When the snake handler pulled a cobra out of the cage, I briefly protested. Weren’t cobras endangered? I would not eat an endangered animal.
I quickly stifled this impulse. It was far too late in the game to start expressing wimpy qualms. Besides, I was wrong. In Le Mat, 10km outside Hanoi, cobras are raised to be eaten.
For a minute, the handler teased the snake, which hissed and spit on the floor in front of us, hood flared and head poised to strike. The handler moved deftly, crushing the cobra’s skull against the ground with his fist and expertly dismantling the live animal.
Shortly afterward, seven ashen tourists were seated at a table set with seven shots of fresh cobra blood vodka, seven shots of fresh cobra bile vodka, and one fresh cobra heart, still beating weakly.
The honor of eating the heart went to David, who dropped it into his glass of blood and tipped it back with a hand so palsied I thought he might pass out. The rest of us followed suit with our shots. The blood, a shocking watermelon pink, was faintly metallic. The bile, a sickly green, was faintly sour.
The relief was palpable. Ten snake meat dishes were brought to our table, and we dug in without ceremony. All were bland and chewy, with the exception of the soups, which were bland and viscous.
On the way out we gawked at the exotica: jars of preserved bears paws, vodka flavored with fat-bodied honeybees, live spiny anteaters, live monkeys, rare birds. It occurred to us that all of these items were on the menu, for a price.
I am done with adventure eating for the time being. I am glad I ate the snake. The meal was thrilling and certainly unusual. I wish I had been the one to eat the heart. I am not glad I ate the dog. It was a pointless act of been-there-done-that taboo-breaking. Our kayaking group has now gone its separate ways. It is time to get back to the Vietnamese food I know and love.
