“Snake palace next,” Doan said firmly. “Look at book, Americans like!” He pulled out the tattered leather book from his jacket and shoved it into my hands, opening to a signature from a man from Arizona a few years back. It was nearly indecipherable due to age and untidy scrawl, but this didn’t bother our motorcycle drivers. “We go there now. You like. Promise.”
Ana went white as she saw the cobra out of the corner of her eye. It hissed and fought as though it knew what was coming next, attempting in vain to kill the both the man holding her and the people watching in horror. The snake’s skull crunched like a walnut under the pressure of his handler’s foot. Its body went limp quickly, and I had a profound sense of dread. We are taught to value life in every form, yet here in front of us this life had been ended with a sudden step. I wanted nothing more than to apologize to the being, although inside I knew that I was more than excited about what was to come. In my classes and my frequent travel channel viewings I had come across this practice; and although Ana had no idea what was about to happen, I was sure I was prepared.
Three men came from the side of the room to each grab a section of the cobra, their hands moving with the sort of expertise that comes with years of practice. I watched from behind the lens of my camcorder as they made a small slice about a third of the way down the animal, taking the heart out and draining the blood into a glass below containing alcohol. Once the two glasses were filled with blood, they moved down a foot to another section and named to us something that we either consciously or unconsciously didn’t understand. Taking the body with some care down the stairs to the side they ushered us to a table and sat us down, gesturing to the glasses with blood and alcohol with huge grins on their faces. Doan had the biggest grin of all.
The taste of snake blood and alcohol is like nothing you can imagine unless you have had it before. It isn’t as much the effect it has on your taste buds, but rather the effect it has on your mind. As the warm liquid slid down my throat all I could envision was the live cobra that had been in front of us only moments before. Although in actuality it tasted like a strong Bacardi mix, when the mind got involved it didn’t matter much the actual taste. All that mattered was the fact that it had been supporting the life of one of my most feared animals seconds before.
Then came the part that, for the first time in my life, made me want nothing more than for my stomach to empty itself right then and there. With a satisfying plop and laugh from the men around the table, Doan dropped the still-beating heart into my refilled glass of snake blood and alcohol.
I am by no means a virgin when it comes to exotic foods. I have eaten crocodile, rabbit, octopus and many other dishes that most Americans would find revolting. I have never in my life shied away from a dish offered to me; however when I looked at the sloshing blood in my glass I felt a wave of nausea pass over me. White as a ghost and shivering, I closed my eyes and tilted the glass back. Unfortunately, my throat was tense from the fear, and chose to become a bit to small for the heart to pass through. The waiters must have been used to this reaction because all of them ran for cover as Doan began to yell for me to calm down. I put my head in my hands and willed myself to just swallow the throbbing mass stuck halfway down my throat and not instead pass it up.
By the time that I had recovered and drank more water than I had consumed in the past month, the men returned with an odd looking dish. The other driver, the same evil grin on his face, pointed at a menu translated into English—‘grilled snake meat’, it read boldly. Before we could look at one another and make a move, another dish was placed before us; this time rice cooked in snake fat. To top it off, they brought out two more glasses of alcohol and happily cut open the unknown appendage and mixed the green liquid into them. Although Ana didn’t look too happy, I figured it couldn’t be worse than the beating heart of doom I’d consumed earlier, so I downed the drink in one swallow in order to get it out of sight. Bad idea—I later found out it was bile, and it tasted about as good as it sounds. I never though that I would be trying to get a taste out of my mouth with cobra liver wrapped in omelets, but I found myself doing it after quite possibly the most interesting drink of my life.
In all the owners managed to make our snake into twelve dishes and two drinks, some innovative (snake skin fried in butter and bone crushed with rice cakes to make pancakes) and others more conventional (fried snake meat and cobra soup). We passed on the cooked snake *appendages* (and no, I am not kidding) and happily paid our $40 USD. I wasn’t terribly anxious to get back on a motorcycle in the traffic of Hanoi, especially with my stomach waging war on a full cobra, so we looked around the so-called kitchen and cages where they kept both the cobras and the other animals that they cooked up. Although I was curious about the porcupine (are they even indigenous to Asia?) and the mongoose, the cobra gave a nasty lurch inside my stomach and I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to feed it. So we hoped on our rides and left Snake Palace and our money behind, heading for a day filled with adventures that we knew couldn’t top what we had just experienced.
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