Yesterday, I took 6 students and one other teacher to Snake Village with my friend Huy. He is from Snake Village and has been asking me for months now to come for a visit and to eat some snakes. Lisa chose not to go and instead went with one student to Silk Village. This is a rather strange custom in this part of the country, but the students were really excited to go, so we made it happen.
After an hour long packed bus ride, the first stop was at Huy's sister's house. Huy (in black shirt) and his sister on the right. He thought we would kick off our day with a little sip of "snake wine." Ingredients: rice vodka/"wine" and two dead and gutted cobras. They just sit in the liquid for at least three months and then you can start drinking it. We passed around a half a cup of the stuff and each has a sip. It tastes like vodka at first, then there is a strange, musky, musty aftertaste. Supposed to be "good for health." I am not sure how drinking alcohol with dead reptiles in it is good for health, but it was good for the curious anyway.
Huy pouring the snake wine at 10:30 am.
Yummy!
Next stop on our tour was to visit "Snake Man." He is an old man between 70 and 80 years old who has been catching snakes all his life. When we got there, he grabbed a green bag, pulled out a white fine mesh bag, then let out a cobra! His daughter came around and yelled at him to put it away. She doesn't want him doing this anymore. Too dangerous. Ya think?
Then on to the restaurant for lunch. This is the restaurant owner choosing our 3 snakes that we would eat. He keeps all his snakes in these little cages, pulls them out and plays with them in front of us for a while. Definitely one of the coolest/strangest/most dangerous things I have seen.
We ate this snake about 45 minutes after I took this picture.
This is where the action happens. I don't have many still photos of this as my camera was on video mode. Here is the basic drill that we saw: He started with the cobra, took it out of the bag and put it on the red fabric, pinned its head to the floor and to be sure he wouldn't be bitten, he took scissors and cut off the upper jaw and fangs. (OK, I am not making this up!) Then he sort of stretched the upper part of the snake to find the heart, took the scissors, cut into the skin, found the heart, snipped it out (still beating) into a shot glass on the metal tray on the blue table. Then he held the opening he just made in the snake over the metal funnel and let the bright red blood drip into the funnel and into a small bottle of rice wine. Then he felt along the snake for the other organs, found the gallbladder and again cut into the snake, pulled out the gall bladder and cut it out, and punctured it into another, larger bottle of rice wine. The other two snakes were killed/stunned by swinging and hitting their heads on the chrome water tank in the corner, then the same procedure was followed with the heart removal and gallbladder removal. Heart into the shot glass, bile and gallbladder into another.
During the 2nd snake, just before he was going to cut out its heart, his cell phone rang and he answered it.
Amy, the math teacher, and the two boy students about to shoot their rice wine with snake heart. I was supposed to swallow the snake heart because it is something only males are supposed to do, but Amy really really wanted to, so I let her drink mine.
Next, it was a shot of cobra blood mixed with rice wine for everybody.
The green one is the bile/rice wine.
Grilled snake, this was really good.
Sauteed cobra, pretty good.
Fried snake skin, tasty with hot sauce dipping!
Our group having a civilized 10 course lunch of snake meat. Included, but not pictured closely was snake soup, rice with snake fat, and rice porridge with "snake water."
My pieces after eating the meat of the ribs.
The strange thing was the night before we all went to a fancy art gallery for a fundraiser portrait painting evening to raise money for Japan. And the night after our return from Snake Village we all went downtown to watch the play My Fair Lady. One of our students was the stage manager.
I have a few videos, but they are kind of long and will only try to post one. So I thought it would be fun to have some reader participation! Plus, we get to see who is actually reading these posts. Come on, Christiana Carmichael, you are going to want to see one of these!! Which ever one gets the most interest from comments posted from readers will be the winner and I will put it on the blog the week of April 18th. So get your vote in!
Here are the choices: Choice #1 26 seconds long, Snake Man playing with cobra and getting in trouble by his daughter.
Choice #2 1:13 long, cobra on the floor with its hood open
Choice #3 50 seconds long, Huy playing with 6 foot long snake and almost bitten and restaurant owner playing with cobra, holding it with its head in that classic "cobra" look.
Choice #4 2:36 long, killing two snakes, pulling out heart, blood, gallbladder etc.
Choice #5 1:23 long, close up of heart/bile procedure with student commentary
Is that the sun peeking through??
The above photo is the morning after a rainy day. The rain quite literally washes the air. The droplets of water condense around air particulates and then drop to the ground. This particular morning, we took the elevator downstairs and walked outside to our bus stop. We both commented on our "super vision." It was weird, like we had a film peeled off our eyeballs. Everything was so sharp and clear. Things had edges. The leaves were green. It was like we were surrounded by objects that were real, that we could reach out and grasp. Like we were in some sort of movie set. It lasted one day.
