I'm in a hotel room in Lord-knows-where as I type this, and once again scoffing my emergency rations of SNICKERS as I type...the people I'm here to see insisted on taking me out for dinner, and - having long-since learned the hard way - I tried DESPERATELY to politely decline, still being mentally scarred from previous visits to 'famous' restaurants (they always are) to eat 'famous' local delicacies (that usually make me want to vomit & leave me bloody starving)...
Worse, when we arrived at the 'famous' eatery, one of my worse nightmares came flooding back - despite several sessions with a hypnotist who tried to convince me I'd really eaten pie & chips & loved every mouthful - I immediately remembered the place...Christ, I'd travelled 1,500 miles to help these people and ended up in the same torture chamber as last time I was here, looking at tanks of deformed fish & toads, all staring back at me with eyes that said "please don't pick me!! Look at my family swimming around me - they all NEED me & I'm the breadwinner!!"
Needless to say, I left my hosts to it and ran to the loo to prey and eat my shoes so I wouldn't starve...
BIG mistake...first up was a phallic-like specimen that looked suspiciously like something Ant & Dec would serve up, sniggering to one of their "I was once a minor celebrity, get me out of here so I can cash in my cheque" victims...and, yup, I was right - my translator said simply "BULLS DICK" (with a dry smile)...
They chirped on about the equivalent of 'you are what you eat', suggesting that if I ate the bloody thing, I'd grow a bull-size donger overnight. My first retort about already having a HUGE (and highly effective) tongue went un-noticed (particularly on the HR lady) as did my rather sarcastic comment that if eating certain food did indeed pass on the physical characteristics of the food, the dangers of these people eating so much sheep & pig brains & the impact on China's desire to become the next America by the end of next week...having said that, it'll keep me in a job longer, helping them make head & tail of the bloody mess...
Next up was a 'chicken' that looked more like a Frankenstein-cross between a budgie and a cat (politely declined), another dick-like monstrosity that had a clam on the end (maybe a weird sex-act gone wrong?) - also declined - and finally a bowl of REAL seaweed (not the fried cabbage you eat in the UK)...which I did sample, to be fair, although I vastly preferred the 132 grapes and 3 melons I ate for 'pudding' instead...
For drinks, we EACH had a bottle of local poison / paint stripper that had a poor translation of 'a drink of this a day keeps the doctor away' on the back - I was told it was 'medicine' - hell, give me a Buttercup Syrup & Calpol cocktail anyday...
So I'm sat here with a bottle of water to wash down my SNICKERS feast. Oh - that reminds me...remember the story of the 10,000 dead pigs found in the main water supply? Latest gem is tons of TAMPONS dumped in one of the main river...thankfully, not used...but as the warehouse that dumped them protested - "they'd just gone mouldy"...well, that's alright then, isn't it?
OiC - Only in China...
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