The Vietnamese 'Pub'

Just down the road from our hotel were a few 'bia hơi' (draught beer) joints.  These are basically the Vietnamese version of a pub where patrons sit on small plastic chairs and armies of waiters/waitresses bring glasses of beers drawn from kegs.  The beer is made daily and each place receives a fresh batch delivered by vans.  The most popular places can sometimes run out of beer before late evening, at which point bottled beer is the way to go.

There are menus of drinking dishes and the atmosphere is basically rowdy with the beers kept flowing by eagle-eyed staff who make sure everybody is drinking whilst ticking up each table's beer count.  The beer itself tastes quite light and is served cold (unlike most bottled beers here which are served with separate ice) with the strength being between 3-4% alcohol.

In some places the stuff is watered down to make the beer stretch further but at VND3000-5000 per glass it doesn't matter that much.  Just be prepared for the toilets.  Ladies will generally have to make do with the old style squat toilet in these places.  Predictably, the toilets become fairly fragrant as the night wears on and aim becomes merely estimation.

We started in the early evening and ordered several dishes to go with the beers which were replaced as soon as they were looking empty.  Food at these places vary from grilled meats which are served with vegetables and herbs to be wrapped up in rice paper, to stir-fried dishes and also things like tortoise, snails and frogs legs.  All are categorised as 'đồ nhậu' which is simply drinking food.

As it became dark, people came and went and workers joined the ranks of drinkers to wind down after a hard day's toil.  We got talking to a couple of guys who worked at some hotels in the area and they were keen to show off their English which was passable.  They were relatively well off for Vietnamese as they shunned the glasses of beer everybody else was drinking for the more expensive bottled beer.

Here, the various ways of showing off status includes what you drink.  If 'bia hơi' is low in the beer pecking order, next comes local bottles, then local cans, whilst more expensive export cans sit at the top.  Beyond that are the obviously luxurious bottles of wine, champagne and spirits to be found in western style restaurants and upmarket hotels.

While we drank the local brew and spoke Vietnamese, our look and the cameras dangling around our necks made our tourist credentials obvious.  The friendly staff asked us where we were from and how it was that we could speak the language.  The two guys we'd met spoke to us about life and working conditions.  They were curious about life in the west and were surprised about the social benefits in place.  Things are slightly different in Vietnam in that they don't really exist.  They told us that people had no choice but to accept how things were and to get on with trying to make a living from whatever they could do.

As we drank into the night, a local police van pulled up outside and announced on megaphones (all the police have megaphones here) that the pavement was to be cleared.  Everybody jumped up; some followed us inside and others to move their illegally parked scooters, as the staff hurriedly stacked up the plastic tables and chairs and closed the doors.  A waitress explained that they were only allowed to use the pavements between certain hours which were enforced as and when the police chose.

After a few moments of drinking up time and settling tabs, everybody was ushered out.  The hotel guys offered us a quick lift back down the road and we jumped on for our first weaving scooter rides in Hanoi which my brother managed to capture one-handed!