Cannabis Cup (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Sure, beer festivals, wine festivals, and even pickle festivals make for somewhat interesting water cooler conversation, but casually drop that you just came back from a five-day marijuana festival and you’ll command the respect and attention of the entire room. Amsterdam’s Cannabis Cup brings cannabis experts together so that they can “taste” and vote on the latest varieties of marijuana and hashish, in the same way a panel of wine experts might gather to judge the year’s wine offerings. If you consider yourself a cannabis connoisseur, an extra fee gets you a judge pass so you can vote for your favorite strain. The Cannabis Cup is also a forum and get-together for activists who fight for the decriminalization of marijuana.
Monkey Buffet Festival (Lopburi Province, Thailand)
During the annual monkey buffet festival held outside Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Thailand’s Lopburi province, the region’s population of monkeys gather to eat over 2,000 kilograms of beautifully arranged fresh fruits and vegetables. The feast is in honor of King Rama, who was said to give his friend, Hanuman (the Monkey King) the province which is now Lopburi.
Cooper’s Hill Annual Cheese Rolling Festival (Gloucestor, England) Camel Wrestling Festival (Selcuk, Turkey)
There are cheese festivals and then there are downright cheesy festivals. Cooper’s Hill annual Cheese Rolling Festival held in Gloucester might be the cheesiest of them all. In this bizarre celebration of cheese (and why not?), male and female competitors race down a hill, and sometimes up it too, chasing a huge wheel of cheese. What does the winner get? The cheese of course.
Forget bullfights or cockfights, even catfights; if you’re looking for some vacation respect, you need to arrive home with photos from a camel fight. Before you pull on your tights to get in on the action at the annual Camel Wrestling Festival in Selcuk, Turkey, you might want to know that this bizarre (and somewhat inhumane) festival pits camel to camel, hump to hump. Held during camel breeding season, the bull camels are first teased with a fine looking young cow camel. Then their mouths are bound and they bump humps in a contest for precedence in a herd, and more importantly, precedence in mating.
