So I poured the still beating heart into my mouth and swallowed

Snake has been on the menu for a long time. "We must take you for snake" say my colleagues with broad smiles, but in three years it never happened.

We were discussing this failure. The reason offered was that the colleague making the offer wanted another colleague to go along, however that colleague was born in the year of the snake and did not eat her relatives. So the saga had dragged on but was brought to a head by the rapidly approaching Lunar new year and my departure for the UK. It had to be now..... unfortunately "now" meant the night I had reserved for packing my bags.

Common sense prevailed and we went for snake.

Now you don't just go anywhere for snake, you have to go to the famous snake village, which involved a 30 minute motorbike ride through the pre Tet (Pre Christmas to those of you who live in the UK) traffic and then wriggling through a rabbit warren of narrow backstreets with no clear signage other than large billboards showing pictures of Cobras and announcing delicious Bamboo snake, or Bamboo snake gardens; until the road eventually ran out and we were faced with a small gateway which looked like a temple entrance but which was actually the entrance to THE snake restaurant.

Inside we parked motorbikes infront of an altar and saw a caged off area where two guys in wellingtons were handling writhing bags, which obviously contained snakes. We were shown to our seats and then invited to go choose our snake.

This is a Vietnamese custom not for the squeemish. I've seen restaurants which advertise "turtle killed at your table" and I have seen eels being bled to make potent rice wine which looks like a cross between Shiraz and cherryade. This was the first time I was going to partake.

There was an exchange in Vietnamese between my hosts and the staff and two rather lively snakes were dragged out of a cage. We were told they were bamboo snakes, that there was no English name for them, that they were farmed rather than wild and that they weighed 450 grams. We were also told that they were not poisonous, which somewhat disclaimed all the posters which offered Bamboo snake but showed pictures of cobras.

The snake handlers were more than a match for the poor reptiles which, having been weighed, were dragged out of the bags, stretched out, had their throats cut, their blood drained, chest cavity opened and heart removed all in a matter of seconds. The still writhing bodies with heads removed were then skinned and gutted in large bowls of hot water in a matter of minutes. I watched a dismembered head slowly crawling across the floor propelled by the mouth which was opening and closing convulsively... Until one of the staff who had not seen it stood on it and it stopped moving altogether.

We retrurned to our table to find a bottle of blood rice wine, a bottle of snake bile rice wine and a bottle of specially brewed rice wine. The special brew was guaranteed to make men strong (wink wink). It tasted pretty poor.

More concerning was the small petri dish sitting in the middle of the table. It contained the still beating hearts of our two snakes. Now this really does make men strong.... providing the pathogens in the raw blood don't kill you that is. I looked at the dish, hypnotised by the movement. There were three men at the table and two hearts. The Vietnamese guy said "I'm not having a heart", so graceous, that leaves one for each of us.

As we pondered what to do a guy appeared, poured blood rice wine into our glasses and used a toothpick to flick one heart into each glass. Photos were taken and apprehensively we picked up our glasses and looking into them. Little ripples in the rice wine every time the heart pulsed.

I took a deep breath, looked at my colleague, we touched glasses in a toast and the I poured the still beating heart into my mouth and swallowed.

Contrary to popular belief I could not feel it pulsing down my throat, or in my stomach. It just went and that was it.

The rest of the snakes was then served in ten different dishes starting with snake soup and going all the way up to snake entrails. Actually, it was quite good.

Price is everything

I've just returned from three weeks in the UK so the current 15 degrees C in Hanoi feels warm. To the Vietnamese this is the depth of winter and everyone is wearing coats, hats, gloves and anything else they can wrap up in.

I've moved house again and now occupy a three floor French Villa in the "French quarter" a euphemism for an area south of Hoan Kiem Lake which is heavily populated with similar properties. I'm in the process of buying stuff to make the house into a home as most of the furnishings and utensils in my last two houses belonged to the landlords or other people.

So it was that I came out of the supermarket with four heavy bags full of shopping. Too much to walk back to the house. I looked round for a taxi there were none. One of the gaggle of Xe Om (motorbike taxi) drivers huddled on the corner spotted me and a gleam came into his eye - here was a chance to make some money.

Inwardly I groaned, if I took this route home the first step would be a vicious battle over the price, in Vietnamese where he would start by asking for a fee equivalent to hiring a limo and I would have to bat him down.

I gave him the address - 12 Truong Han Sieu, "Yes, Yes" he said not looking at me, handing me a helmet and turning to start his bike. This is a common ploy - the driver will wait to tell you the price until you get to the destination and then ask for something exhorbitant. I stood my ground and did not take the helmet. I waited until he looked at me and asked "how much?" He smiled and said "25,000" my response "too expensive - more than a taxi, I'll pay you 5,000". "No No No!" he exclaimed. I turned to walk away "ok ok he said - 10,000".

Now I know that is still too much and more than a Vietnamese would pay but I don't begrudge these guys 40 pence for taking me a kilometre or so. I turned back to him and said OK. He smiled and then turned to the other Xe Om drivers who had been watching with interest. "Where is Truong Han Sieu?" he asked them.

Price is everything.

And Twan raised his bicycle seat

I'm coming to the end of my current contract and have to move out of the house I've lived in for the past six months. This should not have been difficult since all my worldly possessions in Vietnam fit into half a dozen boxes. So Saturday morning I packed everything apart from the stuff I'm taking back to the UK for Christmas and one set of bedsheets then I called a Vietnamese colleague who had volunteered to help me move.

He arrived on his bicycle, actually a woman's bike but a modern design with semi-fat tyres and 28 gears.

The plan was simple, we would get a large taxi (people carrier to you) and load it with my six boxes and two bedside cabinets and take all my stuff to the store room at work until I find a new house in January. I needed my friend to explain where the taxi had to go - a narrow street which a big taxi can only access from one direction. I also needed him to stand on the pavement whilst I brought the boxes out so the recyclers didn't take them away as fast I as put them down.

The first bit went fine, I put the boxes in front of a four wheel drive which was parked in the lane blocking half it's width. My friend stood in the road looking for the taxi. On my fourth trip from the house he was on the phone - "taxi won't come in" he said. A heated debate followed after which it appeared the driver had agreed to come up the lane. A small taxi appeared and parked opposite the boxes reducing the width of the road at that point by two thirds. I went for the last box.

When I returned the big taxi had arrived and swung into a gateway to turn round. He almost reversed into the small taxi which decided to make space by pulling forward. The two drivers exchanged words then the small taxi drove even further down the road. I indicated to the driver that he should reverse up to the boxes, on the same side of the road as the 4x4. Instead he reversed on to the other side parking opposite the boxes and leaving enough space for two motorbikes to pass in between. We now had to get the boxes across the gap with motorbikes flying through sounding their horns.

At this point a small taxi appeared from behind us. No way could he get through the gap. I moved two of the bigger boxes which were causing the biggest obstruction and the small taxi driver eased his way into the gap. Two motorbikes coming the other way stopped to let him come through (unusual) but then a young woman drove her motorbike passed the other two and into the gap between the small taxi and the parked 4x4 (usual procedure). She couldn't get through and now neither could the taxi. The taxi was not giving way; the woman just looked confused and the horde of motorbikes either side of the blockage began to sound their horns in unison. In less than two minutes we had achieved total gridlock. I focused on getting the rest of my stuff in the taxi.

A man walking by told the young woman to get off her bike and he physically dragged it out of the way. The boxes gone the small taxi driver attempted to complete his manouver but before he could do so a young guy on a motorbike tried to get through the even smaller gap and gridlock was restored. We got in the big taxi and our driver eased away, getting maybe 10 metres before another motorbike drove up to his front bumper and looked puzzled by the fact that he couldn't go any further. Such is roadcraft in Vietnam.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, my belongings were stored and we headed back to the house. There was time to spare so I suggested a beer at my local bia hoi. I also suggested that as my friend coverted my bike maybe we could cycle together back to his house and he could use my bike and I would use his. This was a good idea. We got our bikes and cycled down to the Bia Hoi waking up the owner who was sleeping between the little tables. My friend invited another colleague to join us and we sat drinking bia whilst waiting for the arrival. This other guy lived about 15 minutes drive away, but it took him over an hour to arrive by which time a few beers had been consumed. We drank a couple more and my friend said it was time to go.

As we swopped bikes he asked if I would like to visit the new house he was building as well. Conscious of an evening dinnner date I asked him how far it was. He said "my house is 15 minutes from your house and my new house is 20 minutes from your house" I thought, ok an extra five minutes is doable. And we set off. After 20 metres he said to me "your saddle is too high". His bike had the typical Vietnamese configuration - saddle as low as possible so I was cycling with my knees round my ears. He contiued to complain until we got on the main road. Then, as we picked up speed, he looked at me with wonder and said "this is better!". By the time we reached his house he was enthusing. "I will raise my saddle, it is so much better!" And it was, he quickly learned to step off the saddle as the bike came to a halt, he saw the benefit of being able to see over the motorbikes and cars, he could go faster because he was using the full stretch of his legs.

He needed to go faster because he had meant to say that his new house was 20 minutes from his old house, so our journey was 35 minutes including obligatory stops for fruit at his old house and a grand tour of the new house which should be finished in a month.

I did make it for my dinner date, but as we separated and he disappeared off down another road I couldn't help but feel my major achievement of the day had been capacity building in the area of cycling technique.

Finally, I slept with a Man!

Our 77 year old host administers corn wine from a recycled water bottle

The cockerel obviously did not have clock. If it had had a clock it would have known that 3am was not the right time to announce the dawn. The man who shouted abuse at the cockerel probably did have a clock, but the cockerel didn’t speak Vietnamese either so it carried on crowing.

The guy in bed at the side of me said something, maybe in his sleep, but he spoke Dutch so I didn’t understand that either. I was sharing a bed with a man, this has come close to happening several times since I came to Vietnam. In one case it was planned that I would share a bed with two men but then that trip was cancelled. This bed was so wide that sharing it was never going to be a problem. We were sleeping in a typical Vietnamese “Nha Nghi” – a guest house. Being in a tourist centre this room was costing us £6 for the night. That’s £3 each. A Vietnamese family of five or six might share a bed like the one we were sleeping on. And we had separate quilts.

This was my last weekend away in Vietnam before going home to the UK for Christmas. A chance to visit the famous Bac Ha Sunday market for the second time and drink a few beers with friends. The adventure started with the Friday night trip from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the overnight train. I arrived at the wrong station to find everyone else waiting. A failed attempt to get onto the platform revealed we did not actually have tickets. We only had vouchers to be exchanged for tickets at the OTHER Hanoi railway station. We hot footed it to Station B (a good old fashioned communist inspired name), found the woman with the tickets and found our train assisted by one of the touts who hang around on the platform to show you where to go, even if you know where to go, and then expects a tip.

We were in our compartments with 10 minutes to spare. The journey was noisy, the train was old and the window would not shut letting in the cool night air as well as the sounds of the engine. The mattresses are thin but sleep came easily and after several false stops (this was the last train of the night and inter-hamlet rather than inter-city) we arrived in Lao Cai around 7.30am.

Rather than take three hours on a rickety public bus to Bac Ha we had reserved a private minibus and we were met by our ‘guide’ who didn’t actually speak English. He led us to the white van sitting outside the station. The sliding door was eventually heaved open and we looked in. Five of the seats were ok, covered in dust but ok. The seat back of two of the seats was bent forward in a position which looked like it might cause permanent spinal damage to the occupants. Neither of the two fold down seats had seat backs at all. We climbed in. One of the group leaned across to close the side window nearest the back of the bus. After a few moments of confusion it became clear there was no window. The guide smiled, the driver desperately tried to start the noisiest diesel engine I’ve heard in a while and we bounced off down the road. The cool morning air was in danger of inducing hypothermia so sign language was used to get the guide and driver to close their windows. That was achieved by the driver winding the handle until the window stopped moving then getting hold of the glass and pulling it up until he could jam in into the top of the frame. He did this with two hands whilst the guide held the steering wheel and the bus continued to career down the road.

Apart from the cold the trip was fairly uneventful, the road to Bac Ha has taken another hammering in the recent bad weather. Repairs following the floods in February were not complete when the heavy rains of September and October compounded the damage. The bus stalled in a bed of loose sand on a steep hill and we all held our breath until the driver managed to restart it and the van crawled out of the ruts. In the end our luxury bus took almost as long as the public bus and by the time we had driven once round Bac Ha trying to get the guide to understand where the hotel was there was just time to check in, find the electricity was off and go for lunch.

A couple of beers and a bowl of rice later we were ready for new adventures. The plate of chopped bananas which arrived instead of banana flower salad and a few other interesting interpretations of the menu meant that we had not exactly eaten excessively so an afternoon walk with a local school teacher who teaches English showing us the sights seemed about right.

We walked and talked for two or three kilometres when he suggested we should just drop into this house and meet one of the locals. Inside a small group of men broke up as we approached leaving a laughing guy in a leather jacket and woolly hat as the centre of attention. He welcomed us all and began to heap compliments on the women as we sat down. Bac Ha corn wine arrived in the usual deceptive plastic water bottle and shot glasses were put out for everyone. We drank our collective health and the glasses were full again by the time they hit the table. Toasting health with this stuff is a bit like saying smoking is bad for you whilst dragging on five lit cigarettes in each hand. Bac Ha corn wine is probably used as fuel in the Chinese space program.

We drank three… or was it four rounds before finally taking leave of our host who was still consuming the wine and assuring us of the health benefits, after all he was 77 years old. We staggered off up the hill. Our teacher guide said we would be back in town in 15 minutes. This was shortly after he said it was another 5 kilometres and only five minutes before he directed us into another house to meet another of his ‘helpers’. This time our host was a mere sixty something years old. Again the corn wine came out and health was toasted. This guy thought entertainment was in order as well so he brought out several ethnic minority instruments and performed music and dance between toasts. Then we had to join in. Several people headed for the toilet (on the right next to the pig sty). These ‘helpers’ are effectively retired locals of good status who act as voluntary truancy officers, persuading children to go to school and persuading parent farmers with too much work to do to let their young labourers leave the fields and go to lessons. The commitment is obvious and whilst I left both houses cursing corn wine I have the greatest amount of respect for those men, the life they live and the importance they see in the education of the next generation. It was dark when we arrived back in town.

A great meal in a local restaurant was accompanied by… complimentary Bac Ha corn wine but by now most people were past caring. Meal over we retired to a local Karaoke bar where, after the first song from our group, the few Vietnamese in the place left. We staggered back to the hotel about midnight for the third round of ‘hunt the room key’ (don’t ask) and retired to bed for three hours sleep before the ruddy rooster decided it was dawn.

Sunday in Bac Ha is the big day of the week. Hundreds of people come in from the minority villages around the province for one of the biggest and most colourful markets in North Vietnam. You can sit outside the cafes having breakfast and watching vendors and buyers arriving, all dressed in the traditional costumes of their people and carrying or leading their offerings. Here a woman in a bright outfit carrying a shopping bag with two ducks, their heads sticking out and looking round, there a small boy pulls on the cord through the nose a reluctant one tonne buffalo on its way to be sold. Many products don’t even make it to market. As I sat and drank coffee on the steps of our hotel the owner stopped a man going past with a bag on his shoulder. The bag was dumped on the pavement. It squealed loudly. The seller opened the bag to show the hotel owner the pig inside. They agreed a price and the bag disappeared into the back of the hotel. The seller with his money and smile on his face, headed towards the market now going as a buyer.

I met the rest of the group for breakfast and then we went our separate ways into the market which covers a large area. I bought a few Christmas presents but spent most of my time watching the transactions between the local peoples. Two men sat on their heels in a quiet corner playing pipes made of bamboo with a ceramic horn on the end. A third man sat in front of them, his face screwed up in total concentration as he tried to decide which was the better instrument.

The man in the hat listens intently to the two 'clarinets'

In the bottom of the market by the river is a ‘food court’ – rows of small stalls with rectangular seating areas under low blue tarpaulins where the internal organs of many different animals are boiled, carved and mixed with rice noodles to form many different breakfast soups. Sometimes it’s the feet or the jaw which provides the delicacies. You don’t see any Europeans eating here (me included). Around the edges of the market, where the roads are tarmac rather than mud, are all the stalls selling handmade fabrics, clothes, wall hangings and many other items which are attractive to tourists. These are the stall where a few words of English are spoken and where most of the tourists try their hand at barter. I was not very successful, the young girl I was pitted against was just too cute to disappoint. She was smiling from ear to ear when I left with my purchases.

This time I did not try to buy a buffalo, or a horse or a pig. Instead I settled for bags and cushion covers. Then I made my way back to the small bar outside the market where the group was gradually reassembling as enthusiasm for shopping (or money) ran out. We drank beer at 10.30 in the morning and watched as the bulk of the tourist busses arrived from Sapa with the day shoppers. We lunched in the same restaurant (there’s not much choice) walked in the hills for an hour or so and then collected our things as the luxury bus coughed and wheezed up to the front of the hotel. A slightly faster and warmer trip back to Lao Cai was followed by another ticket collecting saga and a bowl of Pho in a local café before we climbed on the early train back to Hanoi. Once again it was easy to sleep and the journey passed in forgotten dreams before the guard banged on the door and shouted “Ha Noi”. It was around 5am on Monday morning as I pushed through the taxi drivers and walked home in the dark. Once away from the station the streets were quiet, only the noodle soup vendors were in evidence busily preparing breakfast for their clients. By 5.30am Monday morning I was back in bed for a couple of hours sleep before work.

HIV AIDS month

Last Friday about 7pm I was contacted by phone and invited to attend a performance to launch HIV AIDS month in Vietnam. The invite came from the Ministry of Health and the concert was 7.30 on Sunday. 7.30 in the morning that is! At first I thought about how to get out of it, but eventually my sense of duty to colleagues in the Ministry and the project over-ruled my common sense and I decided to go.

A party on Saturday night was not really the best preparation for the performance, but I duly dragged myself out of bed and headed off on my bicycle to the Friendship Palace - a concrete monolith built by the Russians as a present to the Vietnamese people and one of those structures which has 1960s communist design written all over it. People were arriving in large numbers but the guards on the entrances were not impressed by my bike. I was directed round the back to find a parking space at the tradesman's entrance. I paid my parking fee of 500 dong - 2p at today's exchange rate and walked in the back door. This confused my minder who was waiting for me out the front. I was given a badge, tee shirt and promotional literature and ushered into the concert hall where I had a seat on the second row just behind the really important people. We waited. A few minutes after the official start time a load of Vietnamese government officials arrived including the Vice Prime Minister responsible for AIDS - not the best of titles. We all shook hands and sat down.

I have to say the performance was the best live show I've seen in Vietnam. The performers were from the National Centre for Dance and Music, a sort of performing arts university and they were as professional as anything I have ever seen. The culmination of the music and dance was a piece of drumming which was started by the Vice Minister for Sport and Tourism - who had clearly been a drummer in his younger days - and concluded with no less than 45 drummers with drums the size of oil barrels thumping the hell out of their instruments enough to make pacemakers give up and leave it to the reverberation off the walls to keep anyone's pulse active.

Then came the speeches, one after another until it was the Vice Prime Ministers turn. None of us saw him speak as he was behind a high lecturn surmounted by an enormous display of flowers and he was surrounded by the Vietnamese press all trying to get the best shot for their paper.

The end of the event required us to go outside and stand at the top of the steps with the Vietnamese dignatories whilst a cavalcade of motorbikes, cars and lorries did a fly past as they set out to spend the day polluting the streets of Hanoi promoting the efforts of the fight against AIDS.

The party broke up and we went for coffee in a nearby bar. It was not yet 10 am on Sunday and I had spent over 2 hours at a concert - before I even had my breakfast!

Lau Dac Biet

There's a big Bia Hoi not far from my house. We went there in the early days but I've not been there since 2007, so it was a surprise when a couple of friends texted me to say would I join them for a Lau and when I finally worked out the address I realised it was the big Bia Hoi.

This is also the place where I could see them roasting dog when I lived in the apartment (did I mention I moved out of the apartment in June? Maybe not)

I think the owner must have bought a job lot of table top gas cookers, because I don't remember Lau being on the menu before. Now they have a whole page of Lau and by the time I arrived my dining companions had already ordered Lau Dac Biet.

Lau is sometimes translated as "fire pot" or "hot pot" or "fondue". It is basically a metal or ceramic bowl of tasty broth placed on a stove on your table. The broth boils and you drop in whatever you have chosen to purchase. It goes in raw and comes out cooked to your taste. The flavour of the broth increases as the evening passes and usually by the time you are reduced to cooking noodles it is delicious. The meat or seafood is usually very fresh when it arrives at your table. On one occasion I picked up a prawn to drop in the broth and it promptly wriggled out of my chopsticks and hopped across the table heading for the door. It didn't get far before a Vietnamese friend caught it deftly and tipped it into the pot.

Prawns were on the menu tonight. Dac Biet means 'speciality' and the steaming pot arrived accompanied by a heaped tray of mixed meats and seafood and baskets of raw vegetables and noodles.

The delicacies included Frogs and snails along with slivers of fish and beef, large whole prawns, slices of eel and squid, which appeared to be mainly the tentacles. Topping the broth were sheets of fried tofu, spring onions and one of the many Vietnamese vegetables which they say is 'cabbage' but which looks nothing like cabbage.

Accompanying all this were glasses of Bia Hoi, the light refreshing beer brewed daily. Bia Hoi is no longer brewed at the restaurants, now it is factory produced just outside Hanoi. We ate and drank.

Its a long time since I ate frog and I had forgotten how delicate the meat is when cooked to perfection, the frogs are big so the small bones are big enough to remove either in your mouth or, for the more skillful, with your chopsticks. The snails taste like tyre rubber, but that is just my opinion of snails. Everything else was great and we finished the whole pot, eating the noodles last and slurping the dregs of the soup like we hadn't eaten for weeks.

It may be shorter than a year before I go back to this place, especially as the bill divided by four came to less than £3 each including the drinks.

Yoga and more Yoga

The road - converted to a rice drying platform

Half way through last week I remembered there was a yoga retreat at Mai Chau, a place in the mountains outside Hanoi. With the weekend forecast for yet more torrential rain (which did not happen) I decided a bit of meditation and relaxation was what was in order.

I called the company organising the weekend and they confirmed they still had places and a room was duly booked. On Thursday a man arrived to collect my deposit and on Friday afternoon I found myself a motorbike taxi and set off for the meeting point. The driver, born and bred in Hanoi and not a spring chicken had no idea where he was going and we eventually arrived at the destination with me giving the directions. He then offered to wait for me and I had to try and explain I was not going home until Sunday night. Eventually, looking a bit crest fallen he set off to try and find his way home.

Six hours later we arrived at the lodge and immediately changed for the first class, a session which lasted 2 hours. Dinner and bed - once the local ethnic dancing display had finished.

Unlike the forecast Saturday morning was damp (it did rain in the night) but clear and therefore cool. Our practice room was a floating bamboo and palm building on a lake and was not the warmest of places. Class overran again and it was over three hours later when we emerged for breakfast. This was followed by a 2 hour cycle ride. We didn't follow the intended route because all the locals were using every inch of concrete paving to frantically dry rice which they had salvaged from the previous week's floods. Everywhere everyone was drying rice in the autumn sunshine.

We stopped for a beer on the way back and in keeping with the theme of the weekend were nearly 2 hours late for lunch. The lodge was getting used to us.

After a relaxing afternoon the third session of yoga started at 5.30pm and also overan to nearly 8.30pm, so it was dinner and bed again. There were a couple of absentees by the time the 7.30am Sunday session started and also overan. That left time for breakfast, a walk into the local minority village to try and shop (I didn't buy anything apart from a beer), lunch, check out and travel back to Hanoi, which took five hours.

I slept well on Sunday night but today I am far from flexible. I ache all over.