Wow - I have had so many its hard to decide - so perhaps I will share my all time fave:
we were in China to adopt our first, and in the provincial captial. Our group leader was a very nice and personable guy, who for some unkown reason felt that he had to constantly out do or show me up. For the most part I am just quiet and reserved (with the exception of the occaission quip), and I just took his attention in stride and laughed along with him when ever he felt a scored a point. Anyway - we were in Hunan, one of the "spicy provinces" Meals in the hotels were brutally expensive, so as a group we would all go out to a local restauarant referred to us by the guide. In China they serve everything on big lazy susans that take up the whole table except for where you eat, and the dishes just keep coming. They consider it rude, as in they have not fed you enough, if when you leave the table there is no food left - so the food comes in never ending amounts. In this particular restaurant, we had been to it several times, and the food was pretty good. On one visit one of the girls came back a little shaken because she had seen a 4 ft snake on the stairs - apparently one of the fresh dinners had escaped and needed to be put back in his pen .... Anyway, Mike, the leader, asks if anyone likes spicy food, to which I pipe up, you bet ( a lot of the people on our tour were somewhat reserved in their choices, and Chinese food can be exotic, the snake just touches the edge of what you can get - Ihave pics of a farmers market you would not believe - including smoked bat), but i digress - excusey. So the waitress comes to the table and the usual is ordered by the guide, along with one spicy chicken dish Mike and I are going to share. They also provide red chilli pepper sauce in oil to dip in. So there were Mike and I enjoing our spicy food, sittingon opposite sides of the table, flipping the lazy susn back and forth to each other as we shared the hot dish. Mike was obviously finding it somewhat uncomfortable - he was starting to sweat and his face was turning red; BUT there was NO WAY he was going to let anyone at the table know - especially as I was enjoying it. He and I were exchanging barbs and having a good laugh, and downing copius quantities of ridiculously cheap beer ($0.18 a litre). Now let me say at this point, there are no knives and forks in the provinces, you learn to eat with a pair of chopsticks or a very small soup spoon - which doesn't work too well. Suddenly as I'm looking at Mike, he makes a strange expression - he had been chewing and stops, he looks at me with questions in his eyes, opens his mouth, puts the chopsticks in, and pulls out the whole head of the chicken, wattle, eyes beak tongue and all. It is amazing how quickly a man's face can go from red to green