Vietnam - Snake Restaurant

I'd read about the hype surrounding the famous Snake Restaurants of Hanoi, so I was determined to try it.

Snake Balls

After a long taxi ride to slightly outside of the city, and then down to a dimly-lit street, with hardly anybody around, I started thinking that it probably wasn't worth it.

But then we stumbled across a restaurant serving everything from: pigeons to pork, snakes to turtles.

I ordered the Snake Banquet, which was $40 Australian Dollars - by far the most expensive meal of the trip. The waitress - who spoke no English whatsoever - returned with a LIVE King Python and two other waiters.

The waiters held the snake with its tail in the air, and upon confirming my decision they slit its throat and drained the blood into a bottle of Vietnamese Rice Wine, confusingly put in Vodka Bottle.

Rice Wine Infused with Snake Blood

I was then presented with three shots of rice wine - one infused with snake's blood, another with it's bile... and the last one with the still-beating heart of the snake. And yes, I did feel it beating as it went down my throat. Apparently it's a demonstration of masculinity. So manly!

With each dish you are supposed to take a shot of the blood-infused rice wine. Which I did with no complaints. The waitress returned at various intervals with dishes fresh from the kitchen, which used the meat from the entire snake.

In total, there were 5 dishes - a soup, a stir-fry, snake-balls and snake wrapped in banana leaf.

Snake Wrapped in Banana Leaf

They were all delicious but despite my attempts to convince my friend to try them, he didn't dare touch it.

(skip to several hours later and he was still awake making sure I didn't die from eating the heart!)

There was an unfortunate mishap with the ordering, however. My friend wanted something with Beef in it. Probably not the best idea considering the restaurant seemed to specialise in strange and/or endangered animals.

Snake Soup

As I already mentioned, the waitress didn't speak English so I said "Bo" which is 'beef' in Vietnamese. However she must've thought I was saying "Bird", because she went away and cooked up a pigeon which she served to my friend... that he didn't touch.

Poor guy!

Snake Banquet