Ever wondered how to make organic viagra? If you’re in Vietnam, it involves torturing some turtles.
During my trip to Hanoi, I got along so well with my guide Lan and my driver Thang that they invited me to Thang’s anniversary – and I (obviously) said HELL YES!
I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Okay, these are the guys who took me to a brothel and introduced me to the hangover cure, so maybe I had a small clue, but damn, was I not ready for this mixology lesson.
The party was at a multi-floor restaurant 20 minutes away from my Hotel. It was the same crowd as the day before – except this time everyone brought their wives and children. The main entertainment was the torture of the turtles. Two restaurant employees brought out a bucket of the doomed reptiles. While one held the wriggling body, the other employee took out a sharp menacing knife, grabbed the turtles’ heads and slit their necks – collecting the blood in a large glass while the dying turtle gave me the hairy eye ball [ed note: can’t say I blame him, but what was I gonna do?]. Minutes later a waitress took a hypodermic needle and extracted all the green bile-y goodness from the dying reptiles’ gall bladders. It was like watching the Coconut Tree Prison display come to life, with reptile stand ins for the mannequins.
Fun fact: turtle blood mixed with rice wine looks and tastes (ironically) like a Bloody Mary while turtle gall bladder juice mixed with rice wine is a sickly, neon green and just tastes like motor oil. Like the snake whiskey in Cu Chi, both are meant to make you virile. I learned this when, after looking around the table and realizing none of the women were served any of the shots except for me, I asked, “Um, so… how come the women aren’t drinking?” To which all the men laughed and Thang said, “Because this is to make you strong in bed!” Apparently, I was now (after showing my boozy prowess the night before) considered a dude. Which is fine with me.
As to whether or not the stuff works: Not having a penis, I could not confirm this, but considering the amount of booze these guys put down, did wonder if they’d ever heard of whiskey dick – which would seem to make the whole turtle martyring moot. On the bright side, nothing was wasted – for dinner we had fried turtle which reminded me of frog legs: a lot of work for so little meat.
From the party:
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