Originally Posted by
chollie
In rural China, a friend and I broke down and settled for Oreos with neon fillings to try to get our chocolate fix. I've seen (and bought) Snickers bars in Africa that looked and tasted like they pre-dated the pyramids.
Oh, that brings back memories, and not good ones!
My parents started traveling in Russia (5 trips) and eastern Europe (2 trips) and China (2 trips) in the late 70's through the 80's. Mom would bring back all sorts of little souvenirs and Dad would bring back a bar or two chocolate from every country. He and I would split them. Possibly the nastiest thing I've ever tasted was a Russian "chocolate" bar that tasted like grit in dirty wax. It was more grey than brown, and clearly had nothing remotely connected to a cacao bean in it. Dad compared it unfavorably to the "non-melting chocolate" that he got in his rations in WWII.