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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.