After a quick stroll around and town and a much needed pizza lunch, we headed back to the hostel for a little planning and logistics. We scheduled our trip to Halong Bay and bought what’s called an “Open Bus” ticket, which allows us to travel Vietnam from North to South on our own schedule stopping once in each major city and beach town. We headed back out into the wild. Amidst a quiet street market we had our first encounter with dog; that is, dog the food product, not the pet.
In Mexico we joke around about dog street tacos when questioning the legitimacy of a particular vendor, but the myth never materialized in Mexico. We were told that dog was a common menu item in China, but never saw it in person and heard from others that it’s actually quite rare in modern China. From a distance, I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew it wasn’t suckling pig. As we got closer it dawned on me and I said to Ingrid “No mames wey! Eso es perro!” which roughly translates to “Holy shit Dude! That’s dog!” We walked by in silence not knowing how to react. Ingrid’s trigger-happy photo finger was frozen. Some dogs were on their side, still whole. Others were chopped up into pieces. The dog was roasted using the same technique that the Chinese use to cook geese, duck, and suckling pig. We walked away, still in silence. It wasn’t until we got home that we had a chance to process. I felt sick to my stomach. I can only describe the experience as shocking.
Later that day, I played badminton with a couple kids on the street and chugged a beer with a local.
May 23, 2011 @ 21:49:25
So they still do it! 🙂
Sounds like you haven’t found the Pho nirvana, yet?
I wanted to drop you a line for a while; I’ve been periodically catching up your travel. A while back I watched a video of a Chinese Maglev and was gonna suggest you guys check it out and I ran into your horror 14 hour train ride story with your appendages occupied by the Chinese. We’re still laughing about that story with Michelle. I figured you were done with trains so I didn’t post anything; glad to see you got to ride one on your last day; I want to go to China just to ride one of those! 🙂
I’ve heard that cheap photo gear in China/Hong Kong is either a myth or a thing of the past as the supply chain is very tightly controlled.
Looks like you could use an ultra-wide lens and larger apertures! 🙂 J/K, I love the photos.
Cheers; don’t lose your steam with these posts; they’re nice to read during our Monsoon season here in Colorado (it’s been raining for the last two weeks and more to come).
_MK
May 29, 2011 @ 05:55:33
Yo _MK!
The closest thing we’ve found to Pho nirvana is Broomfield, CO … hahaha. Man, you are totally right about the wide-angle lens. We thought about buying that 10-22 lens before leaving CO, but decided to wait until we got to Hong Kong to shop. Unfortunately, it was considerably more expensive than even Mike’s Camera =) We’ve been thinking about you guys a lot and wish we could share some of these experiences with the whole boulder crew in person. I think it’s about time we get some sort of international vacation scheduled; even if just down to Cancun for a week.
At the moment we’re in transit to Hoian, Vietnam. We’ve got high hopes for a few days on the beach =)
Cheers,
Graeson