Random stuff from Hanoi

Snake tastes good.

And I now have super-manly powers after swallowing veery fresh heart of a snake and flushing it down with the in-front-of-our-eyes-slaughtered-snake's blood. I mean I've been having a boner 24 hour hours now... No, just a mental one ^^.

Only the three of us - Silja, me and a freelancer reporter Joel (he has very interesting stories about some cruel shit that is going on in the world; e.g. his first assignment was in Pakistan where he made a story about an al-qaida bomb strike killing dozens of people. So he had to go there immediately after the explosion and see all the guts and body parts at the same time fearing al-qaida would perform the so-called double strike.) - went yesterday to have the snake feast. We got to eat the whole snake, everything. It was delicious and we also got to drink some Hanoi spirits, which was quite good. A Vietnamese family dining right next to us offered us some of theirs and we zoo'd (cheers) with them several times, and reciprocally we offerred them our good spirits. It was fun! Getting plastered we traveled back to the hostel, drank some free Vietnamese rice wine (they say nobody drinks it so it's free) and had some Tiger beer. Surprisingly, the streets are totally empty in Hanoi when it's either midnight or 1 a.m. Only few random people eating on their plastic chairs, but nothing else, no drinkers, nothing. I guess we would need to know some places to go but we don't.

When it comes to touristing, we have explored central Hanoi, seen some sights, but everything seems to be finished with "left-hand" (OK the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum was cool-looking from outside), but it's been all good. Vietnamese hot pot today contained a freshly-killed chicken, which we then cooked (it was in pieces, bones though in) with some noodles, some greenies, tofu, mushroom. And we've eaten lot of very good dishes, it's just that can't really tell you what they are because I don't know. Good it's been. They have these bowls of meat, veggies and whatnot, then u just pick and choose. The bowls are of course standing there all day in the +25 degrees of C, so grannies stay away, not for the faint-hearted (or -stomached). But all the locals seem to be eating this stuff with no problem, so I guess it's good. Taste is verry good. Anyway, we've seen the old town quite extensively and today we also visited the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was more like an art gallery than a museum, because Ho Chi Minh's life was depicted in a very...artistic way.

Tomorrow we will go for a trip out from Hanoi for two days time. We will hang out in a boat, doing all kinds of stuff.

Finally, I would like to thank the Turkish people. They have blessed us with kebab (correct me if I'm wrong and some else folk discovered kebab) which seem to be ubiquitous around the world.. and it's always so good, we had it of course here as well. The small booth from which I bought the kebab said "phat phuc". Niccchhe. Codulous!