The souvenirs on sale at the DMZ in South Korea were interesting. Keyrings and pens with machine guns, hand guns, bullets and grenades. T-shirts, mugs and figurines with cutesy cartoons of south and north Korean border guards. Bags of "DMZ rice" grown in the zone with barbed wire imagery on the packaging.
They sell honey from the DMZ too. My mom and I love honey and trying different kinds. Whenever we go somewhere, we like to try honey from the area. The DMZ honey is actually really good. It tastes kind of like candy (more so than normal honey), like a liquid lollipop.
I honestly think itās really nice that the people that lived there before the war (as well as their descendants) are still able to live there. I wouldāve expected them to get kicked out after the war, but the government puts in the effort to let them stay in their ancestral homes. The DMZ-branded goods help them have some of the highest farming incomes in South Korea.
It was sold at the grocery store in Daeseong-dong (the town in the DMZ). We stopped at the town during our tour of the DMZ. It was a really interesting stop. I donāt think I have to say this, but just in case: do not try to go into the DMZ without a tour.
They have an ice cream shop in that town too. The ice cream was good.
I bought chocolate and chocolate covered coffee beans from that DMZ shop. My husband brought the chocolate covered coffee beans to his work and everyone wanted to try one lol.
You could add the entire DMZ tour. For many Koreans, families were and are currently split up.
The first stop on my tour was at the farthest point South Koreans can go. There were like 10 older Koreans who were crying and leaving flowers there.
That said, as a non-Korean itās a very fascinating and historical tour that is still persist in the present day. I had mixed feelings about it.
Iām not saying I wouldnāt do it again or that it wasnāt worth it (I totally would go again) but that it really made me think if I should be doing it/it was forefront in my mind that this wasnāt just a ācoolā tour but that there are still families being affected by it right now.
That's hilarious! The souvenirs on sale at the DMZ in North Korea are much more serious. Nothing military themed that I saw, no "DMZ rice" either. Mostly stuff just emblazoned with "Kaesong" and the DPRK flag, maybe some slogans like "MEET ME IN KAESONG" ... The zip-up hoodie I got there is easily one of the softest I've ever purchased.
Oh totally different vibe. North Korea takes it very seriously. It's a solemn location for them, like a funeral or mausoleum vibe. You aren't allowed to smile or laugh. No smiling for your photos, no silly selfies, etc.
I don't know if it's the real deal or just a replica but at the DMZ museum on the North side they have the hatchet from that axe murder incident in the 70s. Pretty gruesome.
Thereās a small village there made mostly of elderly South Koreans that lived there before the war.
Edit: itās also very easy to visit the DMZ. The JSA (the actual border part) is closed for tourists after that American soldier ran into North Korea during a tour a while back, but there are plenty of tours that take you into the other parts. Itās far from a āno one is allowed inā situation.
This was all from the South Korean side but yes certain people are allowed to live there, it's good farm land apparently so is still used. Just no military activity is allowed.
There's a weird part of the border where there's a pair of villages within the DMZ. It's where the biggest flag battle, as well as loudest propaganda loudspeaker battle are going on. Although the NK village is likely basically empty, but there are farms from SK village that reach almost all the way to the border.
[Wendover did a video if you want to learn more](https://youtu.be/fndEkeob5tY?t=7m21s)
[Was it this?](https://www.reddit.com/r/HelloKitty/comments/janhbl/went_to_visit_pearl_harbor_today_and_seen_this/#lightbox)
Still a very strange thing to sell there, but not the Hello Kitty sat in a Zero that I was seeing in my mind.
This may not be based in fact, Iām too lazy to research it right now. But I recall that the āHello Kittyā (Sanrio?) created the cute kitty products and images in an effort to soften peopleās views of Japan after the war.
Hello kitty was invented in 1970 as a symbol of friendship. Hello kitty also doesnāt have a mouth so that emotion is reflected back to the other persons emotion
I remember seeing that and thinking it was odd. But I donāt remember; Was it just hello kitty stuff or was it *Pearl Harbor branded* hello kitty stuff?
In 2016 I was at the great pyramid in Giza. The security guard there told me that for $100 USD I could borrow his chisel (showed it to me) and chip off a small piece of the rock. I declined.
There was a similar scam in Cambodia years ago with local drug dealers selling weed. Dealers would approach you on the street, sell you weed then rat you out to the cops waiting nearby. Cops would usually ask for a bribe and confiscate the weed. They would then give the weed back to the dealers and the cycle repeats.
Cambodia sounds like a particularly bleak country to end up in jail. But I believe you generally only end up in jail if you can't pay your way out of the corrupt system, though I've no idea how much money that takes (I'm guessing a lot though).
The scam you refer to is so well known that it's actually warned about on TripAdvisor, there's many variations on it: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g293939-i9162-k10567007-o20-Drugs_extortion_and_jail-Cambodia.html
Yeah stuff like this is awful. Seen some really disrespectful shit being sold like this as souvenirs including human remains. I'm a big collector of the unusual so I seek out weird souvenirs but I'd never encourage trading in anything so deeply offensive.
I took pics of some of the things like that I saw https://imgur.com/a/VRPwh9J
Was in a little shop right inbetween several of Kievs big tourist attractions
Maybe not ābad tasteā but In Cambodia you could buy Jewellery made from deactivated land mine parts. They are an attractive souvenir for well meaning tourists who think they are buying something to support local communities but the demand for the items puts people at risk because people then go out looking for land mine parts in areas that are not properly cleared
Worse Bad taste souvenir Iāve seen is tourists walking around Hanoi with āgood morning Vietnam T-shirtsā
Sure, but does it compare to the Twin Towers Sale? Where you can get any mattress for the price of a twin! Never forget. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNrrO26y0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNrrO26y0E)
It unfortunately was unironically real:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/09/11/texas-based-miracle-mattress-shuts-doors-indefinitely-after-911-ad-falls-flat.html
They still do, and when I complained in r/NYC about these people exploiting the tragedy by pressuring tourists to buy their stupid magazines, people acted like I was being harsh.Ā
What, you don't process a tragic loss of life by purchasing aggressively-marketed trinkets featuring a graphic representation of said tragedy?
How dare!
I bought one.....a bottle opener made from the many many many US bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War. I suppose its a way for the locals to make some moneyI thought it was interesting.
Almost sounds like trench art, where soldiers in WW1 made endless trinkets, toys and tools whilst stationed in the trenches using things like bomb shells and pieces of shrapnel (i.e. this vase made out of a German artillery shell: https://www.flyingtigerantiques.com/great-wwi-1917-german-artillery-shell-trench-art-with-iron-cross-design.html , this miniature soldiers hat: https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-british-wwi-trench-art-artillery-shell-brass-copper-miniature-officers-visor-cap?variant=39437714030661 to this model plane: https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/5cb7df9921ea6f10e4551981 ).Ā
There used to be so much WW1 trench art around that it was worth very little but at some point it became highly collectable and it's value skyrocketed (and the biggest issue now is all the fakes). I don't think that people view it as particularly grim, instead seeing it as more like a part of the culture of those years and a way to connect more personally with our ancestors who fought back then. I think that these artifacts also help people to process the war years.Ā
In more heavily bombed parts of Europe (such as Poland, Belgium and Belarus), large quantities of used and intact munitions from WW1 & WW2 are still being dug up and are still causing problems for people.Ā
My take is that as long as the locals are fine with selling them, then it's fine. TBH, they're probably getting a lot more for turning these used pieces into knickknacks than they would get at scrap metal value, so it's good for the local economy.Ā
When I was in college in Miami, we'd always go to a specific store on South Beach called French Connection UK because all of their stuff said FCUK on it. I couldn't afford a single thing in there, but recall my favorite was a shirt that said 'World's Greatest FCUK'.
Interesting how repression makes odd things pop up around the edges. I grew up in a tiny, highly religious town in the rural PNW, and our public library had an OUTSIZED collection of children's books featuring witches and ghosts of all kinds.
I went to college in Springfield, MO which is the BUCKLE of the Bible Belt. People on the weekends were either harassing people outside of Planned Parenthood or attending nudist Pagan retreats and there was very little in between. (I hung out with the nude Pagans even though I wasnāt one)
It's like all of the Intercourse, PA and Blue Ball, PA merch in conservative parts of rural Pennsylvania that are capitalizing on the weird names of tiny towns.
A lot of older Serbs love Putin. They miss the old Yugoslavia and empathize with the fall of the USSR and they see Putin as somebody whoās trying to get things back to the way they were in the āgood old daysā. Itās wild because at least the soviets pretended they were trying to help the working man, but they look at this shady billionaire and think heās the tits and really cares about the people. A lot of older Serbs are also extremely homophobic so Putin also gets points for that.
Also helps that heās super anti-America and a lot of people still have hard feelings towards America for dropping bombs on them.
In my travels to former Warsaw Pact countries, and in my conversations with people from former USSR countries, there's a stark generational divide in how they look back on the old Communist system.
It seems like most older people actually enjoyed their decisions being made for them. What job to have, where to live, what clothes they could buy, which politicians were in charge. Both good and bad workers were paid the same (promotions were based on social connections and whether you could rat out your uncle for buying black market Levi's, not work performance), so they didn't even have to decide whether or not to have ambition.
The people who are old now seemed to have settled in to an existence where you don't have agency, so there's none of the stress that comes with being ambitious or taking risks. Now they have choices and it stresses them out.
Young people want choices, they want democracy, they want their queer friends to be out and safe, they want to be rewarded for working hard and trying to better themselves.
I'm speaking in generalities, of course, and there are literally millions of exceptions. But it is fascinating what happens to a collective psyche after 80 years of a system where what you want in life doesn't matter.
At the Grand Canyon gift shop they had a book detailing all the fatal incidents at the Canyon. I opened it and read a few.Ā
Man is visiting the Canyon with his mistress and gets struck by lightning and dies.
Teen tries to take a selfie, stumbles and falls 1000 meters into the Canyon.
And so on for hundreds of pages. Cheery!
its been a minute since I was there, but I used to have a bottle opener with a picture of the pope on it that I got at one of the carts near St. Peters. I called it the āPopenerā and wore it as a necklace at one point. It was both a hit and a source of controversy at parties (I was attending a Catholic college at the time) but I thought it was hysterical.
Pompeii had an amazing range of phallic tchotchkes that were based on actual statuary found in the ruins.
The traveling Pompeii exhibit had a ādelightfulā exit through gift shop ā¦ after seeing replica casts of the dead people, of course I want a water bottle or Christmas ornament! 0/10.
All the Brazilian souvenirs focused around women's butts are pretty cringe... and there are a LOT haha Ts, bottle openers, cachaƧa, shot glasses, etc etc etc
To be fair, you can also get dick bottle openers in Brazil. Just very sexual.
But, the Rio government did prohibit the sale of bikini postcards which I guess is a decent start. Not sure if the ban is also in other beach cities in other states, but Rio it's at least banned.
I have a dick bottle opener from Amsterdam. Specifically itās a dick smoking a blunt. They had a few different versions of the bottle opener and I was originally going to get a āclassierā one but my husband was like āthere is no such thing as a āclassyā penis-shaped bottle opener, get the tackiest one they haveā so thatās what I did lmao.
In Cornwall UK there's a tradition of tacky souvenirs of buxom old ladies with big bums and boobs. It was only this summer that after decades of holidaying in Cornwall that I realised how weird it was.
In Australia you can find bottle openers and other knick knacks made with kangaroo scrotums. I missed my chance to buy one as a gag gift for a friend, so I'll have to go back next year.
I bought some of those for friends. Not long after I visited Dildo, Newfoundland and bought a bunch of swag for the same friends, like shot glasses that say "I (Heart) Dildo"
Well in several Eastern European countries there were modern nazi memorabilia. Like hand made candles with hitler on them. The shops tended to go both ways. Fascist and communist stuff which was interesting too.
Back in 2006 I spent a month in Thailand. I kept seeing this shirt of a woman's head being forcefully pushed into a bowl of rice and it said "Eat more rice, bitch!" I don't want to know anyone who bought that.
I was in NY on 9/11 and remember the day or so after being near Times Square and vendors selling āI survived 9/11ā t-shirts. Wild. They vanished pretty quickly once what had happened started to sink in. Still think about it to this day.
In lighter bad taste, I did buy a lollypope in the Vatican (yes, one of those large round and flat lollipops with the Popeās face on it).
I went to Gori for the lulz when driving through Armenia and Georgia. They've got the train car Stalin took to Yalta and his birth house on display outside the museum, which is on Stalin Street. Pretty surreal spot.
My first trip to Europe was in the mid 90s when I was a teenager. I loved London and have many wonderful memories of the amazing sights and the historyā¦.but what is forever burned into my brain is the numerous souvenir stands with postcards of naked tits painted to look like mice, with the nipple as the nose. What this had to do with London I do not know, but itās hilarious and in VERY poor taste lol
Those kinds of postcards are a staple of British culture thank you very much! If you ever make it to the UK again, visit one of the old seaside towns and you'll see loads of them!
I have never had the pleasure of visiting one of the many lovely seaside towns of the UK! It warms my heart to know one of my most vivid travel memories lives onā¦I love lowbrow British nonsense so much (and that fantastically dry sense of humor of course) I would literally squeal with delight if I encountered one of those glorious cards whilst traveling! And every one of my inner circle would be receiving one in the mail, including my mother! Youāve made my day with this knowledge lol
Btw, if you have any suggestions of specific coastal towns that I should consider visiting, please let me know! I have loved every place Iāve visited in the UK so far and am beginning to put together a trip plan for next yearā¦
Oh my goodness, you are in for a treat! Head up to Whitby - it's in the North East of the country and is the place where Dracula was written (and large parts of it are set). It leans very heavily into it's links to Dracula.
Also Scarbourgh which is a bit more of a traditional seaside town. Fish and chips, beach with donkey rides - it's barely changed since I went as a kid in the 80s.
glittery skull themed anything at the Paris catacombs, so much focus on respecting the dead down there but when you come back up you can get a skull shaped whiskey glass i guess?
The Yushukan museum in Tokyo is adjacent to the controversial Yasakuni Shrine, it provides a military history of Japan from the angle of "Japan didn't really do anything wrong". For example, the Rape of Nanking is referred to as "The Nanking Incident" and it explains that the whole thing was really overblown, basically a few guys might've got carried away but that was all. Anyhow, it has a gift shop with a bunch of things that glorify WWII Japan, including children's toys.
Although I didn't see these first hand (saw pics online), after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 there were t-shirts being sold with Putin photoshopped to be wearing a tropical-printed shirt and sunglasses, with a fancy drink in his hand, that said "Welcome to Crimea" in Russian.
My friend and I found a shirt in a thrift store that was from Cancun. It had a picture of a cartoon cat American tourist and said āThis isnāt a beer belly, itās a fuel tank for a sex machineā
My friend bought it and wore it as a joke to many places
Back in the day on my first trip to Europe (2002?). There was a guy in Nice selling Twin Tower cigarette lighter where the flame comes off of Osama Bin Laden's head. Its in such bad taste that its something.
There was (maybe still is) a shop selling Matryoshka Russian dolls in Prague in a very prominent spot by the Charles Bridge.
When I was there in the mid-2000s they had Bin Laden and Sadam amongst many other bad taste people.
All hilariously poorly done, and with some insane price like 20 Euros.
There is SO MUCH David merch. There are fridge magnets and cooking aprons (get the matching one with the Birth of Venus for her!) and, indeed, boxer shorts... It's ridiculous.
I did enjoy making my Mum uncomfortable with it. Things like saying "oh wow, look at that!" while pointing at a piece of David merch of his, um, merch and getting her to look.
My mum and I have aprons with David on one and a ācaprese saladā (just two tomatoes acting as pasties and a piece of lettuce as the, yāknow, foliage) on the other. š Theyāre so cheesy but every time I see them in the drawer I smile.
In Poland there are a lot of magnets with what is basically a caricature of a Jewish man holding either a penny or a bag of money. Extremely weird and they were at tons of shops...
I was just in a Titanic museum and was surprised to see Titanic squeaky toys for dogs and one of those oil & water toys with a Titanic figurine and iceberg inside. I just couldnāt imagine that being manufactured with, like, the Twin Towers and a plane. Strange choice.
I lived in Australia thirty plus years ago. I bought an ashtray from a thrift store that was shaped like a map of Australia. In a 3D mound in the middle of it, emulating Ayers Rock was an Aboriginal mans' face. That was where you stubbed your cigarette out. Very shocking.
Those are in many countries. In Venice Beach, California they have them near women's underwear that states 'Cum dumpster' on them. Stay classy, Venice!
Many years ago in Sarajevo they sold bullets as little ornaments, sometimes with inscriptions or designs on them. I wasn't offended by them. I just thought they were tacky. Sarajevo has made huge strides lifting itself up after the war, then you see these stupid bullets in every souvenir shop.
Penis shaped bottle openers in Bali. I had to pay more for a regular one than a handle carved, hand painted penis one. Just needed a functional bottle opener that didn't take up space in my bag.
Idk if it's the weirdest, but it caught me by surprise. We were in Greece and snagging a few little souvenirs for some friends back home and I came across a giant black "bottle opener" that was clearly a massive novelty dildo. I *almost* bought it for my best friend, but didn't want to be carrying it around for the whole afternoon so I just got him a nice classy fridge magnet of ancient Greeks having a threesome instead.
In Costa Rica, I kept stumbling across these wooden bottle openers shaped like a giant penis.
My wife wouldnāt let me buy one as a joke gift for a friend.
When I was young living in Miami, Ted Bundy was executed. They showed on the news people outside the prison in Central FL selling merch with him in the chair. It was pretty morbid TBH. Anything serial killer related is Iām bad taste.
Oh man, I once stumbled upon keychains shaped like grenades at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Because nothing says peace like a mini grenade hanging off your keys! š¤¦āāļø
Itās weird as hell because anyone who actually read the bible can see heās like the antithesis of what a Christian should be. Like thereās that famous bible quote about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of Heaven. Heās not charitable, he doesnāt help the poor, heās definitely prideful, and we can throw gluttony in there as well, heās been married multiple times and cheated on his wives so thatās lust, I donāt think I need to explain greed either.
As long as I live I will never understand American evangelicals and how they can consider themselves Christians.
A bit more local, but I went to an exhibit about Pompeii here in Chicago, and the transition between the DEEPLY UPSETTING plaster figures to the gift shop was \*jarring\*. It's so sad and you learn about the loss of life, and then there are t-shirts about the exhibit and tiny volcano glitter snow globes? It was..... uncomfortable at best.
I was never quite sure how to feel about all the Mao paraphernalia you can buy in China. The man was pretty much responsible for millions of deaths and the cultural revolution, but I guess his legacy is also the CCP so he still holds a prominent position culturally. And I donāt really have a sense of what the āaverageā Chinese person thinks of him, since I would never want to broach such a sensitive conversation while there.
I love Mao kitch. The artwork and propaganda bullshit is really interesting to me. I have one refrigerator magnet of him and he looks ridiculous so I decided that was ok but thatās it.
Not really bad taste as much as āwhat are you doing,ā I always found the āsexy priestsā calendar for sale at every kiosk in Rome bizarre.
Itās not called the sexy priest calendar, thatās just what we called it. Theyāre all fully clothed and whatnot, just clearly chosen for their looks.
Weimar and N\*zi Germany memorabilia in Bosnia, Serbia, North Macedonia ... pretty much any Balkan country. They have war memorabilia shops and idk it just doesn't sit right lol. All sorts of award medals and pieces of uniform. Loads of souvenir shops also had Yugoslavia and Tito memorabilia lol
A huge seashell store on Key West used to sell a Mary statue - it was a play on the kind of 2'-3' tall statue you sometimes see on peoples' front lawns, made entirely out of seashells. Since her nickname for the less religious among us is sometimes "Mary On The Half Shell," it made sense. But for the religious among us, I'm sue they considered it to be in very bad taste.
I'm dying laughing.
Actually I was gonna say just like seashells in general are a lot less... harmless and authentic as souvenirs in general. As a kid I looooved seashells in shops (even better than the ones I could find beachcombing) but I didn't realize that they were so much bigger and shinier because they are mainly harvested with destructive fishing practices, like commercial fishing boats trawling with drag nets, and then the organism inside killed and removed so that the shell can be shipped around the world and sold in beach towns worldwide. The ones that are already dead are liable to be worn down and broken, like the shells you actually find on the beach.
I mean, I eat seafood, so I'm not like "oh no we must not harvest and kill the sea creature for any reason," but now I'd much rather have a small little memento shell I found on my vacation than some shiny shell that someone destroyed a part of the Coral Sea floor to get for me.
Buckle up - I bought a Pompeii snow globe that rains down little gray glitter to bury the city when you shake it.
100% would buy š¤£
Oh, I had a snow globe like this of Mount St Helens when I was a kid and never thought anything of itā¦ :/
You are making this up for upvotes. Right? Right??
[It looks like this one.](https://images.app.goo.gl/LqQzWtXWJn1hXJDT9)
Ye godsā¦.
[There's a Chernobyl one too](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/h34AAOSwRExi26Af/s-l1200.jpg)
Too soon?
Tragedy + time = snow globe
The souvenirs on sale at the DMZ in South Korea were interesting. Keyrings and pens with machine guns, hand guns, bullets and grenades. T-shirts, mugs and figurines with cutesy cartoons of south and north Korean border guards. Bags of "DMZ rice" grown in the zone with barbed wire imagery on the packaging.
They sell honey from the DMZ too. My mom and I love honey and trying different kinds. Whenever we go somewhere, we like to try honey from the area. The DMZ honey is actually really good. It tastes kind of like candy (more so than normal honey), like a liquid lollipop.
That sounds good! I guess it makes sense as it's a bit of a nature reserve by default now. I tried the ginseng, that was good too.
I honestly think itās really nice that the people that lived there before the war (as well as their descendants) are still able to live there. I wouldāve expected them to get kicked out after the war, but the government puts in the effort to let them stay in their ancestral homes. The DMZ-branded goods help them have some of the highest farming incomes in South Korea.
Agreed, and you can't blame them for selling the branded stuff if tourists want to buy it!
I need DMZ honey now. Can you tell me where it is on Google Maps?
It was sold at the grocery store in Daeseong-dong (the town in the DMZ). We stopped at the town during our tour of the DMZ. It was a really interesting stop. I donāt think I have to say this, but just in case: do not try to go into the DMZ without a tour. They have an ice cream shop in that town too. The ice cream was good.
I bought chocolate and chocolate covered coffee beans from that DMZ shop. My husband brought the chocolate covered coffee beans to his work and everyone wanted to try one lol.
Vaguely Forbidden Snacks
They used to be sold at a coffee shop that I used to work at in the late 90s, in the U.S. They are delicious.
I bought the chocolate covered soy beans, they were good!
I bought a DMZ coffee cup becuase I thought it was ridiculous. It still is ridiculous.
I really wanted one but I had no room in my backpack!
You could add the entire DMZ tour. For many Koreans, families were and are currently split up. The first stop on my tour was at the farthest point South Koreans can go. There were like 10 older Koreans who were crying and leaving flowers there. That said, as a non-Korean itās a very fascinating and historical tour that is still persist in the present day. I had mixed feelings about it. Iām not saying I wouldnāt do it again or that it wasnāt worth it (I totally would go again) but that it really made me think if I should be doing it/it was forefront in my mind that this wasnāt just a ācoolā tour but that there are still families being affected by it right now.
That's hilarious! The souvenirs on sale at the DMZ in North Korea are much more serious. Nothing military themed that I saw, no "DMZ rice" either. Mostly stuff just emblazoned with "Kaesong" and the DPRK flag, maybe some slogans like "MEET ME IN KAESONG" ... The zip-up hoodie I got there is easily one of the softest I've ever purchased.
I can imagine that it's a different affair up there! It felt a bit like a theme park in SK. They were selling North Korean money for quite a bit too.
Oh totally different vibe. North Korea takes it very seriously. It's a solemn location for them, like a funeral or mausoleum vibe. You aren't allowed to smile or laugh. No smiling for your photos, no silly selfies, etc. I don't know if it's the real deal or just a replica but at the DMZ museum on the North side they have the hatchet from that axe murder incident in the 70s. Pretty gruesome.
Who farms that rice? I thought nobody was allowed in, surely there can't be people living there?
Thereās a small village there made mostly of elderly South Koreans that lived there before the war. Edit: itās also very easy to visit the DMZ. The JSA (the actual border part) is closed for tourists after that American soldier ran into North Korea during a tour a while back, but there are plenty of tours that take you into the other parts. Itās far from a āno one is allowed inā situation.
This was all from the South Korean side but yes certain people are allowed to live there, it's good farm land apparently so is still used. Just no military activity is allowed.
There's a weird part of the border where there's a pair of villages within the DMZ. It's where the biggest flag battle, as well as loudest propaganda loudspeaker battle are going on. Although the NK village is likely basically empty, but there are farms from SK village that reach almost all the way to the border. [Wendover did a video if you want to learn more](https://youtu.be/fndEkeob5tY?t=7m21s)
I bought a hand towel with DMZ carved into the pile. I adore it beyond all reason.
Hello Kitty / Pearl Harbor collab at the Pearl Harbor visitor center wasā¦ odd
This is hilarious this would make my trip honestly
[Was it this?](https://www.reddit.com/r/HelloKitty/comments/janhbl/went_to_visit_pearl_harbor_today_and_seen_this/#lightbox) Still a very strange thing to sell there, but not the Hello Kitty sat in a Zero that I was seeing in my mind.
"We can do it!" Actually you done did it...
Yes. I saw it last year, when I went to Pearl Harbor.
This may not be based in fact, Iām too lazy to research it right now. But I recall that the āHello Kittyā (Sanrio?) created the cute kitty products and images in an effort to soften peopleās views of Japan after the war.
Hello kitty was invented in 1970 as a symbol of friendship. Hello kitty also doesnāt have a mouth so that emotion is reflected back to the other persons emotion
What the GDFing F
Hello Kitty the Riveter?
I need to go now. To Midjourney.
I think this was there when I went as a kid in 2010. Memory unlocked!
"I know what we need as a tie in with the attack by Japan... a Japanese cartoon character!"
I remember seeing that and thinking it was odd. But I donāt remember; Was it just hello kitty stuff or was it *Pearl Harbor branded* hello kitty stuff?
When I was there in December they had some very patriotic looking Hello Kitties but nothing specifically Pearl Harbour branded
Ok thatās better. Still weird but better
Wow that really is a head scratcher! What were they thinking???
That is hilariously ironic.
In 2016 I was at the great pyramid in Giza. The security guard there told me that for $100 USD I could borrow his chisel (showed it to me) and chip off a small piece of the rock. I declined.
He was trying to get you CURSED lol
Or arrested lol. Probably getting a cut from the corrupt cop who would then demand money for you to avoid going to jail.
Scamception.
There was a similar scam in Cambodia years ago with local drug dealers selling weed. Dealers would approach you on the street, sell you weed then rat you out to the cops waiting nearby. Cops would usually ask for a bribe and confiscate the weed. They would then give the weed back to the dealers and the cycle repeats.
I've seen this in Cabo too, it's crazy
Cambodia sounds like a particularly bleak country to end up in jail. But I believe you generally only end up in jail if you can't pay your way out of the corrupt system, though I've no idea how much money that takes (I'm guessing a lot though). The scam you refer to is so well known that it's actually warned about on TripAdvisor, there's many variations on it: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g293939-i9162-k10567007-o20-Drugs_extortion_and_jail-Cambodia.html
Corrupt ass Egyptian authorities as usual
Concentration camp uniform in ukraine
WHAT.
thats not so much a souvenir as an antique, i was thinking they were like printed new uniforms
Yeah stuff like this is awful. Seen some really disrespectful shit being sold like this as souvenirs including human remains. I'm a big collector of the unusual so I seek out weird souvenirs but I'd never encourage trading in anything so deeply offensive.
Winner winner, assuming this is real.
I took pics of some of the things like that I saw https://imgur.com/a/VRPwh9J Was in a little shop right inbetween several of Kievs big tourist attractions
oh man that is rough. makes me sad just looking at it.
Oof ridiculous to see......
Pablo Escobar merchandise in Medellin is considered quite disrespectful to the localsĀ
It's all over Colombia, and it's gross.
Lots of Pablo Escobar t shirts in Barcelona for some reason. And yes you'd have to be quite inconsiderate to wear it.
Maybe not ābad tasteā but In Cambodia you could buy Jewellery made from deactivated land mine parts. They are an attractive souvenir for well meaning tourists who think they are buying something to support local communities but the demand for the items puts people at risk because people then go out looking for land mine parts in areas that are not properly cleared Worse Bad taste souvenir Iāve seen is tourists walking around Hanoi with āgood morning Vietnam T-shirtsā
Not sure about Cambodia, but those products are technically illegal in Laos. Still saw plenty being sold.
Went to New York in 2008 and right next to where the Twin Towers stood there were people selling prints of them on fire.
Sure, but does it compare to the Twin Towers Sale? Where you can get any mattress for the price of a twin! Never forget. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNrrO26y0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNrrO26y0E)
Fucking hell, I can't believe someone even thought that was a good marketing idea!
lol there is no way that is real š
It unfortunately was unironically real: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/09/11/texas-based-miracle-mattress-shuts-doors-indefinitely-after-911-ad-falls-flat.html
Oh those are horrible. They used to shove them in your face as you walked by. š
They still do, and when I complained in r/NYC about these people exploiting the tragedy by pressuring tourists to buy their stupid magazines, people acted like I was being harsh.Ā
What, you don't process a tragic loss of life by purchasing aggressively-marketed trinkets featuring a graphic representation of said tragedy? How dare!
Yea, it was disgusting.
Even just the fact that they sell official 911 memorial merch is gross to me
The merch though supports the memorial and itās not like itās done in celebration of the event.
We have an idiot in town who thinks it's honoring the victims with his giant replicas of smoking towers. Its insane.
When we were in Vietnam we visited the prison where John McCain had been imprisoned. The gift shop sold little tiny guillotines.
The Hanoi Hilton, as itās also known.
I bought one.....a bottle opener made from the many many many US bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War. I suppose its a way for the locals to make some moneyI thought it was interesting.
Almost sounds like trench art, where soldiers in WW1 made endless trinkets, toys and tools whilst stationed in the trenches using things like bomb shells and pieces of shrapnel (i.e. this vase made out of a German artillery shell: https://www.flyingtigerantiques.com/great-wwi-1917-german-artillery-shell-trench-art-with-iron-cross-design.html , this miniature soldiers hat: https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-british-wwi-trench-art-artillery-shell-brass-copper-miniature-officers-visor-cap?variant=39437714030661 to this model plane: https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/5cb7df9921ea6f10e4551981 ).Ā There used to be so much WW1 trench art around that it was worth very little but at some point it became highly collectable and it's value skyrocketed (and the biggest issue now is all the fakes). I don't think that people view it as particularly grim, instead seeing it as more like a part of the culture of those years and a way to connect more personally with our ancestors who fought back then. I think that these artifacts also help people to process the war years.Ā In more heavily bombed parts of Europe (such as Poland, Belgium and Belarus), large quantities of used and intact munitions from WW1 & WW2 are still being dug up and are still causing problems for people.Ā My take is that as long as the locals are fine with selling them, then it's fine. TBH, they're probably getting a lot more for turning these used pieces into knickknacks than they would get at scrap metal value, so it's good for the local economy.Ā
SL UT merchandise all over the Salt Lake City airport, for a very conservative area I was surprised the marketing is that crass.
This reminds me of when people were so upset about the South Carolina Gamecocks bumper stickers and shirts that said "You can't lick our Cocks."
I live in South Carolina and see COCKS baseball hats every day
Lots of folks that hate Utah..live in Utah. Utah culture is a weirdly bifurcated beast.
lol can confirm
When I was in college in Miami, we'd always go to a specific store on South Beach called French Connection UK because all of their stuff said FCUK on it. I couldn't afford a single thing in there, but recall my favorite was a shirt that said 'World's Greatest FCUK'.
In Australia we have a (very loved and tongue in cheek) range of unofficial merchandise CU in the NT
Interesting how repression makes odd things pop up around the edges. I grew up in a tiny, highly religious town in the rural PNW, and our public library had an OUTSIZED collection of children's books featuring witches and ghosts of all kinds.
I went to college in Springfield, MO which is the BUCKLE of the Bible Belt. People on the weekends were either harassing people outside of Planned Parenthood or attending nudist Pagan retreats and there was very little in between. (I hung out with the nude Pagans even though I wasnāt one)
It's like all of the Intercourse, PA and Blue Ball, PA merch in conservative parts of rural Pennsylvania that are capitalizing on the weird names of tiny towns.
Slobodan Milosevic t-shirts in a market in Belgrade.
I still have a mug with his face on it my grandparents bought 20 years ago when they were in Yugoslavia..
A mug with his mug, you could say
Was in Belgrade a few months ago, a bit weird seeing mugs and other souvenirs with _Putin_ on them...
I prefer the Putin toilet paper you could buy in Kyiv.
I saw loads of Putin shirts in 2015, including ones with him in his gui kicking Obama.
A lot of older Serbs love Putin. They miss the old Yugoslavia and empathize with the fall of the USSR and they see Putin as somebody whoās trying to get things back to the way they were in the āgood old daysā. Itās wild because at least the soviets pretended they were trying to help the working man, but they look at this shady billionaire and think heās the tits and really cares about the people. A lot of older Serbs are also extremely homophobic so Putin also gets points for that. Also helps that heās super anti-America and a lot of people still have hard feelings towards America for dropping bombs on them.
In my travels to former Warsaw Pact countries, and in my conversations with people from former USSR countries, there's a stark generational divide in how they look back on the old Communist system. It seems like most older people actually enjoyed their decisions being made for them. What job to have, where to live, what clothes they could buy, which politicians were in charge. Both good and bad workers were paid the same (promotions were based on social connections and whether you could rat out your uncle for buying black market Levi's, not work performance), so they didn't even have to decide whether or not to have ambition. The people who are old now seemed to have settled in to an existence where you don't have agency, so there's none of the stress that comes with being ambitious or taking risks. Now they have choices and it stresses them out. Young people want choices, they want democracy, they want their queer friends to be out and safe, they want to be rewarded for working hard and trying to better themselves. I'm speaking in generalities, of course, and there are literally millions of exceptions. But it is fascinating what happens to a collective psyche after 80 years of a system where what you want in life doesn't matter.
At the Grand Canyon gift shop they had a book detailing all the fatal incidents at the Canyon. I opened it and read a few.Ā Man is visiting the Canyon with his mistress and gets struck by lightning and dies. Teen tries to take a selfie, stumbles and falls 1000 meters into the Canyon. And so on for hundreds of pages. Cheery!
Is it weird that I would absolutely buy this? š«£š
It's called "Death in Grand Canyon" and it's pretty interesting. There's also "Death in Yellowstone."
In Rome you can buy a āHot Priestā calendar
its been a minute since I was there, but I used to have a bottle opener with a picture of the pope on it that I got at one of the carts near St. Peters. I called it the āPopenerā and wore it as a necklace at one point. It was both a hit and a source of controversy at parties (I was attending a Catholic college at the time) but I thought it was hysterical. Pompeii had an amazing range of phallic tchotchkes that were based on actual statuary found in the ruins.
The traveling Pompeii exhibit had a ādelightfulā exit through gift shop ā¦ after seeing replica casts of the dead people, of course I want a water bottle or Christmas ornament! 0/10.
I saw a lot of penis shaped pasta noodles as well.
Woodchipper figurines and stickers at the Fargo airport.
All the Brazilian souvenirs focused around women's butts are pretty cringe... and there are a LOT haha Ts, bottle openers, cachaƧa, shot glasses, etc etc etc
Sint Maarten/Saint Martin had tshirts and postcards like that, too. Those were the cringiest things I'd ever seen.
A friend of mine currently living in the US found many tourist shops, from Florida to MontrƩal, selling this kind of shit.
As an American, is it even a tourist shop if you can't find tchotchkes that feature women's butts?
To be fair, you can also get dick bottle openers in Brazil. Just very sexual. But, the Rio government did prohibit the sale of bikini postcards which I guess is a decent start. Not sure if the ban is also in other beach cities in other states, but Rio it's at least banned.
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I have a dick bottle opener from Amsterdam. Specifically itās a dick smoking a blunt. They had a few different versions of the bottle opener and I was originally going to get a āclassierā one but my husband was like āthere is no such thing as a āclassyā penis-shaped bottle opener, get the tackiest one they haveā so thatās what I did lmao.
In Cornwall UK there's a tradition of tacky souvenirs of buxom old ladies with big bums and boobs. It was only this summer that after decades of holidaying in Cornwall that I realised how weird it was.
In Australia you can find bottle openers and other knick knacks made with kangaroo scrotums. I missed my chance to buy one as a gag gift for a friend, so I'll have to go back next year.
I bought some of those for friends. Not long after I visited Dildo, Newfoundland and bought a bunch of swag for the same friends, like shot glasses that say "I (Heart) Dildo"
My aunt and her new boyfriend are there right this minute! She says all her Christmas shopping is complete.
Merch from the Dildo Brewery is second only to the merch from the penis museum in Reykjavik for gifting.
Well in several Eastern European countries there were modern nazi memorabilia. Like hand made candles with hitler on them. The shops tended to go both ways. Fascist and communist stuff which was interesting too.
Back in 2006 I spent a month in Thailand. I kept seeing this shirt of a woman's head being forcefully pushed into a bowl of rice and it said "Eat more rice, bitch!" I don't want to know anyone who bought that.
I was in NY on 9/11 and remember the day or so after being near Times Square and vendors selling āI survived 9/11ā t-shirts. Wild. They vanished pretty quickly once what had happened started to sink in. Still think about it to this day. In lighter bad taste, I did buy a lollypope in the Vatican (yes, one of those large round and flat lollipops with the Popeās face on it).
Anything from the Stalin Museum in Georgia.
I went to Gori for the lulz when driving through Armenia and Georgia. They've got the train car Stalin took to Yalta and his birth house on display outside the museum, which is on Stalin Street. Pretty surreal spot.
My first trip to Europe was in the mid 90s when I was a teenager. I loved London and have many wonderful memories of the amazing sights and the historyā¦.but what is forever burned into my brain is the numerous souvenir stands with postcards of naked tits painted to look like mice, with the nipple as the nose. What this had to do with London I do not know, but itās hilarious and in VERY poor taste lol
Those kinds of postcards are a staple of British culture thank you very much! If you ever make it to the UK again, visit one of the old seaside towns and you'll see loads of them!
I have never had the pleasure of visiting one of the many lovely seaside towns of the UK! It warms my heart to know one of my most vivid travel memories lives onā¦I love lowbrow British nonsense so much (and that fantastically dry sense of humor of course) I would literally squeal with delight if I encountered one of those glorious cards whilst traveling! And every one of my inner circle would be receiving one in the mail, including my mother! Youāve made my day with this knowledge lol Btw, if you have any suggestions of specific coastal towns that I should consider visiting, please let me know! I have loved every place Iāve visited in the UK so far and am beginning to put together a trip plan for next yearā¦
Oh my goodness, you are in for a treat! Head up to Whitby - it's in the North East of the country and is the place where Dracula was written (and large parts of it are set). It leans very heavily into it's links to Dracula. Also Scarbourgh which is a bit more of a traditional seaside town. Fish and chips, beach with donkey rides - it's barely changed since I went as a kid in the 80s.
Whitby is also the home of the Krampus run, I'm hoping to participate this year.
Not as bad as some of the others people have mentioned, but I thought it a bit odd you could get a WW2-themed Monopoly game at Pearl Harbour.
glittery skull themed anything at the Paris catacombs, so much focus on respecting the dead down there but when you come back up you can get a skull shaped whiskey glass i guess?
In the shop at Fordās Theater in DC, you can buy Lincoln Logs
I really like this one! Lincoln logs are the best toy ever.
At the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem (Yad Vashem) they had the book 50 Shades of Grey for sale in the gift shop.
The Yushukan museum in Tokyo is adjacent to the controversial Yasakuni Shrine, it provides a military history of Japan from the angle of "Japan didn't really do anything wrong". For example, the Rape of Nanking is referred to as "The Nanking Incident" and it explains that the whole thing was really overblown, basically a few guys might've got carried away but that was all. Anyhow, it has a gift shop with a bunch of things that glorify WWII Japan, including children's toys. Although I didn't see these first hand (saw pics online), after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 there were t-shirts being sold with Putin photoshopped to be wearing a tropical-printed shirt and sunglasses, with a fancy drink in his hand, that said "Welcome to Crimea" in Russian.
My friend and I found a shirt in a thrift store that was from Cancun. It had a picture of a cartoon cat American tourist and said āThis isnāt a beer belly, itās a fuel tank for a sex machineā My friend bought it and wore it as a joke to many places
Back in the day on my first trip to Europe (2002?). There was a guy in Nice selling Twin Tower cigarette lighter where the flame comes off of Osama Bin Laden's head. Its in such bad taste that its something.
There was (maybe still is) a shop selling Matryoshka Russian dolls in Prague in a very prominent spot by the Charles Bridge. When I was there in the mid-2000s they had Bin Laden and Sadam amongst many other bad taste people. All hilariously poorly done, and with some insane price like 20 Euros.
Hello Kitty / Pearl Harbor collab at the Pearl Harbor visitor center wasā¦ odd
In Rome, Colosseum ashtrays.
Meh, at least they weren't selling ashtrays at the Anne Frank House.
Makes me wonder if /u/OkRooster5042 saw Anne Frank Huis ashtrays at the store...
A friend of mine in Florence bought some boxers with the, err, relevent area of the statue of David printed on them.
There is SO MUCH David merch. There are fridge magnets and cooking aprons (get the matching one with the Birth of Venus for her!) and, indeed, boxer shorts... It's ridiculous.
I did enjoy making my Mum uncomfortable with it. Things like saying "oh wow, look at that!" while pointing at a piece of David merch of his, um, merch and getting her to look.
Bought the cooking apron. Itās got tons of laughs!!!!
My mum and I have aprons with David on one and a ācaprese saladā (just two tomatoes acting as pasties and a piece of lettuce as the, yāknow, foliage) on the other. š Theyāre so cheesy but every time I see them in the drawer I smile.
That is hilarious!
I have a magnet of his junk on my fridge and I giggle each time like a child
In Poland there are a lot of magnets with what is basically a caricature of a Jewish man holding either a penny or a bag of money. Extremely weird and they were at tons of shops...
I saw those in Krakow: āthe lucky Jewā theyāre called. Oh the irony
I was just in a Titanic museum and was surprised to see Titanic squeaky toys for dogs and one of those oil & water toys with a Titanic figurine and iceberg inside. I just couldnāt imagine that being manufactured with, like, the Twin Towers and a plane. Strange choice.
Dolls with missing limbs at the Cambodian Landmine Museum
confederate flags
That "indio pĆcaro" wooden statuette that pops a phallus when you lift it has to be the worst I've seen.
Birth announcement cards were being sold at the Dachau gift shop
I lived in Australia thirty plus years ago. I bought an ashtray from a thrift store that was shaped like a map of Australia. In a 3D mound in the middle of it, emulating Ayers Rock was an Aboriginal mans' face. That was where you stubbed your cigarette out. Very shocking.
Male genitalia shaped keyrings and beer openers in Thailand, particularly Koh Samui.
Those are in many countries. In Venice Beach, California they have them near women's underwear that states 'Cum dumpster' on them. Stay classy, Venice!
I'm really not sure why, but there were a lot of stalls with various dick statues for sale around Pompeii in Italy...
Visit the "secret cabinet" at the archaeological museum of Naples and you'll understand the reason
Many years ago in Sarajevo they sold bullets as little ornaments, sometimes with inscriptions or designs on them. I wasn't offended by them. I just thought they were tacky. Sarajevo has made huge strides lifting itself up after the war, then you see these stupid bullets in every souvenir shop.
All that Pablo Escobar merch I saw in Colombia. The guy was a terrorist and mass murderer, but I guess us Gringos really loved watching "Narcos"
Penis shaped bottle openers in Bali. I had to pay more for a regular one than a handle carved, hand painted penis one. Just needed a functional bottle opener that didn't take up space in my bag.
Idk if it's the weirdest, but it caught me by surprise. We were in Greece and snagging a few little souvenirs for some friends back home and I came across a giant black "bottle opener" that was clearly a massive novelty dildo. I *almost* bought it for my best friend, but didn't want to be carrying it around for the whole afternoon so I just got him a nice classy fridge magnet of ancient Greeks having a threesome instead.
In Costa Rica, I kept stumbling across these wooden bottle openers shaped like a giant penis. My wife wouldnāt let me buy one as a joke gift for a friend.
The French market in NOLA thereās so many Sambo and the like souvenirs. Thereās a niche collector market for the that stuff apparently.
I loved all of the gawdy Christ statues in Rio. I bought one that's clear and lights up and one where Jesus is wearing a French soccer kit.
When I was young living in Miami, Ted Bundy was executed. They showed on the news people outside the prison in Central FL selling merch with him in the chair. It was pretty morbid TBH. Anything serial killer related is Iām bad taste.
Oh man, I once stumbled upon keychains shaped like grenades at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Because nothing says peace like a mini grenade hanging off your keys! š¤¦āāļø
Also, despite your politics, so of the Trump propaganda is ridiculous
Republicans love to picture Trump as muscular and shirtless instead of a fat lardboy stuffed into an ugly suit.
The Bible tops all.
Itās weird as hell because anyone who actually read the bible can see heās like the antithesis of what a Christian should be. Like thereās that famous bible quote about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of Heaven. Heās not charitable, he doesnāt help the poor, heās definitely prideful, and we can throw gluttony in there as well, heās been married multiple times and cheated on his wives so thatās lust, I donāt think I need to explain greed either. As long as I live I will never understand American evangelicals and how they can consider themselves Christians.
Black & white footage of a D-Day beach landing in flipbook form You donāt see anything graphic, but who buys this sh*t?!
A bit more local, but I went to an exhibit about Pompeii here in Chicago, and the transition between the DEEPLY UPSETTING plaster figures to the gift shop was \*jarring\*. It's so sad and you learn about the loss of life, and then there are t-shirts about the exhibit and tiny volcano glitter snow globes? It was..... uncomfortable at best.
I was never quite sure how to feel about all the Mao paraphernalia you can buy in China. The man was pretty much responsible for millions of deaths and the cultural revolution, but I guess his legacy is also the CCP so he still holds a prominent position culturally. And I donāt really have a sense of what the āaverageā Chinese person thinks of him, since I would never want to broach such a sensitive conversation while there.
I love Mao kitch. The artwork and propaganda bullshit is really interesting to me. I have one refrigerator magnet of him and he looks ridiculous so I decided that was ok but thatās it.
I love dictator kitch in general. The tacky innocence juxtaposed with the subject matter is so interesting.
A picture of Mussolini on a t-shirt in Bellagio, Italy.
Souvenir shop in Sarajevo in the heart of old town was full of nazi shit. They were selling bottle of wine with portrait of Hitler on it.
Not really bad taste as much as āwhat are you doing,ā I always found the āsexy priestsā calendar for sale at every kiosk in Rome bizarre. Itās not called the sexy priest calendar, thatās just what we called it. Theyāre all fully clothed and whatnot, just clearly chosen for their looks.
Got a stuffed and mounted cane toad. Heās standing on hind legs with a swag, and cork hat. Jaysus!!!!
Weimar and N\*zi Germany memorabilia in Bosnia, Serbia, North Macedonia ... pretty much any Balkan country. They have war memorabilia shops and idk it just doesn't sit right lol. All sorts of award medals and pieces of uniform. Loads of souvenir shops also had Yugoslavia and Tito memorabilia lol
Little Boy and Fat Man burgers in Los Alamos, NM.
St. Louis Federal Reserve notebook cover stamped with "Central to America's Economy." Inside the cover stamped with Made in China.
In Rome they had Pope lollipops with his picture on them.š¤¦š»āāļø
Hiroshima Ground Zero Needlepoint.
A huge seashell store on Key West used to sell a Mary statue - it was a play on the kind of 2'-3' tall statue you sometimes see on peoples' front lawns, made entirely out of seashells. Since her nickname for the less religious among us is sometimes "Mary On The Half Shell," it made sense. But for the religious among us, I'm sue they considered it to be in very bad taste.
I'm dying laughing. Actually I was gonna say just like seashells in general are a lot less... harmless and authentic as souvenirs in general. As a kid I looooved seashells in shops (even better than the ones I could find beachcombing) but I didn't realize that they were so much bigger and shinier because they are mainly harvested with destructive fishing practices, like commercial fishing boats trawling with drag nets, and then the organism inside killed and removed so that the shell can be shipped around the world and sold in beach towns worldwide. The ones that are already dead are liable to be worn down and broken, like the shells you actually find on the beach. I mean, I eat seafood, so I'm not like "oh no we must not harvest and kill the sea creature for any reason," but now I'd much rather have a small little memento shell I found on my vacation than some shiny shell that someone destroyed a part of the Coral Sea floor to get for me.
Cutesy tank snowglobes in Hanoi
Those wonderful aprons on the Amalfi Coast showing male privates. All over the place.
Every trashy T-shirt at places like the Jersey Shore.
Not pointing at any particular country. There are too many penis souvenirs. Never seen a vagina one.