“They’re canned vegies not fresh and as diplomats they don’t go through customs at either end. The rules that apply to you and I don’t apply to them.”
That doesn’t make a home party basket any less tacky. I find it up there with giving DVDs to someone who’s almost legally blind. These people are either clueless or incredibly calculating.
'Taint necessarily so. I traveled all over with a diplomatic passport. One year I was in Miami on a very short R&R just before Christmas and was going to escort my son to Havana to spend the holiday with us. I bought a fresh turkey and a spiral-cut ham at a Publix just before leaving for the airport. I put the items in a carry-on bag, and as we were going through customs in Havana, the officer asked me what was in the bag. Food, I told her. She asked what kind. I said "cheese" then mumbled something unintelligible. She asked if I would open the bag, so being a "diplomat," of course I complied. She looked at the ham and passed it. She said that she would have to confiscate the turkey as it was uncooked. She said that they had been alerted to the fact that there was a fowl-borne disease in the southeast USA. She said that it would be burned. My son, who had been with me in Panama when I offered a $5 gratuity to a traffic cop to avoid having to accompany him to the nearest precinct house, said, "bribe her, dad!" I informed him that that wouldn't work here.
We are to this day convinced that they did indeed burn the turkey - in a 325 oven for about three hours. Feliz Navidad, compa#eros.