A few weeks ago I was cycling from Vietnam to Cambodia.

One of the things I really, really wanted to fit into this trip was swallowing a beating snakes heart.

Unfortunately I did not get the chance as I started cycling from Saigon & was told that I would need to head north to Hanoi or other northerly regions of the country to have the full snake eating experience. There was one hotel in Saigon that I was told  of that had snake on the menu, but not prepared in the way that I was looking forward too. I have been to Hanoi before, briefly, and on a previous cycle from Danang to Saigon I did buy, consume & bring home some snake wine. It does not exactly taste pleasant but is said to be exceptionally benificial to people who have problems with their backs & I do fall into that catagory so drunk it dispite the petty awful taste. The bottles of wine contain several dead cobras & the more you drink, the more the snakes are exposed to air & the worse it gets. I ended up having the last few drinks of the bottle added to blackcurrant & raspberry teas to enhance / discuise the flavour.

Earlier this year there was a television programme called ” could you eat an elephant? ”

In this show two of the UK’s top chefs showed us & tried to stomach some of the worlds most taboo foods.

The chefs were Fergus Henderson & Jeremy Lee who both believe & promote ” nose to tail eating “.

In Fergus Hendersons restaurant  ( St, John ) you are likely to see dishes with pigs trotters, or marrowbone on the menu as the main ingredient of a dish. TV chefs such as Jamie Oliver are really promoting offal & the cheaper ( & sometimes most versitile & tasty ) cuts of meat. I wholeheartedly agree with this & feel that if an animal is killed to eat we should use as much of that animal as we possibly can in the dishes made from them.

On ” Could you eat an elephant? ” Fergus & Jeremy travel to Tuscany to eat dishes made from birds that are native & commonly seen in Italian gardens. This is fairly hard core as they are served whole & the brains sucked out by the participating diners. I actually found this personally the least likely thing on the show that I would be able to consume within my own comfort zone. Also in Italy they sampled Marcetto, a maggot infested cheese. Sounds awful but the maggots themselves are almost 100% cheese themselves once the cheese has matured, so that I possibly would try. Their travels gave them the chance to experience locals eating rats, monkeys, horse, elephant, dog & a paste made from jewel beetles. They declined both the ras & the monkey as the rats were from sewers & the monkeys just too human like. In Hanoi though, they did partake in and really enjoy the experience of eating snake. Below is a clip from youtube on that section of the show, but the clip does not include the first part that was televised & that is when the live snake is cut lengthwise and the beating heart put into a glass along with the blood and drunk, and the next part of the snake eating ceremony being a glass of the snake bile, which according to those who have tried it is surprisingly palletable. The rest of the snake is then prepared into 13 different dishes in 7 minutes. I must do this if lucky enough to return to Hanoi. Here is the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FVG3awKq8

 This clip shows tourists consuming a beating snake heart which is sometimes added just to rice wine or in this clip vodka, or just in a glass of the blood or both. Bottles of the snake wine with the dead cobras in the bottles are also in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3W62bQj9A&NR=1

If you want to buy some snake wine & are not travelling to Asia, you can purchase bottles from www.asiansnakewine.com