Last time I wrote it was the day before I left for Hanoi. I was supposed to leave from Da Nang to Hanoi last Thursday afternoon. My flight ended up being delayed for 5 hours. I guess the plane had hit a bird on its way to Da Nang. The airline company is so small that they had to fly a mechanic from Vietnam Airlines from Saigon up to Da Nang to sign off on it. I was supposed to have a pick up from my hostel at the airport so I didn't bother writing down my hostel address or phone number. Luckily there was some other tourists going into Hanoi so I stopped at one of their places and got on the internet real quick to get the address and phone number. When I finally arrived at the hostel it was about midnight. The next day I walked around Hanoi. I went to the "Hanoi Hilton". It is a prison built by the French in the 1800s. Its famous because it housed downed American fighter pilots shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. This is where John McCain was held at. It was interesting. A lot of propaganda of course. After that I went to the Revolution Museum. It was one of the most boring museums I have ever been to. It was cool to see the artifacts but it just kept going and going. That night a bunch of people I met at the hostel went to the snake village. It wasn't a village just restaurant that only served snake. It was crazy. When you get there they pull out a cobra from a cage that had at least 100 or more snakes in it. The guy swings the snake around to disorient it and puts it in a sack. We got two. Then he weighed the bag to make sure it was the right weight. It took a few times because it weighed too much. After the correct weight he took the snake out of the sack and swung it again. Then he stepped on the head and held the tail up in the air. Then he cut its throat and held it up in the air to show us the snake was still alive because it was moving around. Next he cut the head off. The head was still moving on the table. Then he poured the blood into a bottle of rice wine which was more like moonshine the wine. Finally he cut out the heart and put it on a platter before taking us to our table. When we got to our table two Brits decided to eat the hearts since we had two of them. They swallowed the heart and then took a shot of the blood/wine mix. The hearts were still beating on the plate before they ate them. The night was filled with various snake dishes and shots of the blood/wine mix. We also had shots of bile/wine mix too. Both of the shots were really strong. The first dish was fried snake. It still had the skin on it. I just pulled the flesh off the skin. It was really tough. The taste wasn't bad though. There were various other dishes. There were two different spring rolls that had the bones in it. Those tasted good. Then this meatball type thing that also had the bones. Those were the best. There were also two kinds of soup that tasted like chicken. It was a crazy experience. You couldn't taste the blood in the shots. The rice wine was really strong. Here are two videos from there.
The next day I left for Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. The bus ride was about 4 hours. The boat was really cool. We left Ha Long City to a inlet where there were lots of other boats. We got out on the skiff to go to Suprise Cave. It was a sweet cave. Its hard to top the cave I saw in Slovenia though. I don't think I will ever see one as beautiful. Next we went kayaking. It was more like canoeing because there wasn't a rudder. We went over to one of the island where we happen to see a jellyfish on the beach. It was bigger than a basketball. It was by far the biggest I had ever seen. Tat night we stayed on the boat anchored in the cove. Ha Long Bay reminds me a lot of SE Alaska. The difference being you can't really walk around on the islands because its basically rocks coming out of the water. The next morning the boat took us to Cat Ba Island. Only 6 of us got off. The first stop on Cat Ba was Cat Ba National Park. We trekked up to the top of this peak. It took about 45 minutes or so. It wasn't really a trail though. It was climbing over rocks and trees. When I got to the top there was a tower that had to be 100 ft in the air I guess. The view was amazing. Words cant really describe it. The real challenge was getting back down. I couldn't believe people were doing it in flip flops. Here is a video from the top of the tower.
After the park we went to the hotel. In the afternoon we took a boat to Monkey Island. The name didn't suit the island. We got there and there were two monkeys waiting for us. Then they left. Only two monkeys! I guess the island has about 20. Yesterday we left to come back to Hanoi. I don't know what I got but I vomited 6 times out the bus window on the way back. It wasn't food poisoning because no one else had it. I think maybe it was the water when I showered. I'm pretty sure I had a fever last night too. I managed to find some medicine last night and went to bed at 9. This morning I feel better but still not 100%. My body is trying to fight it off because I'm sweating buckets. I was going to go to Sapa tonight but with Tet its hard to find a ticket and I didn't want to go if I'm still sick. So I'm going to stay in Hanoi until Thursday or Friday and then leave for Laos with a couple of guys I met here at the hostel. Here are pictures from the snake village, Ha Long Bay, and Cat Ba Island. Until next time. Cheers.
J
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