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Ten of the weirdest things to do on holiday
  • Being covered in live snakes sounds more I'm a Celebrity... than holiday spa treatment, but Ada Barak has been offering visitors to her carnivorous plant farm in Talmei Elazar, Northern Israel, since 2006. Barak believes that physical contact with the reptiles can be a relaxing experience and said: "Some people said that holding the snakes made them feel better, relaxed," she said "One old lady said it was soothing, like a cold compress." If you're keen on the idea you can be reassured by the fact that the snakes used are all non-venemous.

  • Most people run away from hurricanes when they see them, but the thrill seeking folk at Storm Chasing Adventure Tours specialise in holidays that put their guests right in the eye of the storm. Their six-day storm chasing tours take place in Tornado Alley in the Great Plains of the United States and come with a 'tornado guarantee' that promises if your tour has less than two days of viewing storms that have been issued tornado warnings by the National Weather Service, they'll give you a $200 discount on next tour. From £1,717 per person.

  • We've all heard of medical tourism, but those who suffer from a bald upper lip can now get a moustache transplant holiday in Turkey. Cosmetic surgeons have been performing hair transplants on balding men for years but there's a growing trend in Asian, European and the Middle Eastern men visiting to give their melancholy moustaches a bushy surgical boost. Turkish surgeon Selahattin Tulunay started facial follicle transplants two years ago and says he completes up to 60 operations every month. He told The Wall Street Journal: "The moustache is making a comeback. If a man's moustache doesn't grow, he wants to know he can have one as a mark of masculinity." 

  • You aren't a man in Monglia unless you've mastered the 'three games of men' - horse racing, wrestling and archery. The Naadam festival dates back to 1225AD and Mongolian men still meet every July to battle each other in the chosen sports of manliness. Think you could take on a Mongol warrior? Then put your money where your muscles are because according to absoluetchinatours.com "Everyone can apply to compete in Naadam, regardless of his or her ethnic origin and religious belief."
    If spectating is more your sport, discovermongolia.co.uk runs an eight-day trip to Mongolia taking in Naadam's opening ceremony and tournaments.

  • How would you like to experience what illegal immigrants feel when they cross the border into America? A small border town in Mexico has recreated the terrifying ordeal with their La Carminata Nocturna (night hike) where over 100 residents from El Alberto simulate a night crossing for tourists, complete with fake border guards and immigration officials, all for the small fee $18 (£12).  The four-hour trek starts with border control agents pursuing participants with sirens and flashing lights as they scramble under fences and run through the brush to escape. According to filmmaker Jamie Meltzer, who documented his hike in his film La Caminata, the adventure is less for fun and more to raise awareness of the horrifying situation migrants put themselves in.

  • Love beer so much you wish you could bathe in it? At the Starkenberger castle brewery in the forested hills of Tarrenz, Austria, you can do just that in their beer spa and beer baths. In the brewery's fermentation cellar you'll find the world's the first beer swimming pool designed by artist Wernfried Poschusta and specially filled with about 12,000 litres of water and 300 litres of Biergeläger beer. Probably the only time you'd be happy to drink your own bath water, this boozy bath experience starts from £192.

  • Want to awaken your inner crouching tiger, sleeping dragon and always dreamed of being a real life karate kid?  Join the China Kunyu Mountain Shaolin Kung fu Academy with bookmartialarts.com and train as a Shaolin warrior for an entire year in China. The intense training schedule involves 5.50am wake up calls and hours of training and meditation every day as well as teaching from 34th generation Shaolin monks and kung fu masters. The 365-day course costs from £3,371 per person.

  • Not content with merely observing live volcanoes, tierratour.com runs an action packed day trip in which guests hike up one side of an active volcano and then board down the other side of it at up to 70 km per hour. The five hour tour can be booked from the colonial cities of Granada and Leon in Nicaragua and start from  £23 per person, including transport, equipment and bilingual guides.

  • Plastic surgery tourism is becoming more and more popular as tourists decide that they can get expensive plastic surgery treatments at bargain basement prices on the continent. If you fancy getting a new nose or some fat sucked out in Eastern Europe, newlookholiday.co.uk offers cut price treatments in Kosice, Slovakia. You can go under the knife before recuperating by exploring the city that's been picked as the 2013 European Capital of Culture.

  • Las Bolas de Fuego is a festival that appeals to the pyromaniac in all of us. Join the residents of Nejapa in El Salvador in August to eat tamales, taste some local coffee and chuck kerosene-soaked, blazing rag balls at people in the streets. According to the tourism website of El Salavdor, the festival dates back to the eruption of the El Playon volcano more than 100 years ago, when huge balls of fire were hurled into the air.

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