The King of Snakes

A couple of my friends have visited a place called snake village about 7 km outside of Hanoi, so this weekend when a friend called me and asked if I wanted to go for a snake adventure, I jumped on it. Snake village isn't a village at all, but more like a part of the city that has an unusually high number of restaurants that serve snake.

Some of you may know about my issues with snakes--I really don't like them. I don't even like to see the nature shows when the snake lunges at the camera. I have to quickly change the TV channel. I was on the lookout for snakes in the grass the entire walk from the motorbike parking area to the restaurant. It was like walking  on Derrick Hollow Road at dusk in the summertime with your eyes peeled for copperheads. If someone had thrown a stick at me, I probably would have screamed and run for the hills! I was determined to have this experience though.

After telling the guy what kind of snake we wanted (cobra of course; you might as well go big), we cracked open a few Hanoi beers to prepare ourselves for what we knew was going to happen next. After a little while, a guy comes up to our table carrying a bag tied in a knot at the top. After untying the bag, he emptied the contents on to the concrete. It was the largest snake I've ever seen in person. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to run or get closer to take a picture. I ended up taking lots of pictures, but there were a couple of times my flight response started to kick in--particularly when the guy held the snake up at our table so we could get a better look. After trying to make the cobra mad so his hood comes out, the guys finally gave up and killed the snake in front of us. First, they drained the blood into a bottle of vodka, then they took out the heart, and finally they gutted it and drained the bile into another bottle of vodka. Why drain the fluids into vodka? Because you take shots of them, of course. First, one of us had to shoot the heart while it was still beating. Traditionally, the oldest male gets the heart, but the oldest male in our group wasn't too excited about it, so we drew chopsticks. He ended up with the special chopstick anyway, so he drank his blood-vodka shot with a little extra protein in it. One of my friends took a video for me, but I'm having trouble uploading it, so you'll have to settle for pictures for now. I'll be sure to post the video as soon as I work out the technical difficulties.

I probably won't go back to snake village because I felt really bad for the snake and it gave me nightmares last night, but I'm glad I had this one-of-a-kind experience. Oh, and snake doesn't really have a distinct taste; no, it doesn't take like chicken. It is pretty tough though.

Snake stir-fry. Mmmm.

Bile shot. It had floaters. Ugh.

An early glimpse of our cobra.

Blood shots all around!