Funniest Thing for March

This item appears on page 19 of the March 2009 issue.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the US, Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is BOB PHILLIPS of Tillamook, OR:

We arrived in Bhutan a few days before the recent US presidential election. Our guide was very interested in the election and had watched the debates. There was a word that he didn’t understand. None of his friends understood it either and they couldn’t find it in any dictionary.

He asked, “Can you tell us what ‘joetheplumber’ means?”