Snake Village

After our trip to Halong Bay, which we’ll have to tell you about in another post entirely, we decided to go on a little adventure that Hanoi Backpacker’s Hostel sets up called “Snake Village”. For 15 bucks we were told we would get to fool around with some snacks and have an 8 course snake meat dinner with endless rice wine so we said, “Why not?”.

Let’s just say, we did not fully know what we had just gotten ourselves into. The night started tame enough, we we’re picked up from our hotel and about 20 of us were packed into a large van that drove the 30 or so min trip outside of Hanoi. When we arrived it wasn’t as much a “village” as it was a cool restaurant type compound that had bridges and islands and served just about any exotic animal you could find in the area. (I would guess a few dishes that they served were probably illegal but I’m pretty positive all of our snake dishes were legal)

Anyways, we start off by playing around with some of your average backyard rat/grass/tree snakes.

What came next was the real kicker, we were told that we could take a shot with a beating snake heart, I just don’t think any of us realized it would unfold the way that it did. The snake was held by his head and tail and the heart was found by one of the Vietnamese workers using his hands before one of us was told to cut the snake open right there. The snake was still alive and his heart was pulled out still beating. The heart was then cut out and boom, placed in your hand and still beating you took it down like a shot. Supposedly its an aphrodisiac, or more specifically, “the viagra of Vietnam”. Let me tell you, it definitely gets your blood pumping fast and you’re filled with adrenaline, and I have to say, it wen’t down easier than the cow intestine and giant snails we had in Cambodia.

I warn you, this video is quite graphic and shouldn’t be viewed by anyone with a weak stomach. I’m looking at you Squeano. Seriously though, it puts a lot of p1edge term to shame.

We then sat down for a surprisingly good 8 course snake meal including Cobra curry and snake spring rolls. We cheered in various languages and took down a shot of rice wine for every course. The rice wine was actually flowing so fast that our waitress decided to just let her kids that couldn’t of been over 5 begin to serve us because she was too tired!

BBQ Snake Ribs and Rice Wine

All in all, it ended up being quite the experience and night, one that the three of us won’t forget for very very long time.

Cheers,

Stefan, Ryan and Farmer