Christmas

Matt and I spent Christmas and Christmas Eve in Hanoi. For Christmas Eve we had a wonderful dinner at a French-Vietnamese restaurant called The Green Tangerine. It was so delicious, and the setting was gorgeous. The restuarant is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, in an old French villa. We sat in the courtyard and had the set menu. I ordered a very curious dish: orange crusted prawns over a Curacao-soaked apple. The apple was bright blue and the prawns wer bright orange, so it looked like some sort of space-aged meal. It was delicious, but a bit on the sweet side. For dessert we had a baked apple stuffed with Camembert cheese. It was yummy!

For Christmas day, Matt and I drove ten kilometers out of town to a village that raises snakes. We had a ten course meal, with each course consisting of snake cooked in a different way. The highlight of the meal was when the owner brought the snake to our table and squeezed the blood out of it. He put the blood into a bottle of some type of strong alcohol, and we drank it. The owner took out the heart of the snake, which was still beating! He put it in Matt's glass, and Matt had to drink it for virility! I was very proud of Matt...even I would have been hesitant to drink it. It looked gross.


The church down the street from our hotel staged a huge dancing/singing performance on Christmas Eve. The whole street was blocked off and there were hordes of people. They had giant TV screens on three sides of the church showing the performance. It felt like a carnival or something!


Lots of people dressed up their kids like Santa, which made it feel even more like a carnival!


The courtyard of the Green Tangerine, where we had our Christmas Eve feast.


My bizarre yet delicious entree: orange crusted prawns on a Curacao-soaked apple