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Your Say Wednesday
For those of you unfamiliar with our Your Say Wednesday posts, it’s fundamentally our way of interacting with you! Each Wednesday we share your most memorable, funny and craziest travel stories. Think you have a good one? Well please submit it to us via the contact page in our menu and it could be featured.
I was in Vietnam with two other friends and in order to travel around we did what most people do and rented bikes. This particular day we had been on our bikes since 8:00 am as we made the 80-mile journey between Hue and Hoi An and about 3 hours had gone by.
We were just about to take a final stretch of country road and head onto highway 1 for the next leg when we saw something in the road ahead of us. You couldn’t really tell what it was until you were right on top of it. In an instant, I saw my friend whip his legs up as a huge snake lunged at his leg when his scooter sailed next to it. I was mortified as I am very afraid of snakes. The last thing I wanted was to have this thing striking at me as we cruised by.
We all pulled over, laughed and discussed the size of it while noticing a local man running down the road with a long stick. He was hollering at us excitedly and pointing at the road. Apparently, snakes of that size are worth well over 1.2 million dong (roughly £35) and the man was bursting with excitement about catching the venomous beast.
Asking where it went, he moved into the grass at the edge of the rice field in pursuit. The movement caused the snake to flee into the rice paddies and the local man immediately gave chase into what became a dance between him and the snake. Each challenging the other until the man lept to the opportunity and seized the snake by the head with his bare hands.
He smiled proudly as he came back to the road, showed off the snake then as swiftly as he appeared, left us standing there while he made his way down the road back to his house. Snake in hand. You don’t see that every day!
73 Park Avenue 