bye bye vietnam

So it's our last day vietnam, and everyone's a bit sad to bid it goodbye. the last week has been ace, a culmination of heavy drinking, meeting new people and seeing some spectacular places. i'll start with snake village.

well. what a crazy night. we went with a group of fifteen odd to this strange little place in a backstreet of outer hanoi famed for its imaginative use of the many snakes kept there. first we got to hold some - well, we basically got thrown a few snakes and had to deal with them, mine kept trying to sneak up my armpit which isn't a pleasant experience. luckily they were just small, non-poisonous critters, but the cobras the guys got out next and let roam around the floor definitely were. the vietnamese do not do health and safety. next we all sat down at our table and they brought over a big bag of snakes. now, snake village is primarily famous for the fact that a couple of people out of each group can cut the heart out of a live snake, put it into a shot with rice wine and put it away. both me and mulac had talked at length at how we planned to do it, but when push came to shove we both pussied out, something i'm quite proud of now because both the guys who actually cut the heart out looked pretty traumatized, and even when you're dealing with an animal like a snake, i'm not sure i could actually pull its freaking heart out.

after that we were all brought over a shot of snake's blood and snake bile, both mixed with rice wine of course, a drink which we've all fallen out of love with pretty hard ever since that night. both drinks were pretty nasty, particularly the bile - mulacs had chunks in! - and it was kind of a relief to go back to just knocking back rice wine, which i never thought i'd say. we had as much of the stuff as we wanted, and we must have put back at least 20 shots each while we ate various snake dishes. some were good - ground up snake ribcage - some were not - fried snake's skin. we were all pretty gone by the time we got back at 10, let alone when we got back to the hostel at 2.

a couple of good nights later we went to ha long bay on what i can only describe as a booze cruise. the weather was misty unfortunately, but as we kayaked and caved ourselves around one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, i coulnd't help wondering whether i've seen anything like the place before. the only comparison i've got is the set of a james bond film or the new king kong, but it is definitely, definitely worth a visit to see for yourself. we slept on the boat the first night - ring of fire, jumping off the top deck, all that good stuff - and on the second night camped on 'castaway island', a tiny piece of land owned by the company we went on.

we all had a go at tubing, played some volleyball, listened to the maayan nidam's excellent podcast. good times. we got back to hanoi a couple of days and spent yesterday sleeping and watching the sopranos, and today went to see 'ho chi minhs body' in the mausoleum, which lets be honest was definitely a wax model. now we're waiting for a 24 hour bus to vientiane in southern laos, where we'll stay a night before pushing north to vang vien - very excited about that.

so, it's goodbye vietnam and hello laos. hope everyone's well, speak soon.


ps can i use this opportunity to point out the clear resemblance of samir nasri to liza minelli