The Coalition of the Swilling

Playing with chicken heads?

Geesh.

Gives a whole new meaning to chok ... never mind.

Damn it Cullen you beat me to it, whoops is that a pun?

Dammit major dad, stop pulling those puds, er, puns around here.

Okay, smarty pantses. Just because we've got a lovely case of Ebola doesn't mean you can't.

Geez, all this personal abuse......what gives?

On a more serious note....hygiene standards are not the same around the world. That picture you paint of a "lovely, santized bubble" is very much the case, THS (as I am sure that you are aware).

On the rare occasions that I had the chance, I declined to eat from local vendors in Kuwait. The places actually looked somewhat clean, but weren't the near-sterile environments we see in resturants here in the US of A. And this was in a public sandwhich shop (of sorts). I'm certain that the more Third World the location, the less sanitary conditions will be. And I'm not even counting playing chicken.

I ate on the economy a couple of times in Afghanistan. I really didn't have a choice a couple of those times. Fortunately, I ate light and didn't have any problems. Good Lord, some of those butcher shops with the meat hanging and all the flies ... YUCK!

One of my troops, not so lucky. He was challenged to a ka-bob eating contest by a local during a humanitarian aid mission he went on. One, he lost the contest. Two, he was sick for three or four days.

I remember my Latin History prof's horrified expression when he learned where I'd been eating for our first few days in Guatemala City. Everyone else was doing the hotel dining room thing and I was living large on the local economy. Had a few tastes I couldn't identify, but always figure it's best not to ask. That's been true in all my travels and travails. The thing that did give me a moment's pause was one of the girls who'd been scrupulous about soda, bottled water and eating at the hotel only, came down with a whopping case of amoebocytis in spite of everything. Lord, oh Lord, listening to her in agony until the US Embassy staff could safely med-evac her was awful. I've only gotten nailed once ~ brought down by a pizza in the PI. Right. Who orders one there. Not me anymore...at least not the 'garbage can' variety. (Cause it really was, I'm thinking.) But it wasn't intestinal ~ it was allergic. Three days of scarlet welted swelling starting at my navel and radiating it's way out to my extremities. (I'd very sore feet and fingertips the last day and a half.) Always figured it was some sort of pesticide or something, since the DDT trucks flooded us with a cloud every single day at dusk. God knows what they were using in the agricultural sections. Ick.

I'm thinking I have my scrabbling-in-the-peat-dirt-twig-and-human-flesh-eating Celtic ancestors to thank for my iron gullet. It saves me in spite of my predilection for bad decision making.