North Vietnam (yes, it was safe, and yes, people there are nice)

Here are the highlights from this entry, as I know most of you probably won't read the whole thing, esp. as this one is particularly long:

- I ate dog
- I ate the still-beating heart of a cobra, accompanied with snake wine (i.e., snake blood from a snake killed tableside, poured into a glass of rice wine, as well as snake gallbladder and bile poured into rice wine), accompanied by various different preparations of the snake and snakeskin.
- I ate "essence of giant waterbug" (read the post for a detailed description)

(yes, I'm still vegetarian: when in Rome...)

Vietnam, Hanoi specifically, has been the highlight of the trip so far. Definitely less touristy than everywhere else we've been...and so hectic. Every time you cross the street you have to just close your eyes and walk forward at a steady pace, blindly assuming that you're not going to get hit by a bus / car / moped + die...We were fortunate enough to attend a performance by the Hanoi Philharmonic of some Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky pieces at the Hanoi Opera House (performances only happening a few times a month) the second night after our arrival, have dinner at one of the best restaurants in Vietnam, and then have delicious drinks (and smoke a delicious Cuban cigar) at what Conde Nast says is one of the finest hotels in SE Asia: the Sofitel Metropole. We wandered around through markets the next day, and for dinner went to a restaurant that offered "essence of giant waterbug / ca cuaong" as a special flavor-addition to the menu. Apparently, waterbugs are harvested only during a short season, and it takes the glands of 3-4 waterbugs to make one drop. Unfortunately, the taste was largely underwhelming: my impression was of weak anise + mint. Still worth the effort to get there, though. Then, the next day, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and actually saw the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh himself (his body is sent to Russia for 3 months every year to be preserved using secret techniques), went to the Temple of Literature, the Fine Arts Museum, and had High Tea at the Sofitel Metropole, at which the main attraction was a chocolate buffet. Yeah, we definitely ate ourselves sick. From Hanoi, we took a night train up to Sapa, which was beautiful but super touristy. The main attractions there are the terraced rice paddies, and also the "ethnic minority" hilltribes. Read: ethnotourism. We hiked for two days through villages and terraces, and stayed overnight in a village (homestay). Then, immediately upon our return to Hanoi, we departed again a few hours later for Cat Ba Island, which is situated right at the lip of the famous Halong Bay. From there, we spent two days / one night on our own private boat, traipsing around the bay, stopping to see some amazing caves / karst formations / lagoons, and kayaking around. Highlights from this: seeing the phosphorescence (bioluminescence) in the water at night (we dropped anchor in a glorious area surrounded by nothing but karsts and one or two other fisherman boats), and seeing Monika get attacked by monkeys. Literally: they bit her. Many times. But she's okay, so it's kind of funny now. Our last night in Hanoi, we went out to "Le Mat," which is a snake village on the outskirts of Hanoi. The proprietors of the restaurant in which we ate actually pulled a live cobra from a bag, split it open right down the middle with a knife, drained the blood into rice wine, cut out the gallbladder to mix with more rice wine, and then dropped the heart into the glass of blood and rice wine. Which we then drank. Like a shot. I swallowed a cobra heart. Whole. We then ate the rest of each of our own snakes, prepared in many different ways. It was interesting.