Snake blood, cock fights and motorbike mayhem

On Sunday afternoon I was walking down Pham Ngu Lao street (the main road of the backpacker ghetto) and I noticed a crowd of people gathered on the pavement. I walked over to see what was happening and what I saw completely astonished me. A man was crouched over a mesh bag filled with over 10 snakes of various shapes and sizes (some were huge.) He would systematically pull out one snake at a time by it's throat before reaching his hand into its chest and pulling out its heart which would continue to beat on the floor for way longer than I expected a heart to last out of a body. After draining the snakes' blood into a nearby jar, the man would slit open the rest of the body and pull out the innards and throw them away. Soon each snake was slipped into its death jar where it would continue to writhe in pain for a long time. I wondered how a snake with no heart or organs could continue to move for so long. I watched four of these demonstrations before I could tear myself away from the spectacle. Snake blood is a delicacy for the Vietnamese and is seen as a sign of Machismo (or whatever the equivalent of that may be) when a foreigner can drink it. I can only imagine the look on some poor expat's face when his manhood is challenged with a glass of snake blood.

And then yesterday I left my hotel only to witness two cocks fighting to the death (literally to the death) on the pavement. Amazing that the sport which is illegal or underground in most countries happens freely right outside my hotel here!

I started TEFL training yesterday which is really exciting and time consuming and tiring and exhilarating. I sucked up my fear and climbed on the back of one of the Vespa taxi drivers to get to school which was one of the braver moves I've ever made. As I got swept into the mass of traffic I grinned and laughed and imagined everyone I know seeing me in an expanse of Vietnamese traffic on the back of a motorcycle on my way to TEFL training in Ho Chi Minh City!! In In 4 short weeks I'll be a certified English teacher and then the real fun begins!!

For now, I continue with my terribly pronounced Vietnamese and my friendly yet terrifying motorbike drivers.