Hanoi

Hanoi is far less hectic than the rest of Vietnam. It did bother me a little that many people try to ask whether I want a ride or whether I want to buy something as I'm taking a stroll down the street. This happened far less in Hanoi. Plus the weather is much better here. Mostly the guys are more persistant and bother me more than the women. Apart from that, I'm quite happy to walk around by myself- I'm not concerned about security or anything these days. I'm staying in the old quarter where the roads are narrow and most of the buidlings are old, french style ones.

I managed to try dog meat while I was in Hanoi. This happened because a couple of my room mates were pretty keen to go. We sat down on the straw mats at the restaurant and the waiter laid out a couple of sheets of newspaper as a tablecloth. We had three dog dishes. One was thin slices of roast meat. It barely tasted different to pork. We ate it with a very pungent shrimp paste- based dipping sauce, raw lemon grass and other raw vegetables. We also had it deep fried. That tasted exactly like fried pork and there was no way to tell that it was dog meat. It was also in the form of a sausage with nuts in it which was quite tasty. Disturbingly we could here dogs barking in the distant background. I think this will be the first and last time I'll try dog.

I'm not interested in trying snake but you can have a Bloody Mary with snake blood, snake bile and its beating heart. I don't think I'm tough enough for snake that yet but eventually I'll have to do it. I'm slowly matching what my parents have eaten in the past. I have yet to eat snake, cat, possum and bear. I don't know whether eating cat is illegal in Australia, as eating dog is, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever have the chance to eat bear and there's no way I'd do it anyway. My dad said he ate bear in Hong Kong at the zoo when the experienced an overpopulation. How wrong is that?