Date: 26th June 2011

Place: Hanoi

Weather: raining

I had set my alarm ready to get breakfast but Carm decided to stay in bed longer. She was feeling pretty hungover! I went down and met a girl called Lilly and Kristie and Carm came down a little while later. After breakfast we went to chill in the room for a few hours and tried to get a bit of sleep in. Instead we were just talking to an Australian couple in there and a Dutch guy called Eric.

When we picked up the cameras it felt like Christmas! We then decided to kill some time and went to the upstairs lounge in the hostel and watched episode after episode of The Inbetweeners. That day the special was a bbq and beers in that lounge so when they started making the burgers we couldn't resist having one even though we were going to snake village that night. Everyone got given a free beer as well so of course the room was full of guys!

We got ready and went downstairs to wait to be taken to Snake Village. I was really trying to psyche myself up for it but it just made me feel weird so in the end I just tried to forget about it. They were so late with taking us, we ended up sitting around for atleast an hour waiting to be picked up. When we finally did we were taken by a guy called Matt with a big group of other people.

The first thing we saw when we were there was a big cage of snakes which were the ones we would be eating "/. Everyone had the chance to hold one but I couldn't do it because they were too wriggly; I didn't want it to get free! Carm tried but it wouldn't go right for her either. They then asked us who wanted to eat the heart because we had to pay extra to do it for our own snake. The Vietnamese guys laughed at me when I put my hand up.

The table set up was really cool, we were in our own little section of the restaurant and all had to sit on the floor around the little tables. Then the heart eating began. I watched a load of people doing it and it made me feel sick. I didn't think I'd be-able to do it and by the time my go came around I was seriously shaking so the guy had to help me.

It works by you sitting on the floor next to a metal tray with a glass and a knife on it (and all the blood left over from the people before!). Two Vietnamese guys get a live snake out of a bag and hold either end of it so it is straight in front of you. They locate the heart and show you where to make the incision. This is where he had to help me, I couldn't cut it properly my hand was shaking so much and I felt to cruel. He guided my hand and helped me to add some pressure. The guys then empty some blood into the glass and push the heart so that it sticks out of the hole you have made.

The heart is about the size of a large peanut with its shell on (it looked like an ugly jelly bean). You can see it getting bigger and smaller in front of you as it beats and they wanted me to put my finger on it. I couldn't do that even though I was about to be touching it with my mouth! I then leant forward to rip it out with my teeth but I couldn't reach properly so I had to move back after it had already been in my mouth and manoeuvre myself so that I could reach the back of it with my teeth. It was quite weird trying to rip it off, I think I started pulling at something else so had to let go a bit but it wasn't too difficult and I chewed it almost instantly to stop the beating.

I cant really remember the taste of the actual heart because I swallowed it too quickly but the drink that came afterwards will stick with me forever! They had a glass of rice wine (which is horrible and really strong normally) and vodka and then they emptied the rest of the snake blood and some bile into it too. You have to down it as part of the tradition. It was safe to say that a few minutes after that I was pretty drunk. It was then time to start the snake feast. The tradition again was that you have to have a shot of the vodka, rice wine and snake blood mix before you try each dish (The Vietnamese like their drink!). Well we had a fair few dishes and they came out pretty quickly so the shots were going down pretty quickly. The dishes I can remember, with the help of Carm, are snake bones crushed up with popadoms, snake spring rolls, snake meatballs, snake steak, snake ribs and some sort of embryo thing. At the end of the meal we all had to do a shot of just snake bile, vodka and rice wine. It was bright green and absolutely gross! It is meant to be an aphrodisiac so all the guys were obviously wanting to give a lot to the girls.

We then all head back into town together and went to a few bars. In Temple Bar we played a bit of pool and I finally got to dance a bit (on the tables as usual). I met a couple of guys from Northampton and attempted to convince them that I'm not a typical 'Daventry girl'. I went back to the hostel and went to the lounge area then for a little while and watched a film that was on, Im not quite sure what it was it was a guys film really and I couldn't get into it because it was already half way through.