Fear Factor Trained Me Well

(PICTURE: The lucky snake.)

Steve returned to Hanoi yesterday after his ten days of exploring Southeast Asia on his own. Well, I think some solo time put some hair on his chest. When he showed up on my front steps he literally looked more like a man than he ever had before....although the hair on his chest was actually just thirty whiskers on his chin.

Before Steve had left, we promised him we'd go to the snake village when he returned. I'm not sure if he really even wanted to go to the snake village but I sure did. So Ryan, Steve and I hopped into a cab and took off. Well, we wanted to take off but the cab driver didn't know what the hell we were talking about despite our very obvious snake gestures. So I called Huyen and put her on the phone with cab driver. A minute later we were off...


After some heavy negotiation at the snake restaurant the owner/cook agreed to make us a nine course meal, including rice wine and snake blood, with a fresh snake. Second later the guy pictured in the purple shirt brought out a live poisonous snake. We took some pictures and then he preceded to slice open the snake and remove it's beating heart. He put the heart into this little shot glass:




The guy then motioned for one of us to drink the heart. Well, I knew Steve wouldn't do it since he recently bragged on his blog about how brave he was that he ate a fried cricket. That's Single A versus the majors of eating a beating snake heart. I thought Ryan would want to try the heart and was prepared to rock, paper, scissor him for it. But, alas, Ryan passed too. So it was all mine...


(PICTURE: Snake heart mixed with its blood)

It was delicious.