Where's the germiest place on earth? Print

CNN recently listed what they called the “germiest” tourists places around the world. The list is an interesting one. It includes the Blarney Stone in Ireland (too many kissers), San Marco Square in Venice (too many pigeons) and the Market Theater in Seattle (too many chewed gum blobs).

Also listed is the cement celebrity signature sidewalk in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood (too many sweaty hand and smelly foot prints), and Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris (too many lipstick marks on it from wildly adoring visitors).

However, CNN didn’t even begin to scatch the surface on even worse dirty and disgusting places in the world. For instance, getting high marks for low cleanliness are any public bathrooms in Moscow, any crusty cup of drinking water in Mexico City and any polluted air you try to breathe in Beijing.

The only kind of swimmers in the Buriganga River in Bangladesh are the ones that creep out of the garbage and flushed toilets, as if they ever had any flush toilets. The city of Mumbai (Bombay) in India gives you the choice to die from the drinking water, its filthy streets or by terrorist bombs. The decision may be difficult.

The Pasig River that runs through downtown Manila is said to be one of the most polluted in the world. I lived near its fragrant banks for nearly a year as a U.S. Navy guy in 1945. It was filled then by hundreds of bodies of citizens murdered by retreating Japanese troops. It shouldn’t possibly be any worse today, but apparently it is.  

Osama bin Laden’s sweaty cave in Afghanistan hasn’t been vacuumed or mopped up in ages. And maybe we should include among the germiest that tiny little basement strip club just off Las Vegas Boulevard. It has no air-conditioning, and each of the nude dancers weighs at least 300 pounds.

 

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