8 DEC - 6:30PM - DINNER WITH BUDDIES

We went to a Gin Moo Get-Tah (lit. pot-boil any food). We sat down at the wooden tables and they put down clay pots, filled with hot coals. Following our buddies we picked up our chopsticks. Half the pots they covered with a metal grille, the other half they put a dish shaped like a half-tire with a hubcap in the middle. Chicken-stock soup was poured into the circular groove of the dish.

Whilst these were heating up we filled our plates with raw meat: pork, bacon, beef, squid, prawns and crocodile. Also some beans and lettuce (Rabbit-food as Craig calls it - although carefully cooked in meat juice).

The prawns and squid we placed on the grille ("throw another prawn on the barbie"). The remaining meat we placed on the hub of the aluminium dish. It didn't seem to matter when pieces slid down into the chicken stock - they floated down there and cooked, and subsequently were transferred back up to a gap on the hub.

After 90 minutes of this, it was time for dessert. This was black jelly (Chug-whay), glassied sweet potato, a fruit that was a cross between a strawberry and a cherry, and pineapple slices.

(Please pray for Lauren - she got bitten by some tiny ants at dinner).