It’s time to take a break from serious travel advice again and just have a laugh, this time from Thailand. Sure, I take lots of scenic photos when I travel, but I revel in the silliness even more sometimes.

First up, there are a lot of things you’re not supposed to do in a Bangkok taxi cab. Some of them may make plenty of sense to foreigners, some may produce a scratching of the head.

That spiky thing, if you haven’t been to this part of the world, is a very smelly fruit called a durian.  The throwing up guy is kind of funny though because really, has anyone ever thrown up in a cab on purpose?

This other one is a bit stranger. No mooning is funny in itself, but a dog with sunglasses? Does that mean no blind dogs that need another seeing eye dog? And is that last one just a cigarette…or some kind of drug inhalation device?

Next up, no, I did not take a photo of meditating monks all gathered together. These are creepy lifelike statues of (apparently) well-known Thai monks you can buy as souvenirs and put on your shelf.

It’s been a rough few weeks in the usual powder kegs of the world as an obscure amateur video that poked fun at a certain religion’s founder sparked riots among the faithful. We should all give thanks that the Buddhists are so much more level-headed.

I traveled through Southeast Asia with a pair of Pickpocket Proof Pants from Clothing Arts. I knew I’d be navigating crowded markets, walking dark streets at night, and visiting sites frequented by clueless tourists. So I figured there would be more than a few pickpockets about looking for an easy target. Still, I was perplexed by this sign I encountered several times at the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

So…all the pickpockets that might be milling about are foreigners, not locals? How did they all get in there? Did they pay the hefty $13 admission fee like the rest of us, expecting to turn a big enough profit to make up for it? They must be very successful if so…

Like what you see here? Snag the RSS feed to keep up with future posts. 

Usually when travelers post photos from Vietnam, they’ve got all kinds of shots of motorbikes loaded down with people and goods. You can see a few of those here in this Vietnam scooter story and I’ve got plenty more I might dribble out later. But here are a few other fun ones I wanted to share.

This first one is also of a motorbike, but this one is doubling as a place for a nap. In the middle of the sidewalk. Next to a really busy street. This guy has both amazing balance and an impressive ability to shut out noise. I would surely crack my skull if I did manage to fall asleep amidst that cacophony.

Next up, this is still a communist country, in politics anyway. Hotels and internet cafes typically have to use a proxy server or some other workaround for you to get onto Facebook or Twitter and access some sites with non-official news about the country. So you still see propaganda billboards around the country and odd sayings here and there, like this one on a straw container near Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house in Hanoi. What’s doubly odd about it is the illustration: a fat pizza guy who is definitely not from Asia.

This next photo is from the excellent Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. Inside are all kinds of exhibits on the hill tribes and other groups prevalent in the country, with costumes, video, and more. Outside are rebuilt houses and buildings typical of certain areas. This one’s got something to do with fertility.

Gibberish t-shirts are not unique to Asia (see some from Bulgaria here), but a lot of them are manufactured here, often designed by people who have no working knowledge of the language they are using. The words are just a design element. We saw a dozen hilarious shirts in the riverside night market of Hue, one having the word “pimple” repeated about 50 times and another with a cat pictured but the words saying, “Time file so fast in busy daily life.” This one shows up the best as a photo though.

I believe she needs to quit her job and go to Hawaii. Or something like that.

Next post we’ll return to useful and practical cheap travel info. Until I feel the need to post that photo of what you can’t do in a Bangkok cab…

With a title like that, you know it’s time for another issue of Perceptive Travel, home to the best travel stories from authors on the move. You know the editor of said publication is dedicated when he publishes it from a volcanic island in the middle of a lake in Central America. (Or am I just crazy?)

I’m keeping this post short, as who knows if the power will go out again, so check out my story (From Red to Green in Bulgaria), Luke Armstrong’s A Clear and Prescient Danger in Morocco, and Michael Shapiro’s piece Frank Lloyd Wright’s Humble Desert Palace.

As usual, we also highlight some interesting travel books and world music. Susan Griffith handles the former this month, Laurence Mitchell the latter.

Instead of gear this month, we’re giving away two copies of a book that could change your life: The $100 Start-up from Chris Guillebeau. It’s good, so you should go for it. If you’re not on the monthly newsletter list already (why?), then follow Perceptive Travel on Facebook. .

This cheap travel blog has been packed with informative posts and photos to make you drool lately, so time for a bit of fun instead. It always gives me great joy to find the English language used as a mere design element rather than to communicate. In most countries it is very difficult to find a t-shirt in the local language. Almost everyone, it seems, thinks it’s better to have a message in English, even if they can’t understand what it says.

Sometimes it’s clear nobody knows what it says, or they wouldn’t be wearing it around. Like this one at the top I found in a storefront in Sofia, Bulgaria. I walked for miles in that city looking for something in the mysterious Cryllic alphabet, but the only thing I could find was ugly tourist shirts just spelling out Bulgaria or with the original alphabet scrawled out by the founder. Neither something any local would wear. Instead you get boob references.

The second one is much like a few I have bought over the years in Korea, Thailand, and Peru. Complete gibberish meant to look like a cool message. Really though, just a bunch of random phrases slapped together. If you can’t read the second one, here’s what it says:

Blog
Old Fashioned Root Beer Floats
Catfish Power
NewYork City
Sports Wear

In the big scheme of things to complain about, I’ll admit that dumb and annoying travel advertisements don’t rank very high on the scale. But after looking at these two ads for months across multiple publications, I’ve realized that they represent a black hole of stupidity, millions of dollars turned over to some ad agency with a good Powerpoint presentation instead of being spent in ways that could really bring in more visitors to a destination. They represent what’s so wrong with how destinations market themselves. Instead of courting evangelists, conversing with fans, and highlighting what makes this specific place truly special and worth visiting for a certain type of tourist, they go for the big dumb media splash in hopes of getting noticed by some fraction of the masses.

Exhibit A, this truly horrible magazine ad from South Africa Tourism. It’s the kind of thing that makes people scratch their heads and then ask, “What the f*&% were they thinking with THAT one?”

Although I’m tempted, I don’t want to sully this ad with any funny thought balloons or arrows pointing to the silly parts, so just check out the following list. 1) They’re about to get mauled. 2) The guide has a gun. Is he really going to shoot an elephant in Kruger National Park? 3) One of the women is wearing shorts in the middle of a patch of razor grass. 4) Really, you think this is going to be a fun position to be in when you go waltzing through the savannah—and you think your tour company will really allow it? No and no. 5) What’s that “exuberance of the locals” line all about? The exuberant elephants or some mystery unseen humans hiding in the grass?

Exhibit B is not as dangerous, but is doubly dumb. I’ve now seen this is six magazine issues, which tells me they’ve spent a double-buttload of money on it. But what does it mean?

For anyone who has actually been to Scottsdale, Arizona, this ad is laugh-out-loud funny. Scottsdale is a city of strip malls with gargantuan asphalt parking lots, shopping malls that are big enough to be seen from space, and convention resorts surrounding carefully manicured golf courses. It’s about as close to cowboys and cowgirls as a boots store in Tokyo. The only thing you’re likely to lasso there is the iPhone of a soccer mom who is texting while driving her Hummer. Or a retired grandma who’s moving too slowly on her ScooterStore transportation device—in one of those shopping malls. (Are the diamonds in the ad a reference to the fact they have Kay Jewelers outlets?)

I’m sure there are natural cacti somewhere outside of Phoenix and Scottsdale, but I was last there for three days and didn’t see a one. No diamonds in the sky either—the light pollution along the six-lane roads killed anything that may have been overhead.

There’s a demographic that actually likes all this and will get excited about it, especially if they can use their Marriott loyalty points to come play some golf. So show them what you’re really about. Be honest. Don’t try to trick the rest of us into the idea that you’re like Flagstaff or Santa Fe. That deception is ridiculously expensive and it never works.

Figure out what makes you unique and communicate that to us in an genuine way.

(And when it comes to handing money to that ad agency, you might want to start looking at some research reports concerning how people are making their actual vacation decisions. I hear there’s this newfangled thing called the Internet…)

Related silliness: Careful with those Tourism Slogans!