Sideswipe: Rough ride

Although the sign was about 500m away from the nearest building, the terrain didn't strike me as particularly 'disabled friendly', says a reader who spotted this at the Port Taranaki car park. Photo / Supplied

Holidays in hell

Catherine Price's new book 101 Places Not to See Before You Die is like a reverse bucket list. It's about the world's most pointless or disgusting tourist traps that you should avoid. One is the Karostas Cietums Prison Hotel in Latvia. It's a prison that has been minimally converted into a hotel:

"It's not like they took the prison and tried to like spice it up and turn it into a luxury resort," Price explains. It really looks like a prison. "Guests" sleep on iron beds or prison bunks. For an extra-special occasion, you can arrange to be abducted at your workplace and delivered to the hotel.

Another place to avoid, according to Price, is the Museum of Anatomy in Turin, Italy. With its dried-out body parts and fingers preserved in formaldehyde, the museum is not something Price felt was a "need-to-do" on a hot Turin afternoon. But the creepiest part is that the museum is lorded over by the skeleton of its founder.

She explains: "He left a note in his will saying, 'I want to be preserved using the techniques that I myself developed and be put on display in the museum.' So there's this skeleton with his brain, preserved by his own methods, sitting at his feet. Very weird."

Shear necessity

A reader, who spent the second weekend in a row de-nitting her son and hot-washing all his bed linen, says there must be an easier way.

"When I was a kid, some cultures simply shaved the infested head - although I always thought these kids must have felt ashamed because their freshly shaven heads told everyone they had nits/lice - this now seems like an excellent idea."

Temperatures rise over air con

There's an emerging fashion trend in China that's causing some inter-generational conflict. Older men are rolling up their shirts over their bellies to cool off in public (often fanning themselves with the garment) and the younger men think it's crude and embarrassing and have started calling their elders "exposing grandfathers".

One 21-year-old scoffs and tells the LA Times: "It lowers Beijing's standing as an international city. I go without a shirt sometimes at home, but never in public. If my dad reaches for his shirt when I'm out with him, I threaten to go home. It's just too embarrassing."