to Facebook so that you can see your favorite Teddy exploring Tokyo and having a great time in your place. The whole trip takes about 2-3 weeks by the time Teddy arrives, takes his tour, and then is returned to you.

It's a whole lot cheaper than going yourself. The tours range in price from $35 to $95 depending upon the one you pick.

We did a similar thing for our granddaughter last year. She sent us a Flat Stanley and he toured with us from Seattle to Cleveland to Florida including a stop at the Kennedy Space Center. I blogged the whole trip and put together a Shutterfly book for her to share with her class when she reported Flat Stanley's adventure. It was a lot of fun but virtual travel is not for me.