• Cooking up some hot dog sausages in the kettle supplied in the motel room because you don't have a hot-plate or saucepan;




• Cooking up your two minute noodles for dinner the next night in the same kettle;




• Putting the toaster on its side, and using it like it is a cheap George Foreman Grill;




• Cooking up a couple of thin steaks in the toaster, using it like a vertical grill;




• Placing a meat pie in some foil wrapping as you are leaving the motel in the morning, then placing it in the engine-bay while driving all day, and then when you check into the motel that night, your dinner will be already cooked;




• Eating cold porridge in long-life milk for breakfast after you realise there is no microwave in your room (peeling thirty of those little plastic long-life milk containers so that you have enough milk);




• After realising there is no bowl in your motel room, trying to stuff four Weet-bix's into a mug and eating them for breakfast. And then you have to eat them dry, because you used all the long-life milk yesterday in your cold porridge;




• You realise that there is no vegetable peeler in your room to peel the potatoes, so you have a go using the safety razor you used for shaving;




• Going to eat sausages and spaghetti in a tin - then realise there is no bowl, so you either have to microwave it in a coffee mug or eat it cold. And then you realise there is no can opener;




• There are no spoons, forks or knives in the accommodation, so you are forced to try to stir your cup of tea with a pen. Which then starts to melt;




• You eat a meal at the local restaurant, only to be told by the locals during training the next day that the restaurant has only just re-opened after an extended closure enforced by the health department due to rampant uncleanliness, the presence of cockroaches and other pest species beyond counting, and that they are suspected of substituting ibis in dishes in place of chicken (and the dish you selected and ate was, according to the menu, "chicken with almonds");




• Buy a pack of four ice-blocks, thinking that they will last you the week. Get back to your room and stick them in the freezer section of the bar fridge in your room, then realise the next day that the freezer is not capable of keeping the ice blocks frozen, so you are forced to eat all four at once, and what you are left with is a runny, almost completely melted mess in a bowl. And a stomach ache from eating four melted ice blocks at once;




• Eating a bowl of yoghurt and then thinking it tasted a little strange. Then realising you didn't buy any yoghurt, and the use by date on the cream you just ate expired more than a month ago;




• Buy all the food for the week before you get to site, and then realise the smell and taste of bananas has permeated into all the rest of your food so that your lamb steaks, chicken kebabs, and jatz crackers all taste like banana;




• You sit down at the end of your day with a cup of tea with water out of the hot water tap, because there is no working kettle (somebody probably broke it heating up their two minute noodles and hot dogs), and all you are able to muster is a tepid, weak tasteless cup of lukewarm water;


• There is no bottle opener in your room. So you have to use a knife to try to dig out the cork from your bottle of port, and then you are forced to push the cork into the bottle of port so that you can get some of the port out. Then, when you are drinking the port out of the cup, you have to drink with your teeth together to try to sieve out pieces of cork.

Bon Appetit!

You can also successfully boil eggs in those plastic open top kettles. I've also found, from experience, that those single serve cereal boxes have a waterproof liner, so if no bowl, you can pour the milk straight into the box, but if no spoon you have to dig your cornflakes out of that small box with your fingers!! Local produce also helps boost the food supply. I have found some nice mangoes in hotel gardens and local parks, even found some wild bananas on Erub Island. Every bit helps -  Cheers, Bill. 


And I've used the little brush out of a packet of hair dye as a spoon before now, when arriving to an empty house after my tenant had left! - Liz