what odd and down right silly food combos have you had to endure while working away ?

Im currently in balkanabat in turkmenistan and ive been to the local hotel and decided thats exactly why the FCO say almost everyone gets the travelers trotts here ….

so got the driver to take me to supermarket – interesting when you dont speak russian and dont have a kitchen…..

The other night i bought bread and cheese , lots of chocolate and crisps . 3 litres of coke and 12 litres of water – the cheese was rancid and couldnt be eaten but the bread was tasty – fresh baked.

tonight i bought different cheese and its tasty – but there was no bread – i also have no fridge so im having to eat all my cheese with crisps haha.

Its not as bad as ukraine where i survived on 6 packs of supernoodles a bag of coffee and bread from the canteen when offshore for 8 days – the rig food was rotten (litterally it was rotting when they brought it on board)

on the way back it was rough seas and abody was sick – except me who had nothing to be sick with haha.

Never mind – for every shit trip like this there is a good trip to make up for it.

My working away generally means Paris.
Restaurant around the corner does a set 5 course meal – superb..
Eating on my own though..

Blokes I worked with had been on an Iranian ship at the time of the Ayatollah. They took a look at the galley. All they ate and drank for a week was Mars Bars and Long Life milk they’d opened themselves.

thats what im talking about slowoldgit !

im doing a rig visit on monday to a land rig errected onto an offshore platform….. first port of call will be the galley for inspection.

That story was about a supply boat. A tanker from the same area was dry-docked in Rotterdam. The dockies refused to work on it until it was fumigated. Then they swept up the dead roaches and shovelled them into the normal trash bins that they used. Four old oil drums full of dead roaches were craned off.

A former work-mate was bird-dogging for BP on a Red China ship. He came back and insisted that if they ever hired another such, the contract would include an additional clause. All cutlery and crockery to be washed at least once in every 24 hours.

Stay safe. I hope it’s better now.

Warm very sweet bread rolls with dessicated coconut topping, filled with warm dry tuna. Fair play, the cook onboard didn’t do it again, he tried the same the next day but with cheese in place of coconut.

Problem with roaches is you rid them from the ship, then they’re brought on again with the next stores. Difficult to manage. Never experienced that many though!

A third-world ship I later worked on was anchored on location. A body drifted past. The Capt had a boat lowered, and the body was brought on board. It was placed in the chiller until they returned to port. My workmate ate only dry goods from that moment on.

You can keep down the number of roaches by cleanliness and by constantly re-sealing stuff. Or not bother. One bloke I worked with came from S America, he maintained roaches like cardboard. He insisted on ejecting all cartons etc from our workspaces. It seemed to work. They are jungle creatures, I suppose, happy to eat cellulose in one form or another.

My boss had to be medivacced out of Iran after food poisinkng many years ago.

Says he’s still not quite right.

Pickled fish for breakfast on the Baltic coast never sits well..

Pigs Cheeks. Very popular in Andaluz (quite nice too)

Chicken feet (plate of about 200) in China was the weirdest thing I’ve come across at work.

I have to say I normally stick with Club Sandwiches in the hotel!

Ethiopians love raw meat. Minced with cottage cheese, swimming in spiced butter- kitfo. Or just big slabs of it – Kurt. All served with sour pancakes called injera. Loved injera, never could get my head round the raw meat.

And don’t talk to me about Ugali…

Nigeria, offal in a spicy stew, it wobbles on the plate like a jelly, bush meat suri from the bush bars, this can be anything, just marinated in spices and cooked on a bbq, then theres bottles of sand roasted nuts and bags of water, never had a bag of water so far, heard from a local it was not always safe.
Last time i was there i ordered a pepperoni pizza with chilli peppers, it came with as requested but with chicken and sweetcorn, when i asked about this i was told all pizza is served with chicken and sweetcorn as standard, i wouldn’t have minded but the chicken was on the bone, in fairness the chicken in lagos actually tastes of chicken as well as diesel and the engine oil it has been mooching about in.

how do you people get into these crazy jobs?

Im currently in balkanabat in turkmenistan and ive been to the local hotel and decided thats exactly why the FCO say almost everyone gets the travelers trotts here ….

Where’s Balkanabat? I was there a few years back, in Ashgabat, up to Darvaza and Dashogus, over to Kiva in Uzbekistan. Dashogus is interesting – I went to an Italian restaurant there, again, speaking minimal Russian, it was quite an experience.

how do you people get into these crazy jobs

Oil and gas are a good start…

Still in the ‘stans, fat-bottomed sheep is a prized meat, particularly the fat buttocks. Very fatty.

i spent 5 weeks in port harcourt earlier in the year

beef suya was quite nice ….not sure nee convinced it wasnt beef but it was tasty – very spicy

tried their garri as well – tasted like dirt !

balkanabat is about 2 hours out of turkmenbashy

hole in the wall food working out in california was an experiance also but on a much lower level……my colleague ordered a cold chicken salad in the mckittrick penny bar(google it ) then wondered why he was blowing chunks all the next day….nt chicken fried steak was fine.

Ahhhh… Oil field food. My favorite was a delivery of bananas to a seismic boat that included several tarantulas that made going a getting a snack a whole lot more exciting for a while.. You certainly looked twice before reaching in. Or a plate of something meat like in Algeria that I am still not sure exactly what it was.

I also have horrible memories of an egyption “milk” that was not off but certainly was not fresh either. The locals all drank it to no ill effect but I steered clear.

Hmmm, bit less exotic here in Azerbaijan.
Toyuq Tabaka is a bit bizarre: Chicken Squashed.
It comes on the plate like a whole chicken that’s been cooked and then driven over by the chef….

Staying in an ‘Olympik Center; here out in the sticks, the apartments are good but been exisitng on lentil soup every night for 4 weeks as can’t really face the dry spaghetti and ‘cutlet’….

Last day on site today then back to Ganja, train to Baku and then home to Family Mugsy in France. Yay bloody Yay!

1 week down 3 to go …..

time to get up and get some tools built ….. damn these rock solid beds ….. been up since 5am…..

Sea cucumber here in Malaysia – the flavour’s ok, but the texture is pretty rank, like a mouthful of fat. It’s supposed to be one of the ‘five gems of the sea’, god alone knows what the other four are.

Once spent two days on a ‘crew boat’ (ie, old PSV that was good for nothing else – offshorey types will know what I mean). We were heading up to join our ship working in northern Saudi Waters.

Crewed by Indian blokes:

Breakfast – Mild Curry with a chapati
Lunch – Medium Curry with a popadom
Dinner – Hot curry with rice
Can of coke and one piece of fruit per day.

The AC was none existant, so headed out on to the deck and slept on a very large coil of rope.

^ that menu sounds good! Otherwise, the rest of this thread is a boon to those of us who are on the intermittant fasting diet. I felt quite queasy reading some of these.

I think the strangest for me has been jellyfish when in China – pretty tasty but didn’t expect it to be crunchy!

Cheers, Rich

Nicko74

Ive now experianced the fatty bottomed sheep

One of the guys in the workshop ive been working with took me back to meet his family for Eid al-Adha muslim festival.

remains of Sheep hanging from the carport roof

Tasty tasty – but i dont think ive ever shared a meal with so many flys …….

WTF is that white fermented drink they drink – its vile :s.

An excess of limes and habaneros in French Guiana. Seemingly only sold by the kg in the market.
Also caiman, agouti (kind of a guinea pig type thing), paca (ditto), armadillo, and tapir but didn’t try Iguana.

Moscow seemed to be safe to stick to chicken and bortschch (sp?).

edit: oh and the Rum (preferred Martinique rum to local stuff, but they’re similar) was only a massive €2 per litre for 50% stuff, so any bugs didn’t stand much chance.

(all the above consumed by choice, and would have again)

Breakfast – Mild Curry with a chapati

Surely it was a roti that time of day? I quite enjoyed eating daal and roti for breakfast every day in malaysia. Felt like one long night out.

wow, the roaches stories sound grim. Here in Finland they seem to grind all the meat together into a slurry and fry it up. Food is a fuel, as opposed to a passion. Weirdest thing i’ve had is Jaluviina, which is basically a mixture of bad vodka and bad brandy.

Chickens feet! Nom, nom!

Duck’s tongues as well, in Shanghai a while ago.

However, all of this pales in to nothingness alongside durian….

Have you had Salmiakki Koskenkorva? Pepper salty liquorice sweets dissolved in vodka, frozen until gloopy then drunk as a beer chaser. Surprisingly pleasant.

atlaz, yeah i’ve had it. It’s called Salmari. If you ever want a free drink in a club, pretend to be a tourist and ask about the local drinks. Many people will get you a salmari in response.

Just saw above about the jelly fish… i’ve had that too, really good! We also had pig intestine that night and it tasted like essence du poop

Roaches on boats – my stepdad says they lay eggs in corrugated cardboard so when we were in the Caribbean we always had to ditch the boxes after doing the shopping.

Lunch in Kenya…

Lunch in Cameroon:

Lunch by brf, on Flickr

do you get a choice of left or right with that Veg Rice in kenya? 😉

Pigs Cheeks. Very popular in Andaluz (quite nice too)

Popular in my wife’s home village in Extremadura, too – along with all the other bits of a pig that shouldn’t be eaten: balls, ear, snout, tail… Most taste OK, I just can’t handle the texture.

Oil and gas are a good start..

That.

Sea cucumber – holy **** that is disgusting
Garri – I believe they use that in diet food becasue it swells up inside you and makes you feel full.

However, all of this pales in to nothingness alongside durian….

I’ll second that, had all the usual testicles / brains etc. that they serve up to westerners but the durian was one of the vilest things I’ve ever tasted.

Bags of coffee from roadside shops in Singapore is a weird concept as well, they don’t work very well in a cup holder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chal

fermented camel milk it was ….. BOAK

i suggest you do not try this stuff.

Home yesterday

Can report that i lost just over a stone in a month . Woops really didnt need to loose that

Working n putting it back on this weekend in glasgow. Massive curry last might with all the trimmings , going oot for a full scottish breakfast this morn and a massive steak this arvo 🙂 i think i earnt it.