Exotic Foods

I suppose after some 17 years here in Vietnam I should be able to reach a point where I can say that I have pretty much had every exotic meal and creature to be had in this small, yet diverse country. Everytime I get thoughts like that I am "invited" to enjoy some other poor creature that was caught and slaughtered for my dining pleasure. In my days here I have had bull penis soup, bat, field rat, rooster balls, pig uterus, porcupine, anteater, snake, and any untold number of other small reptiles and mammals long since forgotten.

Just the other day, however, in the mountains of Gia Lai Province, I was given the opportunity to have mountain goat balls and goat's blood rice wine. Both of these were new to me, and neither were dishes I will be asking for again in the near future. The soup in which the goat balls were cooked was actually pretty tasty with medicinal herbs, but the balls were just too tough. I was pulling double duty of eating and interpreting at the same time and actually hade to push my index finger down my throat to clear an errant ball portion that could have killed me. If it had, the story may have started fairly accurate, but no doubt the shortening and retelling would have led to an obituary that read something like, "Navy civilian in Vietnam dies after choking on goat balls."

Rice wine, also known as Cuoc Lui, is a clear nasty brew not much unlike the moonshine of yore in the U.S. The goat's blood must have been quite a treat to most of the guys we were eating with, but for me it was just something to get a picture of while going through the motions of putting it down. What I didn't figure into the equation was there was no going back to the clear stuff after opting into the blood wine. The first shot wasn't that bad and was relatively "watered" down in the wine, but the second and third shots were pretty frothy. In my mind's eye I could see the host of parasites swimming around in the goat's blood as I swigged it down. Fortunately, I have suffered no ill effects so far, but I can't help but to think I missed a bullet this time.

This lunch was just one of the few I had with our counterparts in the field on a recently completed six day site visit. Our combined efforts in this recovery iteration are going well and I am hopeful for some great success. My hat is off to the teams working so hard in the harsh environment they are in to bring our warriors home.