A Surprise Thit Cho experience

So after spending the last two days talking about the abundance of Thit Cho restaurants along the way to Halong Bay, today after our morning work in the garden, I went across the street from the Orphanage to get a bottle of water.  While paying, I noticed that just next door, there were 5 men skinning a dog...   I asked to the woman at the corner store if she thought it would be OK for me to take a photo of it.. She said for sure, so I went over and the men were more than happy to have me snap a few pictures of them at work...

I went back to the Orphanage to let the others know, and when I came back they had moved the dog to across the street and had it on an open pit where they placed a bunch of dried up leaves and branches and set forth to 'cook' it by fire.. 

After the cooking of the dog, they moved to the side of a nearby house where they set forth to slaughter it and take out the organs, cut off the head and prepare the meat.  This involved cleaning the intestines, stuffing the organs into the stomach, chopping very finely the lungs and other organs, as well as emptying the head of the brain and cutting off all four feet. 

We were invited to taste their achievement, but quite honestly just seeing all this was enough to make me politely pass and go for a nice lunch back at the orphanage of rice, peanuts, potatos and a banana... No meat today!!!

Well for my last full day of my 20's I can say that I was able to experience something that 99.9% of westerners probably never see in their lives up close...

On a brighter note, Ha Long Bay was absolutely stunning.  Spending the night on board the Ha Long Dragon Cruise ship was definetly the highlight of my trip so far.  We visited an island with an absolutely enourmous cave system, went sea kayaking, tried our luck at squid fishing and spent the night gazing at the stars and constellations in absolute pitch black surroundings.  Waking up at 6am yesterday we calmly watched the sunrise with no other boats anywhere near us save for a fishing vessel that dropped its nets and a Vietnamese woman silently rowing her boat off in the distance.

More updates and photos & videos of all explained above to come upon my return to Vancouver.

Only 5 more days left...

Jeremy