Salon Wanderlust | Mondo Weirdo

This place has legs
By Catherine Seipp
In search of the perfect Hollywood hangout
Museum of unnatural history
By John McMurtrie
Myth and reality commingle at Culver City's Museum of Jurassic Technology
Mentally undressing autos in L.A.
By D. J. Waldie
Reflections on the odd relationship between walkers and drivers in L.A.
D E P A R T M E N T S
The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
Weiner take all!
Mondo Weirdo
The meanest rat in Malaysia
Road Warrior
Business travel & beyond
Table Talk
Where will you be on New Year's Eve, 1999? Will you travel or stay home?

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Your virtual travel agency

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LA S T+W E E K
Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1997

How Zurich invented the modern world
By Carlos Fuentes
A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

[The meanest rat in Malaysia]

This week's Mondo Weirdo locales run the gamut from the den of a wild rodent in Malaysia to a nighttime dock in Greece to a parking lot in a remarkably quiet "residential" area. Wanderlust readers dream where others fear to sleep! What's the strangest night you've ever spent? Send your tales to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com.
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The meanest rat in Malaysia
My friend, Andrew "Schmedley" Oelz, and I decided to take a relaxing vacation through Southeast Asia one year. On our way through central Malaysia on the "Jungle Train," we stopped off at the Taman Negara National Park and booked ourselves a place, or a "hide," in the middle of the jungle, which was little more than a glorified treehouse with a wide opening from which you could look down at animals foraging below.
When we entered the hide, we noticed a logbook that chronicled something much more mysterious than the amazing animals people might have seen below -- it recorded visitations of a large and particularly voracious jungle rat that apparently terrorized everyone staying in the hide. There were illustrations (ugly), stories (fearsome), tips (violent), and so on about how to deal with the marauder.
That night, we carefully stowed our food in a storage box and went to sleep. There were about six other people in the hide with us. Of course, at about 4 in the morning, everyone was up with flashlights blazing like a macabre cabaret. And in the spotlight was the jungle rat, who happened to be performing right under Schmedley's bed.
The rat was about the size of a small dog and made weird snarling sounds. Its eyes were red and its tail was naked. It gnawed. It was like a Disney character gone bad. Apparently, some Germans staying in the hide with us had left out some peanuts because they wanted to see it.
Fortunately, no one was bitten -- or killed.
And then there were the glow-in-the-dark cockroaches ...
-- Mike Hodgson
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What's up, dock?
One of the strangest sleeping stories I have had in my weird experiences file is from one warm night on the Greek isle of Naxos. At 7 p.m. my friend and I were staring at the sea, looking and waiting for a ferry that never did come. Being as we had just said our "fond farewells" to the innkeeper whose damp basement we'd camped out in for a week, we decided to just lay our heads down and sleep where we waited, on the boat dock.
What makes this a Mondo Weirdo experience is what happened when we woke up early the next morning: All around us, in a perfect circle, sat six old Greek fishermen. They were chatting to each other unfazed, as if two blonde 24-year-old American women were not waking up wide-eyed and mortified under their noses.
They were pretty neat-looking characters, and we would have enjoyed seeing them from another vantage point. But at that moment of shame, it was hard to be anything but in a big rush.
My friend and I don't speak Greek, but we interpreted their actions as a statement that we should think twice next time before making our beds in the work space of Greek fishermen.
-- Bonnie Olmsted
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The safest spot in town
One night many years ago, when I was young and silly, I drove home after having too much to drink and too little sleep. I decided I had better pull over and sleep before a cop pulled me over and didn't give me an option of where to sleep -- no doubt, it would be in jail.
So I turned off the freeway and into the first residential-looking apartment complex I could find, and I drove along until I found an available parking space, parked the car and dozed off.
The next morning when I woke up, I looked around and realized that I was not in an apartment complex, but a very residential-looking police department! The cars next to my vehicle were all police cars. It turns out that I had spent the night at the jail after all.
-- Wally Glenn
SALON | Oct. 14, 1997
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How about you? Do you have a weird travel tale to share? Send it to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. And join our Table Talk discussion on travel and food.