Epicurian Exercise
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
81
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Oh, and there are dozens of stores selling faux or copied CDs and DVDs. Want all 18 seasons of the Simpsons for a dollar a disc? The original Charlies Angels? Star Trek Vogager seasons 1-7? Prison Break? You name it - this is your place. I bought 11 CDs for $20, but quality remains to be seen until I get home. Send me an e-mail if you want every episode of "The L Word" or "The Adventures of New Christine."
So what did I do? Nothing cultural, no tours, no temples, no pagodas, and absolutely no war museums. I didn't even go to Halong Bay, which looks spectacular - http://images.google.com.vn/images?gbv=2&hl=vi&q=hal ong - but it is meant to be misty right now and I have seen my fair share of karst landscapes by now.
Beer Hoi Corner
I went gastronomic big time. Epicurian on a grand scale. Maybe not gourmet, but gourwhat?I ate dog served three different ways. You have to take a motorbike (which is scary enough) to a road about 10km outside of Hanoi which has dozens of restaurants on stilts specializing in dog meat (thit co). You can hear them barking below the restaurants. Allegedly they differentiate between eating wild dogs, not pet-type dogs, but who knows? It was a mixed bag. The steak-style dish was pretty good, although a bit dry, with a taste like well-done mutton. The stew-style dish had too much skin, which was really thick and chewy, and the meat attached to it was stringy. The fried dish was in the middle - again too much skin, but the non-skin meat was nice and spiced well.
I ate snake served nine different ways. Again, I had to take a motorbike outside of town to Le Mat (the Snake Village) where there are numerous restaurants specializing in snake. It is not cheap and has become a tourist attraction in and of itself, but I went for lunch not dinner, so I (and my driver) got a whole cobra to ourselves. First, they show it to you and play with it a bit (the guys have all been bit so much they are immune to the venom). Next they cut it and squeeze the blood into one glass, the bile into a second glass with vodka, and the still beating heart into a third. Because I was alone, I got the honor of eating the heart, in addition to drinking the blood and the bile booze. The uncooked heart had little flavor, the blood was good, and the bile hidden by the really harsh local vodka.
They then serve the snake in two soups, with rice, fried, the skin, in two types of roll, in congee, and a couple other ways.
Bleeding the Snake
I also had two different types of snake infused liquor. Overall, it was pretty good - much better than the dog. Chewy and with not much of a unique flavor, but all the different preparations and sausces were good. When I come back, the restaurant also offers cat, porcupine, monkey, lizard, and tortoise. Another night I ate crickets again and crocodile fillet - I expected it to be similar, and it was, it tasted like the proverbial chicken. I found another place that served goat, but they were out, so I had to settle for what the menu called "slam." I guessed they meant clams and I was right.
Now for the drinking. They make a lot of, um, interesting infused liquors here and I think I tried about 17 of them. One place - Highway 4 - probably sells 20 or so themselves and they offer sampler groups, including liquors with geckos soaking inside, snake, starfish, seahorses, and outright mysteries. I also got 16 ounces of grubworm infused liquor (see pics) to share at what I called Beer Hoi corner. "Beer hoi" is the really cheap, fresh daily, unpressurized or pasteurized beer that I first had in Hanoi. It is even cheaper here - 3,000 dong or $0.18 a glass. It is also very light in flavor and alcohol to the point that I think you could drink them all day and sweat out 90% of the booze before it even hit your brain.
But, for whatever reason, there is that one street corner with 6-7 places selling it, with little plastic chairs on the street/sidewalk (if there was a demarcation - hah!) to sit at while you pass your glass back and forth to the mama-san who notes every beer in her book. To eat, you can also get a bread/wafer/naan thing, dried squid, or pork paste in banana leaves. Depending upon the place you get more backpackers or more locals. I went to the same place every afternoon and hung out with a changing set of slightly older expats who appeared happy to do this every afternoon for the rest of their lives. There are lots of places selling the beer hoi, but none so concentrated. I am on my way there now, before catching an overnight train to:
Sapa, Vietnam
