Snake Village

So I'm down to my last week of vacation and have been making an effort to do some interesting things before I become a slave to work. Today, I went with 2 friends about 30 minutes east of Ha Noi into Le Mat snake village. Calling it an actual "village" is a bit misleading, since it is more just specialty restaurants all in a row. It was Son's idea to get there very early, so we were literally the only ones at this place when we arrived around 10am. Doing the whole "snake thing" is more of a dinner phenomenon, but we had the day to kill so we decided that snake for breakfast wasn't too bad. We got to the main floor where there were a bunch of cages housing all different kinds of snakes. At this point we were told to pick out our snake. The wrangler/owner took out a pretty formidable spitting cobra and jostled with it on the ground for a bit. He then proceeded to show us his missing finger, claiming that if a snake bites your finger, it's better to cut it off immediately rather than let the venom get into your bloodstream. I decided to take his word on it and back away from the cobra, and then we requested something a bit smaller and not so poisonous. We were shown a couple snakes and we settled on one of the smallest. Once we gave the nod, these guys went right to work. They cut out the heart and drained some blood, then ushered us upstairs to this very fancy dining room. There, my friend Dan proceeded to take a shot of snake blood vodka with the beating heart. Apparently this is a very manly thing to do, and I've heard of many Vietnamese men making the trip to snake village on the first day of the lunar month to test their level of manliness. Since I am not so much of a man, I was fine with my little bit of snake blood and vodka. After that part was over, the waiters started bringing up all different sorts of food prepared from our snake. Varying from snake spring rolls, to grilled snake, to dumplings, to snake porridge, and even rice cooked in snake fat, the whole thing was a feast of snake. It was actually pretty good, but I decided to pass on the ground-up snake ribs because I couldn't really deal with the crunch. In total, the whole ordeal cost us around 30 dollars, which is considered a bit of a luxury meal in Vietnam, but well worth it for the experience.

Now, I'm sure there are a lot of you thinking how terrible a thing it is to kill snakes, but a trip to the snake village is a very popular thing for Vietnamese businessmen so I was simply participating in the local culture.... don't judge! And in an effort not to gross out all my family and friends, this entry is very edited and very short. :)