things that make you go WTF...

Here are some of the experiences that, very simply, made us say "what the fuck..." They're not necessarily negative things. They're just, um, strange ;-)

1. When we arrived in Cape Town (at the airport), we both went to take a leak before our luggage showed up. In the ladies' there was an attendant there who handed everyone a piece of paper towel after washing their hands. The same thing was going on in the men's room, according to boyfriend of feitpingvin. Having just arrived though, I had nothing to give as a tip...



2. My first experience with an ATM and South African money was kind of freaky. If you take out, say, R 3000, it all comes in R 100 notes. Yeah, that means you get a big fucking wad of cash. I guess there aren't that many people that take out so much cash at once (*duh* - it's more than what a lot of people earn in a month), and it takes a while to spend that much too, and we weren't exactly being miserly...



3. For the guys – you'll sometimes find urinals filled with ice...





4. Vyfster. We were watching TV one evening and found this while flipping channels. We thought it was a movie, but apparently it's a TV series. From the Apartheid era. In Afrikaans. Without subtitles. It's set in a prison, and of course the first scene is when the main guy is arriving at the prison, getting into his prison garb, and getting all his bedding and linens and stuff. And then at some point they showed this guy who took out some kind of drawing hidden in the sole of his shoe, and then you see him filing some metal... aha. The drawing is of a key and he's trying to make a key. But of course, the key broke in the lock when he tried it... and so on and so on. And then there was this boxing scene. And all kind of scenes revolving around “power games” within the prison community. It was rather fascinating to watch...



5. While we're on the subject of weird TV shows, I may as well mention Muvhango, a Venda-language soap opera. Though once in a while, English sentences and phrases would be thrown in.



6. The Singing Turd of the puppet shows at the Two Oceans Aquarium.
   
   
   
   They had this puppet shows exhibit where they played 3 different shows at regular intervals. Each one had some kind of "how you can save the environment" message. The Singing Turd show was about what not to throw into the toilets...



7. We were at this pub and this woman ordered these freaky drinks – a shot of Jagermeister was placed in a glass, and the glass was filled up with Red Bull (up to the edge of the shot glass). Eeeewwww...



8. The supersized t-shirt. We were at this t-shirt shop and I saw this t-shirt that I thought was really cute and wanted to buy. So I first tried on an extra small. It was too big. As in drowning in it too big. I asked the salesgirl if they had anything smaller, so I ended up trying on children's sizes. I finally found the right fit – the ages 9-10 size!



9. There's a rugby team called the Pot-Bellied Pigs. They have pink uniforms. (OK, just found out they're a Hong Kong team... I guess they have lots of SA players)



10. At World of Birds, we were about to exit one of the exhibits when there was this bird that took a keen interest in boyfriend of feitpingvin's shoe.
    
    
    
    It was screaming and pecking at it. At first I thought it thought the shoelace was a tasty worm or something, but then the bird tried to mount the shoe...!!
    
    see here for a larger version of the picture along with comments.

And a bonus WTF: Not really South Africa-related, but while listening to "News from Africa" (or something like that) on SBC, I learned that some Kenyan parents get their boys circumcized and pierce the ears of their girls in order to make them "undesirable" for witch doctors that kidnap children for use in rituals. These witch doctors only use "untouched" children, not children that have had their bodies manipulated and/or mutilated.