Eating abroad can be one of the greatest pleasures of travel, and global foods (be it pasta and pizza or a chicken tikka masala) enrich our daily diets. For those of us whose linguistic skills leave a little to be desired, however, ordering something you actually want to eat in a foreign restaurant can be somewhat of a challenge, especially at the end of a long day.
On the many occasions when an English menu is not forthcoming, you have two options: point at a dish that happens to be passing by on its way to someone else's table or, as we were once reduced to in an empty restaurant in Xinjiang, risking the "eeny meeny miny mo" approach, keeping our fingers crossed that what arrives on your plate is neither dog nor lizard.
In Khorog, Tajikistan we were quite pleasantly surprised to be handed a bilingual menu although, as it would soon be apparent, the English made even less sense than the Russian. We felt cautiously optimistic about the identity of "Thai Meet", but the "Perfume of Love" and "Surprise Vaqt" kept us guessing even once they had arrived on the table. There was nothing discernibly Thai about the meat, though meat it certainly was. With the other dishes we may as well have been playing the guessing game "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral".
Unfortunately for Tom, he was to discover the "surprise" in the early hours of the following morning and it was to stay with him for several days. When in reach of a flushing toilet, sofa and daytime tv, food poisoning is unpleasant but sort of bearable. Trying to keep a bung in both ends whilst driving through the wilderness of the poorest country in Central Asia is quite another entirely.
On the many occasions when an English menu is not forthcoming, you have two options: point at a dish that happens to be passing by on its way to someone else's table or, as we were once reduced to in an empty restaurant in Xinjiang, risking the "eeny meeny miny mo" approach, keeping our fingers crossed that what arrives on your plate is neither dog nor lizard.
In Khorog, Tajikistan we were quite pleasantly surprised to be handed a bilingual menu although, as it would soon be apparent, the English made even less sense than the Russian. We felt cautiously optimistic about the identity of "Thai Meet", but the "Perfume of Love" and "Surprise Vaqt" kept us guessing even once they had arrived on the table. There was nothing discernibly Thai about the meat, though meat it certainly was. With the other dishes we may as well have been playing the guessing game "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral".
Unfortunately for Tom, he was to discover the "surprise" in the early hours of the following morning and it was to stay with him for several days. When in reach of a flushing toilet, sofa and daytime tv, food poisoning is unpleasant but sort of bearable. Trying to keep a bung in both ends whilst driving through the wilderness of the poorest country in Central Asia is quite another entirely.
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