Eating and Drinking Part 2; apple liqueur and dog meat

When I grow up I want to have a room in my house, like Indiana Jones has, except instead of rare artifacts I want it to hold exotic hard liqueurs from around the world, I also want to procure at least one of them by answering a riddle or logic game. I am also a fan of trying things that are taboo in America, if for no other reason then to offend people who get offended easily, see 90% of Americans, for this reason I was also very excited to try dog meat.

On New Years day I was going to go to the countryside, but we ended up having to get George’s bike fixed. We went to the mechanic’s house and he didn’t want to fix the bike, he wanted to celebrate the new year so he treated us to something called hot pot at a restaurant owned by his cousin. Hot pot is basically a big bowl of boiling water that you put different meats and noodles in and share with a big group like fondue. I don’t really like it because some weird stuff comes with it, like pig intestine and shrimp with the head still on, but whatever. We sat on neat little tables on the floor like you see in the movies. When we came in there were three huge bottles of home made liquor; a rice wine, a very scary one with fish in it (maybe some other time) and one made from apples. While we were waiting for the food the guy ordered a small bottle of the apple one. It was amazing, about 20%, but not girly tasting and meant for mixing like apple pucker, and it went down very easy. This mechanic and I finished off two bottles and George’s wife had to ride my motorbike home. I am currently try to figure out a way to smuggle some back to the states

A few days ago I was at a dinner party hosted by one of my fellow teachers. It was at an Indian restaurant and the people I met their were talking to me about the difference between Indian cuisine and Vietnamese cusine and then asked me a question I have gotten from many of my classes “have you ever had dog meat?” I responded I hadn’t but really wanted to try it. The guy, named Thang said “OK you and me will go eat dog soon.” Awesome.

So yesterday I get a call from Thang saying he wanted to take me out on Sunday to get a traditional meal with dog meat. OK. So he picked me up and we ended up going out to some suburb of Hanoi to the house of a guy he knew who was a surgeon at the military hospital, he actually fought for North Vietnam in the last year of the war and grew up in Hanoi during the war, but that is a tale for another time. Anyway we went there and had a great meal of noodles, dog meat prepared three ways, oranges, Me Sow Baw (my favorite Vietnamese dish), french bread, and Hennessy to drink. My critique on dog meat is as follows. The boiled stuff was gross and chewy, you also “had” to dip it in sauce that was basically liquefied shrimp. The soup had bones in it and was a bit too gamey especially since we were eating Lassie here, but the fried stuff was AMAZING. It tasted just like BBQ pork back home! Duke (my sister’s dog) you better watch yourself pal. Just kidding Nicole… or am I?

The good news is that this Surgeon is a really great and funny guy who thinks I am awesome so I may be going over there on Sundays. He also wants his son, who is apparently a genius in math, to practice his English with someone who speaks it so he will have a better chance to go to an American university… not a bad idea.

PS New Posts on the other blog coming this week