Thanksgiving 2010 has come and gone! (in Southeast Asia.) Let's not mince words and just admit that the most iconic part of this particular holiday is the fantastic meal that accompanies the giving of thanks for our many undeserved blessings. Sadly, this part of Vietnam doesn't have much in the way of Western food and most of the people here have probably never seen turkey in their lives except for maybe in picture books. Having realized this, Andrew and I decided we would make this a Thanksgiving to remember. While most of you will be chowing down on turkey, mashed potatoes, casseroles, and cranberry sauce, we enjoyed a few dishes you may not be quite accustomed to. What follows are photos of our... interesting... lunch, as well as our more conventional dinner. Enjoy!

For lunch we decided to check out one of the restaurants that a popular travel guide describes as "very popular with well-to-do locals on an evening out." What we thought to be just a restaurant actually turned out to be a large and rather complex resort community. The restaurant portion had conventional indoor seating, as well as an outdoor section where parties can sit under canopies overlooking the river. We chose the latter.

A typical cabana\canopy thing at Hoa Su.

A gorgeous view of the river from the restaurant

  And now we get down to the nitty-gritty of lunch. Some of these pictures may not be for sensitive stomachs. And before you ask, yes, we did eat some of everything.

Ok, so here we go: At the top right we have stingray grilled with lemongrass and chile, to its left we have fried frog, and, in the foreground, boiled snails.

I'll start with the least adventurous part of our Thanksgiving lunch: Fried frog. Notice that I didn't say fried frog legs. This was, in fact, at least two whole fried frogs. Andrew got the spine of one to prove it. If you compare them with the typical frog legs you might get in America you might say that Vietnam has some pretty large amphibians. If you've never had frog before I think the way that I would describe it to you best is 'it tastes like chicken, but it doesn't." The meat looks very similar to that of a chicken, but it just has more of a gamey and tough feel to it.

CSI: Vietnam - From this evidence we can gather that there was at least one whole frog included in our order.

Our next adventurous step into the world of authentic Southeast Asian cuisine occurred when we decided to order stingray. Before seeing one of these creatures at a fish market earlier today we didn't even know that people ever at stingrays, but apparently there are few things that a Vietnamese chef would consider out of the realm of possibility. This actually turned out to be our favorite dish of the lot. While it had a very slight fishy taste to it, it also seemed to be kind of fatty. It was a little chewy but, all-in-all, pretty delicious. Andrew described the taste as "chicken-fish."

Only hours ago this delicious dish may have resembled the animal in the picture below.

Humans 1: Stingray 0

But what was easily the craziest thing we had for lunch this Turkey Day: boiled snail. I won't lie, I had long dreamed of trying what I considered an exotic dish that could be enjoyed only by the most daring of eaters. I can now tell you firsthand that snail is pretty terrible. The level of grossness you feel when you are finally able to pry the snail from its shell is matched only by the disgust you feel when you finally bite down on it. The front half is really tough while the end has several strange sacs that burst when you bite down on them and who knows what it is that you're eating when those bust. It was bad. But we still managed to get a few down just to say we did.

Pre-shell removal

I ate this. WHY did I eat this?

These suckers were actually pretty large.

The part right above my skewer is the sucky thing the snails use to get around. Here you can also see the sacs along the snails body that burst when you bite down. Whatever is in there tastes awful.

Andrew went first. He had to so I could take a picture. That's the only reason I didn't go before him.

As strange as it was, we still managed to finish the majority of our food.

Really our only failure was leaving these last three snails. We just couldn't do it and failed the Snail Challenge. But in our defense, they brought us 12 really big snails. They were only a dollar! We didn't expect so many!

 

The white ball with black specks is dragon fruit in case you're wondering.

At the end of the day, it didn't turn out to be a bad Thanksgiving day at all. We started the morning with our usual three hours of language that we concluded with a trip to a local Wal-Mart-esque type mega store to practice language. Then we got to try some interesting new foods and just spend the day at rest. It was actually really good, and I'm thankful for it among many other things. I'm thankful for a wonderful and supportive family, great friends who love me from all around the world, God's provision for my many earthly needs and, first and foremost, the grace and mercy that God showed to a sinner like me.


Try as I might though, I don't know if I'll ever be able to say I'm thankful for the idea someone had that snail is edible.