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(DYLAN POV)
We left Ha Long bay around 3. By 7 we had made it to our second destination: Hanoi. If there was a complete opposite to Ha Long bay, it seemed to be Hanoi. Tourists went from few and far between to giant hoards out of nowhere. Quiet restaurants were replaced by people hassling you to eat. Clubs with open doors blared dance music for the whole city to hear. Our hotel was fantastic. We were at the Hanoi Style Hotel. We relaxed and got settled in, our only plans being dinner with Truong, his wife and two kids. We got comfortable and tried out our new 4th floor balcony. We even had a shower with a curtain, and let's not forget working wifi!
By eight we had showered and once again were waiting on Truong to pick us up and show us the true Hanoi. He came through more than any of us could have imagined. Once we got picked up we drove through the narrowest roads I've ever seen. Roads I couldn't drive through on my own had three vehicles passing by each other at once. Finally, we made it to our destination. After a quick walk through more back roads we entered a beautiful sanctuary. It was a two story red building with a giant courtyard filled with many beautiful plants. I (Dylan) stood around as everybody spoke about what was going on. It is very safe to say I had no idea what was going on. All of a sudden the worker behind the counter was reaching into a cage and pulling out handfuls of long squirmy black snakes. The worker held out a snake for us to hold. I reached out and took it instantly. They started massacring the snakes while I held the sole survivor. I felt horrible handing him over but when in Rome do as the Romans. This (snakes) very quickly became the theme of the night. They bled the snakes alive into a bottle, cut out the hearts, and skinned them within 15 seconds. At this point we were led to a table, as I walked all I could think about was the poor snakes' blood on my hands. This was forgotten very quickly. We sat down and Truong's wife pulled out what we had been promised. She unwrapped the parcel and the brown meat inside was unveiled. TV and I really deliberated on leaving this part out as to save me from being disowned by my mother but here goes:
I should explain first that Truong and I had grown closer as we had been together for the past couple days. It started with the beer we shared the first day. At the point we are at now him and I communicate using only a few hand signals, tonal noises and one small word. For example, if I was full I would give thumbs up and rub my belly. At this he would give a large nod, give a thumbs up of to show he understood and then laugh and say "ok ok" in the jolliest voice imaginable. He always would show me what to eat and to mix what with what by pointing till I did exactly what he wanted. To see if I liked it he would just nod as I ate and when it was officially in my mouth he would say "ehhh?" To this I replied up or down. It's safe to say I never gave the latter which got me into trouble tonight at the snake dinner.
Now where were we. We sat in front of the brown cooked meat. We had requested Truong only bring a little so we could try it but he must have forgotten because the meat was enough for an army. So TV and I picked up our chop sticks and hesitantly went in for a bite because once again when in Rome do as the Romans. I put it in my mouth chewed..... Truong looks at me, "ehhhhhh?"..... I hesitated with the thumbs up for the first time. It was fatty, chewy and pretty much exactly what you expect from fresh dog meat. Finally, I gave the thumbs up and his Santa Claus-like laugh came out. There was little time to deliberate on how much my mom will hate me because the next course was out. (Sorry mom I love you). First, two shot glasses. Ok doable. Then a Red glass that looked eerily similar to the one they filled with snake blood. Then, a plate with three little moving pieces, still beating snake hearts, of course. Truong casually explains through hand signals and noises that we will be putting the beating heart in our mouths like living medicine pill and taking a shot of snake blood vodka to swallow it down. He went first, no problem. I followed suit because as I said when in Rome do as the Romans. I put the warm heart on my tongue, threw back the blood shot and followed with my ever so truthful thumbs up. After the yummy appetizer five dishes came out all containing snake. I tried every one as Truong showed me how to eat each one. Ground snake bone, thumbs up. Snake meatball, thumbs up. Snake soup, thumbs up. Snake this snake that. Truong's son and daughter ate everything on the table like it was an average dinner for them. His son who was no more than 5 years old held full blown chopsticks like a professional. If I was thirsty Truong and I would wash down the snake nibblets with what other than more snake blood shots. I told TV I couldn't handle this kind of tourture for much longer, she said just stop but my manhood couldn't let me say stop to a man who couldn't understand more than a belly rub from me. In this situation quit was just not in my vocabulary. So I plugged on, more snake this, more dog that. Pause for a blood shot and instantly Truong was back on me about eating something else. He would tell TV to tell me "eat as muchas you want" before I was done choking down the bloody "snake" Mary. I was way past eating as much as I want but I didn't want to offend. Unlike TV's mom, who didn't eat a single dish on the table and had ordered a dove to eat instead. After we drank all the blood vodka he pulled out a green bottle of vodka and we chugged on. Finally by the end of the night I was hiding behind a bowl of mung bean rice as to not allow for another chance to be invited for another bite of god knows what. There was no hiding from the shots, however, I just had to finish that. Finally, all the alcohol was gone so Truong asked "want to keep any"...... I won't even waste time writing our answer.
So they packed up the food for Truong and his family to eat later while we said our goodbyes to his family. Truong drove us back to our hotel and said he would be picking us up again around 8:30 the next morning. We found out that breakfast was going to be at 6:30 and we didn't want to miss out on anything the hotel's buffet had to offer so we hit the sack pretty early. We really wanted to blog that night, but I was too tired.
The next morning I woke up around ten till five and my mom was lying awake beside me on her phone. My bladder forced me to get up and I decided to look up when the sunrise was because the sun wasn't even up yet. The first site I found said around 5:31 so I waited till then and could see absolutely nothing from my balcony. The smog and smoke and buildings combined obstructed any view I had of anything further than a few blocks. I went back into my bed disappointed and grabbed Dylan's iPad to download candy crush for me to play when I lost all the lives on my iPad. I saw texts from his mom and sent a lengthy reply. A few minutes later she called on FaceTime and I woke Dylan up to talk to her as I started to get ready for breakfast. He caught her up out on the balcony and when he came back in he started to tell her all about the snakes and his eventful night (minus one thing, sorry Miss Susan! I hated it!!! I didn't eat one piece!) She immediately expressed her disgust toward everything he said. After he finished grossing her out she showed me Scrappy (my pup) running around her back yard and how happy he was. I was so glad to see him happy and healthy.
At this point we had to say goodbye because breakfast would be starting. The three of us stepped out into the empty three table dining hall and saw three kinds of cereal followed by loaves of bread and a row of those silver metal grills that keep the food warm at catered events. Next to that was a station for fresh eggs and pho that wasn't ready yet and on the way to our table was a small fruit station with cantaloupe, watermelon, and dragon fruit--all surrounded by gnats. The workers finally brought out a kind of milk that comes in a box and it was already more than half gone. Dylan and I both got cereal along with bread and some bacon we found. I got some fried rice and stir fried egg noodles also (not good). My mom and I decided it would be best to take some of this food for the road (8 hour train ride later that night) so Dylan and I went up to the room to get her purse and some bags for the bread and whatever else we could carry. Dylan, of course, scoffed at our plans, but he'd be sorry later when he gets hungry! So periodically my mom would take loaves of bread, and I would stick them in her purse. I grabbed some fruit and she got egg rolls for the trip also. My mom and I split the pho, but it was not too great either. By this day Dylan was happy to enjoy a real breakfast and not a steaming bowl of pho so since he had the choice, he declined a bowl. What he did get was a glass of the clear orange juice. He said it tasted like someone just squeezed a little bit of orange juice into a cup of water because you could see the pulp, but it looked just like their lemonade did.
We finished up at breakfast and went to put the goods in the refrigerator so they would keep later that night. Truong was supposed to be there at 8:30 but as Dylan looked over the balcony he noticed Truong in his taxi and we proceeded to go meet him earlier than planned. He drove us all through the town past a KFC, little boutiques, and souvenir stores. We passed multiple big green buildings with guards in the front and eventually we made it to where Ho Chi Minh was supposedly preserved. Dylan wore his khaki shorts with a button up shirt, my mom wore running shorts and a clear blazer on top, and I wore my one sleeved dress. Dylan was the only one dressed to go inside. My mom and I were forced to buy scarves to wrap around our legs and I had to put on half my jacket to over my shoulder. When we got past that, we had to check in our backpack, then they took our camera. We just walked around this big stone building to the main entrance and followed a red carpet up the stairs. Standing feet in front of the door you already feel the amazing air conditioning the building had and as we marched in the guards would shush you to be quiet while walking through. Mom's heavy footsteps made us all silently crack up as we continued on. Ho Chi Minh was plastic looking. We walked in the shape of a U around his shiny body encased in a glass box guarded by six men holding guns with bayonets on them. Mom said later that she thought it was fake, but it would be a big waste of people to have the fake body guarded like that. I can't remember his face now but he looked just like all the pictures you see in people's houses and stores.
The exit was quick and we stopped by the house that he lived in and worked in. We saw his three cars and Dylan read that one was given to him by the French Vietnamese and two by the Russian government. This was all pretty boring to us, but nice to have seen. We went to the first college in Vietnam and read about lots of history. The signs explained that the children would all take classes and learn general information to a certain level and then they'd take two(I think) tests and if they passed those they got to keep learning and eventually take a test given by Ho Chi Minh himself on the very grounds we were standing. It was strange because seeing Ho Chi Minh's house was like looking into a pretend home, but where we were held no classrooms or seats, just a big courtyard. Along a certain wall of the open courtyard there were what looked like tombstones if you multiply the size by fifty. These stones held the names of all the children who graduated the test given by Ho Chi Minh.
After the morning tours, the four of us went to the biggest buffet (meaning it had the widest selection of foods). It had tons of Vietnamese dishes that I'd never seen buffet style before and in an outdoor section of the property there was grilled shellfish and seafood. They had goi cuon (spring rolls), com (white rice), thit kho trung (pork with boiled eggs in a delicious sauce!!! My favorite), chao (poridge), a Che station (dessert drinks), and soo much more including sushi and ban bot loc (a clear dough with shrimp and pork inside). Dylan and I were bot too hungry but mom and Chu Truong had a ball with all he seafood dishes. He doesn't eat like this much because he used to be chubby and he lost weight recently so he doesn't eat too much. But since we were at a nice buffet he ate a ton. Everything was pretty good. We had been afraid of ice in Vietnam for a while but I got past that when I wanted to try all the combinations of che. Dylan got another bia Saigon along with my mom since she was eating seafood (she thinks it tastes good together). Truong and I both had Pepsi (pretty good, unlike Dylan's foreign soda experiences). We were all having a great time together until my mom came back with place number (?) and had three maggot looking specimen on her plate. She offered two to Dylan and I to try to see what it tastes like while we both assumed she'd be eating the third. Dylan went for it first and said it felt like mung bean texture with a strange flavor. I was so grossed out I did not want to try it at all. I've only tried the crunchy kind but these things were mushy. When I finally bit into it I realized Dylan was exactly right; felt just like mung bean and tasted GROSS. Mom asked Truong what it was and he said it was the thing inside the wrap that becomes a butterfly. So we ate the caterpillar inside the chrysalis. When it was moms turn to try it she refused. She said she got three for us to eat and didn't even take a bite. Wimp. When we finally got the bill we stepped outside into the humongous courtyard that we realized could lead to three different restaurants. Close by there were small areas where we could take pictures and pose with props (or at least that's what we did).
After lunch we went home to rest before Truong would come back to walk us around the city prior to our departure. Dylan and I took this time to take turns at the blog for Ha Long Bat that took so long. We sat downstairs in the un air conditioned lobby with bugs attacking me and a very disgustingly dirty keyboard. Two and a half hours passed before I gave up and left Dylan to fend for himself. I needed rest and air conditioning if I was going to walk around town for three hours before we left. Dylan held strong and continued writing the blog for a while without me and when I went down to see how he was doing he said someone was standing behind him trying to use the computer, but they couldn't communicate so Dylan just stayed. When he decided he was done tying up the blog we all finished packing and mom called Truong to come take us out on the town for a bit.
On the way out with him, we found post cards and we bought one because we were planning on writing him a thank you card for how wonderfully amazing he had been to us. Especially the day he thought we had left the hotel and he scoured the beaches looking for us, sweating like a mad-man only to find us still in our hotel room. So we bought one card and continued walking. We saw many bia Saigon shirts along with "bia hoi" shorts (which means keg beer) but none were green (the color of the bottle). So we looked around more and more finding many people burning fake dollar bills on the streets in front of their stores. Truong told us that it was the first of the month and they do that for luck.
Finally, we ate for the last time with our newfound friend. We went upstairs and relaxed for a little while waiting to head to the train station. The time came. We were all really sad. TV and I couldn't stop talking about what we were going to miss about Truong. Eventually, he dropped us off and we all got on the train. Of course he helped us move everything in. Mom gave him his postcard and explained that he could leave it in his cab to show future cabees. He said he wanted to put it on the wall. He gave us a few pointers and we said our last goodbyes. We sat on the train, it started to move and we were off to a new destination, all we could hope was the rest of the trip goes as well as this part. Northern Vietnam, check.
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