The king cobra, or rắn hổ mang chúa in Vietnamese, has great personal branding. For proof, one need look no further than the recent flower display on Nguyễn Huệ celebrating the Year of the Snake: the largest, most impressive statue bore the telltale hood of a cobra.
Photo via Travellive.
Endemic across tropical Asia, including much of Vietnam, the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) occupies a large range but is not particularly numerous. Because it is not considered aggressive and avoids people, human interactions are relatively rare. Despite the infrequency of people encountering king cobras, they maintain a prominent role in everything from illustrations accompanying myths to tourism efforts in Vietnam.
In the zodiac animal race, the slow snake took sixth place by wrapping itself around the leg of the galloping horse. Such fairy tale behavior supports contemporary stereotypes of snakes as sneaky, cunning, crafty creatures. The king cobra, however, needed no such chicanery to achieve archetypal status in modern society. The reason for its popularity is obvious. Humans are designed, literally, to fear snakes. Coiling across the rungs of our DNA is a revulsion to creatures that hiss, slither, strike and exist without limbs or concepts of play. King cobras are the world’s longest venomous snake and one of the heaviest. Moreover, the hood formed by the flexing of special muscles to spread its ribs, is impressively imposing, particularly when the cobra employs its unique ability to rear up, its fangs hovering at a child’s eye level. These traits, unique to most cobra species, elevate the snake from just a glorified worm or slug into an embodiment of the cold-blooded instinct to kill. Additional characteristics, such as its preference to eat snakes, particularly other cobra, make the king cobra the most extreme version of an animal that stirs an instinctive panic in humans.
Photo via Mongabay.
Myths never include scientific names. Few of the many Vietnamese legends and folktales involving snakes include enough information to discern which type of snake is involved. Sometimes, details and context clues can rule out varieties, but when presenting apocryphal stories constructed with threads of fantasy, memory, and morality-making, it’s up to the (re)teller to add whatever details he or she would like. It therefore makes sense to go with the most visually impressive and menacing example. Thus, the king cobra is often featured in story illustrations and photographs. For example, an article exploring various folk wisdoms about snakes including the popular “rắn trả thù” (snake’s revenge), uses a king cobra as the top image, despite the sayings not mentioning any specific species. Because king cobras can be found throughout Vietnam, one can insert them into just about any legend that features a snake, from the Tranh Temple god to the story of Dã Tràng and the Lệ Chi Viên cases’ curse. Associations with these narratives further contribute to the gut-dropping, pulse-racing terror fear people have when they think of king cobra.
The legend of Dã Tràng. Graphic by Dương Trương.
The exaggerated image of king cobra as diabolical serpent has led it to exploitation on a global scale. Tourism offerings in Hanoi, particularly those catering to western backpackers, can include visits to Lệ Mật, a village about 7 kilometers outside the city center that traces its snake-taming ways to an ancient legend of a hero saving a princess from a snake monster. There, guests enjoy a spectacular experience. Waiters remove snakes from cages, slit them open, and pour their blood into rice wine while the still-beating heart is offered on a separate plate. A full spread of dishes including mì xào with snake, fried snake skin and grilled snake ribs follows. The rowdy tourists slam the blood shots and mug for selfies that will present Vietnam as a barbaric, backwater that is equal parts exotic and dangerous.
Photos via Life Part 2 & Beyond.
One should not trust everything they read on blogs or see on social media, of course. Performed dozens of times a night, the meals are about as routine as those in a restaurant serving snails. And the snakes are not always cobras. Cheaper species are included on the menus, and because of the imprecision of naming conventions, it’s rarely clarified if one is being served the body of a king cobra or one of the other 38 species of cobra — of which the king cobra is technically not one, though that’s a tangle of taxonomy we aren’t going to get into. Tourists can indeed seek out a king cobra specifically though, as seen in Anthony Bourdain’s 2002 trip to the country where he ordered it from the menu at a Saigon restaurant. For him, like the tourists to Lệ Mật today, the experience is not about the taste of the meat or blood, which are quite bland and overwhelmed by the accompanying rice wine or fried noodles. Rather, the entire point is to consume something terrifying and deadly. In doing so, they attempt to show they are wild and fearless in a barbaric foreign land.
Video via Go Traveler YouTube page.
This desire to boast of travels to strange, savage lands explains why in tourist shops you’ll find a few bottles of rice wine containing coiled cobra. Sometimes, it's all a lie. Sneaky vendors can stretch the neck bones of common, non-venomous sneaks so they look like cobras. Moreover, the alcohol in rice wine denatures venom proteins, completely neutralizing its effect, which really has no effect on a product likely destined for display rather than consumption.
Photo via South China Morning Post.
While cobra rice wine is largely a tourist item that locals claim is not an important part of their culture, it wasn’t invented for the sake of foreign visitors. Rather, certain Vietnamese consumers — particularly those older and living in rural localities — believe the cobra contains medicinal qualities owing to its “hot” nature. It is thus suggested to treat a long list of ailments including rheumatism, arthritis, back pain, leprosy, excessive sweating, hair loss, dry skin, far-sightedness, exhaustion, flu, fever, and migraines. And like just about every animal product used in traditional medicine, some men think it will make their dick hard.
Even though most of the products associated with the endangered species trade can be waved off as hokum, snake venom, including cobras, can have true medical value. Scientific research into its use as an anti-inflammatory and cancer treatment is underway. A recent visitor to the Saigoneer office claimed that the tube of snake venom cream we purchased at the Đồng Tâm Snake Farm in Tiền Giang helped remedy his stiff neck.
Superstitious medicine and tourism efforts detrimental to the national image do at least help support local livelihoods. Vĩnh Sơn Village in Vĩnh Phúc Province, for example, is the nation’s largest hub of cobra raising. Farmers in the once jungle-filled area transitioned to breeding the snakes when the wild populations diminished. Thanks to traditional medicine and rice wine products, the village pulled in VND100 billion (US$3.95 million) from snakes and eggs for breeding purposes in 2024. While capturing them in the wild is illegal, according to Vietnamese and international law, farming them is allowed and in 1983, Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng even encouraged the villagers to pursue the industry as a viable income source to alleviate poverty.
Snake hunters in the Mekong Delta. Photo via Roads and Kingdoms.
Unfortunately, illegal king cobra hunting exists in Vietnam as well. Poachers across the country, some belonging to lineages of northern snake farmers, undertake the dangerous, uncomfortable and poorly paid work. The snakes they catch are used for rice wine, medicine and to supply local restaurants, as well as to illegally supplement captive farm stocks. As with many instances of poaching, poverty ultimately impacts wild species, incentivizing individuals who would likely prefer other sources of income were they available.
But perhaps, in honor of the Year of the Snake, we should strip the king cobra of all its associations with humans, removing every artificial layer of myth we’ve draped upon it. Free of the legends and marketing, the fears and fables, it’s a sleek creature that muscle-ribbons through the undergrowth, its Triassic brain pulsing with simple instincts. A crunch of leaves, swish of dirt and crack of a twig, and it's out of sight. It prefers we don’t watch it, anyhow, especially if it has eggs nearby, because king cobras are incredible mothers.
Most snakes will abandon their eggs after laying them, but a few species, including cobras and pythons, will protect and incubate them. King cobra mothers take their parental duties even further by first constructing elaborate nests up to four-foot tall in areas that are carefully selected after assessing sunlight, temperature and water drainage. Female cobras will lay 20 to 40 eggs in the waterproof nests and guard them dutifully for up to four months until they are ready to hatch. Such warm displays of motherly love is not what we first associate with these cold blooded animals, but perhaps we should.
