Thread: The best place you've been/worst grub.

I was thinking as I'm having my Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich this afternoon of a place in Laos. Not naming the place specifically, it was on an island. A beautiful place like none other in the world, that I ordered breakfast at a cafe along the waterfront.

Cutting a long story short and getting to the "meat on the bone" I could honestly say this was in fact the worst slice of bacon, not to mention the eggs I have ever had. I did not eat much of it as it was just "strange". I know it was bacon and surely an egg of sorts locally sourced no doubt.

The place was Don Det Laos. A beautiful place but a bit off the trail so as like lets say the Himalayas not that easy to bring food to. So tell us what was your best place with the worst food. I should have taken more pictures, I know. So how about it? Cold Pizza at the Ritz?

Beautiful place/ lousy grub.

Uyuni, SW Bolivia, 1989. Ancient history now, because the place has become much more touristy since. But back then, what a dusty, barren, impoverished backwater. Fascinating though, because it lies on the edge of the world's largest salt flats- Salar de Uyuni, and there is an ancient abandoned train cemetery too, which apparently they are planning to turn into a museum. Ended up there by accident, after a near death experience from hypothermia on the rattly old train that went up the Andes face from the Atacama desert in Chile. Jeez, what a night- had to get off, rather than continue onward to La Paz. Recovered the feeling in my feet in the early afternoon, by which time it was boiling hot.

So to the food. Only one choice of lunch or dinner, two courses- first course a watery gruel with some stringy veg, dry tasting chilli, and some tough stringy lama meat. Second course, a thicker gruel with some stringy veg, chilli, and a bit more tough stringy lama meat. Both were pretty órrible. The only respite from this insanity inducing diet was the afternoon market, which ran for about an hour or so. Here you could get some tough, stringy local chicken, grilled. It is the stringiest, driest chook I've ever had- it makes Isaan village chooks look plump and luscious. Plus some grilled local varieties of potato, which tasted and looked like no spuds I'd ever known but were quite fascinating in their own way. Hardly haute cuisine- but compared to the gruel diet, paradise.

A crappy slice of over priced Spanish Tortilla with a slice of stale bread at €10,sat beside the fish filled harbour of Los Gigantis with the magnificent backdrop of the towering volcanic stone cliffs, rumoured to cause the decimating flood of the east coast of America if the volcano erupted and the mountainous cliffs dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.

Well there you go. I thought I was alone on this. The moral is if you plan to travel outside your comfort zone bring the anti diarhrea meds. And be willing to eat what the the area provides. In my case while in Pakse I had no trouble finding palatable fair at the "real" as apposed to the unreal, I'm in the minority on this, Local market.

A year in East Texas. Beautiful scenery, all pine forest, plenty of outdoor activity, too many places to list for day trips. The time felt like a year spent taking the sweetest, most pleasant nap imaginable. Time flew by, at the slowest possible pace.

The town of 90,000 or so residents were all fed by one grocery company that dominated the local market. Restaurant food was all fried and miserable. Everything was fried. Not Thai fried. The greasiest, deepest fry possible. People survived on the shit. I use the term survive loosely, since there is no way people were making it to life expectancy. The most miserable diet imaginable. Things got so desperate, one day I tried eating a hot dog kolache. Never been more stomach sick in my life. Three days in bed from that misadventure.

One of the most pleasant years of my life.

In Laos the markets are like night and day. Really there is a night market and a day market. Both of witch could be called Bazaar. I chose to get fruit like oranges, pomelo,lychee and the like from the local market. When it came to fish and meats I left that to the experts. I bought frozen shrimp and chicken nuggets from the Friendship mart. They even had Smuckers Jam to put on the french bread in the morning.

I did get a case of the "runs" after eating some fish there but was nowhere near as sick as I got last time I was there and ate some "soup" at a local restaurant that used the city water supply for the base stock. The gal was putting water in as fast as she was dishing it out without giving time to boil all the bacteria to death. A half an hour later I thought I was gonna die.

I was lucky to get to a private parties bathroom. A squatter with a large cistern next to it. Lucky I got my shorts out of the way as the room began to spin.

Twenty minutes later I was throwing up by a fence post in front of the sisters house in town. I was miserable for a week. I learned from that lesson. Funny though my son and girlfriend as well as the rest of the folks were immune to the food-borne diseases.

On the bright side I think I only spent fifteen dollars for all ten of us to eat, that included the beers.

Vientiane is a scenic place by day, some great bakeries/coffee places to munch at.

By night, most of the local food on sale in Vientiane along the river front is absolute crap. The 'street' food is worse than the lowest quality un-fresh shite available in a Bangkok slum area and would most probably make even the most iron stomached amongst us very ill.

After reading all the rose tinted articles about how this cuisine should be tried, I was flabbergasted. What a load of bollocks.

A passable Vietnamese restaurant was our food choice for the other two evenings out, when we weren't bored shitless that is.

The waterfront stroll could get old after a few nights. I wonder what do they do with all the food that is left at the end of the night?

We tend to eat "made to order" rather than pick the dried up fish and shrimp. Hey not all fish are dried up, just find it hard to breath.

Mac D's - Soi 19 ish - 5 30 am, fish burger....

Bacon and egg in Pattaya, swimming in black, cancer-inducing , burned cooking oil. Chicken drumsticks in restaurant near P72 Hotel, Walking Street. Blood dripping from them over my fries. Waitress could not understand why I walked out.

Surin is not the best place I have ever been but the 214 Diner definitely has the worst food I have ever had. The shepherd's pie I ordered looked and tasted like a plate of vomit.

At least you got carrots

a steakhouse beginning with the letter B in a hotel beginning with the letter M

Gotta be careful of the libel laws here

Do you remember that film, "Babette's Feast"?

Baracoa, in far eastern Cuba (at the end of a 800 km road from Havana) in early 1995 at the end of the "special period" and before the farmer's markets had much of anything besides onions and boniato. Needed a passport to get into the "dollar" store in order to buy oil or powdered milk to bring when invited to a home for a meal as there was only one paladar (private restaurant) in town at the time. Almost everyone was emaciated at the time, but oh so friendly. Everyone in town knew who we were as two gringos arriving on a sailboat was quite the event in a very sleepy town. Spent a month before heading back to Florida.