Wednesday, March 21, 2007


Bloody unbelievable

Saw this striking picture on flickr and it reminded me how I used to eat this stuff with the Baron in Truc Bach village, once upon a time, in a land where the duck was free to be eaten without any consequences (for you) - such as death by H5N1 flu strand.

For those who don't know it's tiet canh - fresh blood which has been chilled so it congeals, it's made from a duck, goose or a pig, mostly, served with crushed peanuts and washed down with a glass of liquor or bia. It has the not unusual distinction of being "good for man" (what isn't "good for man" in this country I have yet to work out with the exception perhaps of wives... even sweetcorn is "good for man").

Has disappeared from the streets of Hanoi as it's a no-no (whether it's a law or collective responsibility I can't quite be sure, the official line is the authorities are still 'considering' banning it) due to bird flu but apparently, my reporter friend tells me, it's easily found on the outskirts or in Ha Tay province.

Here's another bloody photo by the same chap - look like wee bowls of paints in an artist's studio, but believe it or not, people eat that stuff up.

2 comments:

Hercé said...

a chipped bowl - its just not done...

Hoang Viet Anh said...

Remind me of a embarrassment few months ago. I was asked to give a short talk about Vietnam for my classmate, so I decided to use Flickr to show them some random pictures of Vietnam's life. Everything when fine until someone asking about wildlife in Vietnam. As I entered two simple keywords in the search box "vietnam bird", suddenly the blood soup coming out all over the screen. All of my friends, who really never been out of Europe, jumped up and asked, what the hell is this.

After my brief explanation, they can't help but looked at me as I'm some kind of animal. So to cheer them up a bit, I give them a comment that this is actually not the main dish, but mainly serve for breakfast or starter.

But my effort to be more civilized seem to be worthless.