We had taken the motorbike out for its first spin on the highway to reach Le Mat, the snake village. It’s just like the other handicraft villages outside Hanoi, but instead of making pottery, silk or conical hats for hundreds of years, its residents have perfected the art of cooking and eating snake. It’s basically a two street village, with modest houses surrounding a strip of grandiose snake restaurants.
We picked our eatery at random, and like all the others, it had shelf after shelf of reptiles preserved in rice wine, like an alcoholic apothecary. The main attractions, of course, were the three cages of live snakes, where we would have been permitted to choose our lunch from the slithering mass had we not already been dismissed as clueless Westerners. I’m sure my presence confirmed our obliviousness in the eyes of our hosts, as clearly the point of eating snake is to enhance male virility. Also included in the “good for men” category: watermelon rinds, cow penis and the more lethal varieties of rice wine. All the delicious, delicious fruits are for women, so I have some guesses about who devised the system.
The restaurateurs fished a snake about a meter long (three feet, you ignorant Americans) out with a hook and pinned its head down with their feet. Then, they were slicing out its heart and gall bladder, draining its blood and snipping off its head. It was very quick but very intense, and I wished the head could have come off first.
It couldn’t, though, because as the snake was whisked off to the kitchen, we were whisked off to our table where we were prepared shots of snake blood mixed with rice wine and, for our lucky friend Tim, the still beating heart. If a certain absurdly tall American tells you it’s easy to do that shot because it tastes like less strong rice wine, don’t believe him. Technically, it is less strong, because it’s full of blood-tasting blood. Like you bit your tongue hard enough to hit an artery. I had to chase it down with spoonfuls of rice (rice fried in snake fat) to get the taste out of my mouth because, this being Vietnam, there was no water in sight. You just wash down food with more food.
Next, the punctured gall bladder produced shockingly green bile, which was also mixed with rice wine and poured down the hatch. Impressively, the time it took us to do two pretty hesitant shots was enough time for them to prepare our first snake dishes. Within the next half hour to 45 minutes, they turned that not-very-substantial snake into a feast of a dozen dishes, including three kinds of rolls, breaded fried snake skin, powdery meat on a pancake and porridge. We also got to choose a complimentary infused rice wine, and we went with gecko because we figured it was the least likely to be endangered (the snakes are also farmed, not wild, so OK to eating). Gecko wine definitely tastes like a science experiment, no surprises there.
I think it’s a testament to my increasingly steel-like stomach that when I first got here, I’d feel queasy after eating just about everything, and now I’m downing snake bile with no problem.
Isn't she great? So despite being terrified of all things motorbike related when we got here, we eventually warmed up to them and realized that they're incredibly convenient, especially for my commute to work. It's not that far, about two miles, but that's pretty miserable to walk in the heat and with the busy streets, and the public bus doesn't really stop that close to my office. So we decided to rent a motorbike. Driving home from the rental place was one of the more nerve-wracking experiences of my life, along with driving to work the next day in rush hour, but I pretty quickly got comfortable with the crowds and the feel of the bike - it's actually not that different from riding a bicycle, just way heavier and harder to balance. Alison drove for the first time last weekend, and managed to get around the block a few times without any incidents, so that's a good sign too. We're always really careful since we've heard plenty of stories about accidents and things, so don't go worrying too much about us (I'm looking at you, Mom).
Everything was way more involved than expected, with tons of very thinly sliced ingredients, but we managed to muddle our way through pretty successfully and it ended up being really delicious. The spring rolls in particular had an absurd number of ingredients, and the rolling took a lot of time since they were so tiny (only a couple of inches long) and we had so much filling. After eating all of our creations, we had a dessert of mango, grapefruit dipped in chili salt, and green tea, and then got our little gift bags of long cooking chopsticks and copies of all the recipes so we can make everything once we get back home. And don't worry, we're already planning multiple Vietnamese food feasts for all the loyal readers of the blog.
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