Boots with the Pho

I don't think I can live in Viet Nam, I just don't see noodle soup as an acceptable meal. And they absolutely thrive on that stuff here. they love there phos. I don't even like saying pho. I didn't mind it so much when I thought it was pronounced Po - I mean that sounds like a word - but it's pronounced a bit like fear and a bit like fur. It sounds like you started saying feather but found it was too much effort so stopped.

Another reason I'm not Vietnamese is that I'm just not very good at squatting. They love to squat here, just on the side of the road, squatting away as a comfortable alternative to sitting. If I squat for any length of time I lose feeling in my legs. Sopheak tried to teach me squat Asian style (that's flat footed, none of this Western, on-your-toes nonsense) when I was in Takeo. I fell over.

I'm still in Hanoi. I'm nailing the sites at the moment. Went to my first art gallery since Sydney. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed them. Is that weird, probably, but not as weird as this...

Weirdest Food:
In just about any other blog entry snake spring rolls would be a shoe in for weirdest food. Today it doesn't make the Top Three.

We went to the snake village yesterday (a 4x4 drove into our taxi on the way there, thankfully it didn't play out Shantaram-style), we got given a snake to play with. A small child tried to kick our snake in the face, which Goss thought was unkind, then realised how much of a hypocrite he was about to be proved. The snake had its heart cut out, which was put - beating away - in a shot glass, mixed with blood and rice wine. It had stopped beating by the time I got to drink it, I felt a bit cheated. The twitching snake was then taken away and chopped into a smorgasbord of dishes (sauted snake with lemongrass and ginger was ace, fried snake skin wasn't).

Incidentally, snake bile is surprisingly green and, unsurprisingly, doesn't make rice wine taste any nicer.