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My father in law went to Paris and brought me back peas.
Yep, peas.

LMAO!! what the - what was he THINKING?? Wow that's a lame present. I sort of felt bad about going overseas the first time i went, and my lame stick-in-the-mud family had never gone nowhere. So i bought them all presents, each and every one, from each and every country i visited. And not a single one cared in the slightest - possibly excepting my little sister, who loved the ghiradelli chocolates and the french cheese and english boiled sweets.. So i just don't bother any more. Expectations are a killa.

One time my dad brought me a pillow case that looked like a million dollar bill. I'm really not clear what the thought process behind that was.

When I was around 11 or 12, my dad had to go to a conference in San Francisco. He brought us all something - I don't remember what my sisters got, but he got me a hand painted, waxed paper parasol. In hindsight it was sort of ridiculous - I mean, where was I going to put it? The thing was not much to look at closed up, but opened it was gigantic! I still appreciated it, because I love getting presents.

PF tends to bring presents when he goes to a new country but not for repeat trips. We would rapidly be reduced to olives and peas as gifts if he had to come up with something new everytime!

Did I mention that my husband has work pretty hard to convince me that his job is actually work?

AlphaGeek has promised me Stroopwafels when he comes back from Norway. He'd better deliver...I can't find the real thing here and those things are TASTY with a cup of joe.

I had a friend whose mother was Australian, and every time she would go, my friend made her bring back Pollywaffles. Some friend she turned out to be, she never shared!

Alan went to a conference in Maine recently and brought the Dragon all the freebies from the vendor fair: a ruler, a sticky-note pad, a pencil. All emblazoned with various corporate logos. For the record, the Dragon LOVED them.

That's my husband -- thoughtful AND cheap! *sigh*

The best part about the peas - he then wanted me to cook said peas in various dishes while he stayed with us.

So let me get this straight... you bring me peas and now you want me to SERVE you the peas. All I can say is that man is lucky I love his damn son.

Bol - that was awesome of you! It was lesson I learned too while traveling... I only really brought back for my immediate family.

This isn't really about a gift from travels, but all of the lame gifts reminded me that when I graduated from college my parents gave me a rubber check for $1,000,000. Ha. Ha.

MNM i can mail you a pollywaffle if you want. i don't really like 'em that much myself, so there's no chance i'd accidentally eat it on the way to the post office. I have to mail Cherry Ripes to my mother in England from time to time, it's like the one thing she misses about Oz. (Presumably after us kids. And the sunshine. But we can't mail that.) Every so often she also requests Fabulon, it's an ironing spray. I'm still surprised that anybody irons. I spent years perfecting the art of avoiding it.

if i could have one thing american, it would have to be the Mr Bento lunch jar. You can't get them here, and i can't find a single online store that will ship them internationally. :( i think there are laws about it, but i can't think for the life of me what they might be. Unless it's territorial. In which case, you'd think there'd be someone shipping to asia-pacific, to make it like, a territory to actually infringe upon. world makes no sense some days.

My British grandparents always send a Christmas parcel. It's a wonderful tradition that can be found in Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. And my Christmas experiences in rural England are a lot like it.

Anyway they always send sweets like Cadbury fingers, Galaxy chocolate, and toffee. Every once in a while they send sweets that are available in the US. One year we got three huge packs of Kitkat bars. We didn't have the heart to tell them.

My stepdad brought me back a beautiful and expensive earthernware jug of sake from one of his trips to Japan. When I was 10. I'm fairly certain it was a gift from his employer and he was clinging desperately to sobriety, so I got it. I still have it - unopened. I wonder if it's still good? I imagine so.

Yes, I came in late on this, but @Bol - will Amazon not ship to you?

Amazon (US) will send us books and cd's and DVD's.

I can understand why they won't send us gourmet foods, makes perfect sense. But we also cannot buy any electrical equipment, kitchen equipment, etc. etc. It's a drag.

Someone was making a whisper about a more local Amazon (like, amazon asia-pacific) which would be nice, might get some better options. Maybe. If it ever happened. By itself, Australia isn't big enough (i.e. populated enough) for them to bother with us. Not like UK etc, which has enough paying customers to keep it afloat. OZ is quite unpopulated. Which under any other circumstances is wonderful. :)

Bol - are you guys on the same voltge that the US is on? Our plugs are mostly set up for 110 - I just wonder if electronics purchased through Amazon US would even plug in.

it's not the pluginables that i'm after really... i know my dad wanted to buy a blackberry or something, we can always buy the charger separately in Oz without hassle... but can't buy the unit on Amazon.

What i was after was a lunch jar. No power supply or moving parts or anything. I think there was something else i was after one time that also seemed reasonably stupid that they wouldn't ship it here. If it was plugin, that too would make sense. It just seems that because of a few items within certain categories, those entire categories are off limits to us. It's a drag.