Monday, February 05, 2007

That Zoo of a Menu

Another 24-hour bus ride! And I finally arrive in Saigon to the house of my CouchSurfing hosts, Vicarious Voyage Andrew, John and Batista the Monkey. Their neighbors Arthur, Natalie and Elke were also around.

Those guys are most definitely nice, and overly generous. The first thing the asked me, apart from "Hey, are you Ronnie?" was "Do you want to eat a horse tonight?"

Andrew holding the famed menu

So we headed to the famed bia hoi via cyclo om (When in Vietnam, do as the Viet do). The menu was fascinating, it had porcupine, dear (note the spelling), rabbit, doves and frogs. However, the clincher was they had weasel on their menu (with citronella!) Ah, my Dilbert instincts were jumping for joy at the thought of skewering weasels.

The following day was no less of a test for my stomach as we had snake. Eww. Snakes definitely rank high (if not the highest) in my Eew list, and eating them definitely sent it off the charts. The skin was gummy (ugh), but the meat was fishy - a muscular one.

The snake was killed to make snake wine. His brother was cooked into a soup. Ewww.

That was good, my favorite was the porcupine, while the least ones were the horse, it had a strange racetrack-aftertaste, and the snake. At least there was something that threw me off the safe path for this trip.

5 talkbacks:

Anonymous said...

hey. snakes? eww.. having one on my shoulders in Residence Inn, Tagaytay (remember those souvenir-photo shoots) already is giving me goosebumps, much more eat it?

say, did you tag along some of the production team of fear factor? :D

monsterboy said...

Hehehe. Hindi naman. :D But my hosts were the adventurous type, and I was more or less the opposite - so I was very glad that they took me out of my comfort zone.

Anonymous said...

well, we have this exotic restaurant in San Fernando Pampanga. maybe you should try this dried insects they call "kamaru" as starter. they taste yummy :)

monsterboy said...

Ah, locusts.... Never tried, but I've heard. My dad's from Pampanga as well.

What's the name of the resto? I drop in SF around once a month.

aajao said...

Everybody's Cafe. Just near the entrance of Unisite Subdivision in San Fernando where my high school alma mater is. :)