Once I had booked my tour to Sa Pa, I happened to be sat in reception and I heard that there was going to be a tour to Snake Village tonight. I had been struggling to find some people to come along so I jumped at the chance to get there tonight with some people from the other Hostel.

A short journey by minivan and we had arrived in Le Mat (Snake Village), you knew you were pretty close with all the carvings and drawings everywhere of snakes...the first thing on the agenda was apparently holding a live snake. Now...I am not a fan of snakes however, I held one anyway and it was wriggling about for Britain. The only thing I think that went through my head afterwards was...why on earth would you make handbags out of this material?

There were 14 of us who went to Le Mat and we were seated in a traditional room with mats on the floor for sitting on barefoot. A couple of minutes later and a guy comes in with a bag of snakes. He then proceeds to ask if anyone would like to eat the heart of a snake...I said no. However, a few people said yes and we got to watch them killing the snakes and crazy members of the tour group bite them straight out of the bodies whilst they were still beating. The tour guide told a guy to swallow it whole as it was beating on his tongue and he shat himself as he could feel it still beating as it was going down his throat! NO THANK YOU! However, I did have a shot of pure snake blood and it tasted ok but the thick warm consistency almost had me throwing up before dinner. None of the snakes that are killed are wasted, they are then put into dishes for our dinner afterwards. There was the possibility of drinking the snake bile too but I said no, having seen enough of my own bile in the past due to drunken antics I thought I would pass!

We all sat down for dinner Rambo style with snake blood painted on our faces as we tucked into a variety of dishes made from the snakes we had just seen killed. Rice wine was definitely flowing and I think after about 6 shots I was definitely feeling a little tipsy to say the least! The food was nice, excellently prepared and not like you would think. There's no snake head soup staring back at you or anything horror film style, it just looked like normal food. Afterwards we all went on a pub crawl round the town but I was still tired from Ha Long Bay so sacked it at about 1 am, trying to find my way back...thank god I grabbed a map before I left!

I think tonight was a pretty random night out and what made it even more random was there were a couple of guys in the tour who were from Gerrards Cross and another one from Amersham!

The picture is of me about to drink a shot glass of snake blood. There is no after picture, just the before!