Devotee at the Phuket vegetarian festival - Johnny Lawlor
Think the world's in danger of turning into a giant, American-style shopping mall? Weird World, a new book from the adventure travel specialists Bradt and Wanderlust magazine, shows us otherwise.
The images contained in this eyebrow-raising volume (all of which were originally entered into a competition by ordinary Joe and Josephine travellers) of eccentric animals, extreme cuisine and people doing the strangest things are a reminder of how travel is partly about appreciating difference - enjoying the shock of the new.
Context is everything, though, as Weird World points out. One woman's deep-fried tarantulas are another's cheeseburger, and it's a toss-up whether the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cheek-piercing at the Phuket vegetarian festival or, say, a lawn bowls match would appear odder to an alien observer.
Read on for more such when-in-Rome lessons (but be warned: some of the photos in this edited Weird World extract make for rather, er, brutal instruction).
