Before we went offshore, we spent the night in Danang. Since Van Dam was there and speaks Vietnamese, we asked him to take us to get some proper local food.
We went to a restaurant and had an assortment of local dishes. After, Van Dam says there is some special we can have, but it is expensive and he wanted to know if I’d pay for it. I said sure and he went away and had a discussion with one of the staff.
Out comes and older man with a Sponge Bob pillow case. The man has three fingers on his right hand. He has three fingers because he reaches into the pillow case that happens to be filled with cobras.
He snatched one out of it and pulled out a knife. As his helper pours us shots of whiskey, Cobraman cuts the snake open and pours some blood into every glass. He starts to cut up the snake and my glass gets the still beating cobra heart inside of it like a macabre olive.
I’m told it is a high honor to drink this and that every part of the snake is magical. I may have ruined the moment by yelling “COBRAA!” instead of the proper cheer that sounded like “Roy”
I feel lucky. One guy got cobra penis in his.
It tasted rubbery and I could psychosomatically feel the heart beating as it went down and in my stomach later.
On the plus side, I can now check “Eat the still beating heart of a reptile” off of my bucket list.
