At every bia hoi, there are plates or packs of peanuts on the tables. I love peanuts so this is always one of my favorite things about going to bia hois. There's something especially fun about breaking open peanut shells and throwing them on the floor.
As I mentioned in the last blog, on Saturday night my friends and I went to a bia hoi. While eating and drinking we went through about eight plates of peanuts. On about the third plate, after I cracked open the shell, I started to notice that some of the peanuts had a stem of sorts attached to the nut. This seemed odd to me so I would toss those peanuts on the ground. However, once or twice I would eat a peanut that had only a small "stem" that I could knock off with my finger.
Well, about halfway through dinner, our friend Minh showed up. He saw me opening up a shell and immediately noticed a peanut with a stem. Minh's English is not good but he did manage to say, "No eat. Bad for health. Poison." I said, "Poison?" Minh said, "Yes. Poison. Bad for health."
Needless to say, I stopped eating any peanut that looked like it even remotely could have a stem. However, the fact that I had eaten a couple already totally bugged me out and made me extremely paranoid. It is for this reason that I'm pretty sure I woke up wide awake at 2:30 AM after having bizarre nightmares. So lesson learned: Do Not Eat Peanuts With Weird Looking Stems Attached To The Nut!
