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By Root 731 0

with the colonial architecture of its French planners. We check into the Hotel Victoria Can Tho, one of the many luxurious foreign-run hotels one sees more and more of in Vietnam. It’s stately, beautiful, with an airy whitewashed lobby, black-and-white marble floors, a pool and boathouse on the shores of the Mekong River, hardwood teak and mahogany rooms with comfortable beds, and satellite TV. There’s a business center, a health and massage studio, a very decent restaurant and bar – and an anti-aircraft battery down the street. As we drive by the gun emplacement, Linh reminds the shooters, ‘Not to photograph, please.’

I order a mango daquiri as soon as we check in. God, there’s nothing like a fine hotel when you’ve survived multiple brushes with death. I splurge and send out my moldering clothes to be laundered, schedule an hour-and-a-half massage, and treat myself to a traditional Vietnamese lunch of chicken BLT club sandwich. Philippe, in a monogrammed hotel bathrobe, is already at the pool. Soon, I’m oiled up on a table, half-asleep, a tiny Vietnamese girl walking on my back, by now only vaguely aware how lucky I am to be alive.

I’m also beginning to think that there must be a lot of penile dysfunction in Asia. There’s no other explanation for it. Just about every damn thing you can think of seems to have been thoroughly investigated for its potential wood-raising properties. If your waiter or a friend urges you to put something in your mouth that a few weeks ago you never would have thought of eating, chances are it is believed to ‘make you strong.’ Only desperation can account for what the Chinese, for instance, do in the name of ‘medicine.’ That’s something you might remind your New Age friends who’ve gone gaga over ‘holistic medicine’ and ‘alternative Chinese cures.’ They say there are sun bears in China, hooked up to kidney drips like catsup dispensers, leeching bear bile into tiny bottles. Rhino horn. Bear claw. Bird’s nest. Duck embryo. You’ve got to be pretty anxious about your penis to contemplate hurting a cute little sun bear.

And you’ve got to be really concerned about your penis to eat at the My Kanh Restaurant in Can Tho. Our waiter greets us and proudly takes us on the obligatory premeal tour of the grounds. It’s a large wooded park with a narrow cement pathway that winds and twists around zoolike cages of menu selections. Everything here is available for dinner. I lose my appetite as soon as I see the sun bear. There are snakes, bats, lizards, crocodiles, cranes, an eighty-kilo python, monkeys, and dogs. The dogs, our waiter assures us – not too convincingly – are not for sale. We pass ponds where one can catch one’s own elephant fish or catfish. And in the middle of this torture garden, where the cages seem to radiate fear, are cute little bungalows where Chinese and Taiwanese businessmen come for dirty weekends, their mistresses in tow. They come to eat animals that most Americans have seen only on the Discovery Channel, to absorb, I’m guessing, the animal auras at close hand – before killing and eating them. The plan, then, I can only assume, is to settle the check quickly, rush back to the bungalow, and endeavor mightily to produce a hard-on. The management of My Kanh, our waiter proudly shows us, is putting in a swimming pool. It’s a horrifying theme park of cruelty. And I’m sickened by it all. Bad enough to want to eat some of these creatures. But to want to stay here, close to your victims, to lie in bed with your mistress, listening to animals die – what kind of romantic weekend getaway is that?

Philippe and I settle for catching our own elephant fish in a murky, stagnant pond covered with green film, a small boy helpfully pointing out exactly where to drop our hooks. It takes about thirty seconds to catch our entrées.

For appetizers, we go for the relatively benign curried frog legs, a little ground snake with shrimp cracker, peanuts, garlic, and mint, and some braised bat (imagine braised inner tube, sauced with engine coolant). We eat no animals with cute bunny eyes. I just can’t take