A Trip To Vietnam

No…no….no… friends you all are very wrong. In fact, the caption is very, very misleading. The trip was not undertaken by me but by my nephew and niece-in-law. Why Vietnam? I am yet to ask them. But its my nephew’s second trip to the country. What pulls him to that land I am not very sure. But this time they shared a lot of information which I am not very sure will be likeable to all. It was not to many of my family members.

Wiki says that Vietnam has now become a very popular travel destination. Its a country where I think vegetarians will not be very comfortable as most of the dishes served are non-vegetarian. Vietnamese serve a wide range of wines which includes snake wine, centipede wine (not for humans), rice wine etc.. Serving snake wine to guests is, I suppose, a delicacy. My nephew visited a friend where they were served wine from a glass jar. The jar was filled with wine and had a dead cobra preserved in it wrapped around ginseng (see pic above). Ginseng is good for health. It boosts energy, lowers blood sugar and cholesterol levels, reduces stress, promotes relaxation, treats diabetes. Snake bite is supposed to be height of intoxication. So, presumably, the dead snake must be adding to the level of intoxication to the wine. Centipede wine, on the other hand, is given to animals to treat them of diseases. They also visited a winery which was owned by a Vietnam war veteran. He had got one leg amputated as an aftermath of the war. But still he would visit the jungles to catch Cobras, kill them and bring them back to the winery for wine making.

It was quite yucky listening to such preparations as we Indians do not believe in including insects and reptiles in our culinary. In fact, most of us enjoy vegetarian dishes mostly. However, apart from such weird but novel facts about Vietnamese cuisine, I was told that the country was very clean and had scenic spots.

And that’s my globe trotting nephew and beautiful niece-in-law who are real adventurous types ready to enjoy every new experience from sipping snake wine to tasting super expensive coffee made out of animal defecation. Yuck!! You read me right. They actually made me drink a cup too but told me later what it was made up of. Well I was feeling not so okay after that but my niece told me that it was all in the mind which made me feel slightly better.

All the pics have of course been taken by my nephew and niece-in-law and they generously let me post them in my blog.