They made us laugh, roll our eyes and some even made us cringe. Wrap up your work week with some of the funniest, random travel news stories we could find.
1. Are these the weirdest towns?
Please do let us know if you’ve heard of a place that offers something weirder than the town in Mexico that believes coca cola will rid them of darkness or a mining town where people live in underground dugouts.
The Daily Mail has compiled a list of some of the world’s weirdest towns and let’s just say – they are somewhat strange.
In the central highlands town of San Cristobal las Casas in Mexico, there is a church. It looks like you’re average place of worship, but when you go inside some ‘true sorcery’ takes place.
Hundreds of candles burn for Mayan spirits, Disney stickers plaster the walls and a cassette plays Christmas music – whatever the time of year.
Then there’s the town Thames Town in China where there are statues of Winston Churchill and Harry Potter.
Heard of a weirder town?
2. Stinky tweets to rail boss
Twitter has come to the rescue once again after a second rail passenger experienced ‘difficulties’ in a carriage toilet.
In January, a 16-year-old blogger took to the social media site to advise Virgin Trains that he’d run out of toilet paper.
Catching the tweet early, the rail company came to the rescue with a quick delivery of paper rolls.
Now another desperate train passenger has turned to Twitter after he accidentally locked himself in the loo.
The 38-year-old was travelling on a Southeastern train from London Blackfriars to Orpington, Kent, when the incident occurred.
Steven Staples says he was unable to open the door and when he tried calling out to other passengers – nobody heard.
He then pulled out his mobile device and opened trusty Twitter.
“@Se-Railway I’m stuck in a toilet – just pulling to Elephant and Castle, please help. Going to Orpington.”
The social media team spotted the tweet and told the passenger they were trying to get a hold of somebody to help.
It wasn’t too long after that the driver used a stop at south east London to go check on the trapped traveller.
Has Twitter ever come to your rescue?
3. Delta takes everything you love about the Internet to the sky
Delta Air Lines has just taken the battle for the best inflight safety video to new heights.
In the quirky new six-minute and second seconds video, the US-based carrier has used some of the most popular Internet memes and viral sensations since the invention of the Internet, mixed them and blended them into one captivating safety chat.
4. Aussie travellers’ flying habits revealed
Wearing sky-blue underpants, sitting in even numbered rows, shaking salt over the check-in area and enjoying a ‘Jet plane Champagne’.
These are just a few flying rituals Aussie travellers confessed they do when flying, according to the High Flyer survey by Wotif who said the survey of almost 15,000 Australian travellers revealed almost one in seven have a flying ritual.
“From the 14% of Aussie travellers who revealed they have a flying habit, there was a mix of interesting rituals, from wearing a particular item of clothing on every flight to doing exactly the same routine onboard every time”
Kirsty La Bruniy, Wotif Travel Specialist
5. Hijacker admits to taking over 20 planes
A security researcher has admitted to hijacking a number of aircraft engines while mid-flight.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Chris Roberts said in February that he had used in-flight entertainment systems to hack into over a dozen flights.
In one instance, he even managed to takeover the aircraft’s management computer and briefly altered its course by turning it sideways, The Age reported.
The reveal comes after Roberts was escorted off a United Airlines flight because he had tweeted a message that hinted his ability to tap into the aircraft’s alert system and release passenger oxygen masks.
During interviews with the FBI, Roberts said he had compromised inflight entertainment systems on up to 20 flights between 2011 and 2014.
He did this by prying open the cover of the electronic box under the passenger seats and connecting his laptop to the system with an ethernet cable.
He then scanned the network for security flaws and monitored communications from the cockpit.
