So we were dropping of my dry cleaning (yup, in Hanoi I'm fancy enough to have dry cleaning). We spotted a bar next door that we've driven by many times and never seen. It would be a 'hole-in-the-wall' bar in the US. Here it is a nice little joint and far bigger than the hole-in-the-wall places which actually are a hole with road-side/in-road seating.
Why are you mentioning this Jeff?
Thanks for asking.
There was a huge keg in the bar. It looked more like where they ferment the beer. The tap was labeled as Fresh Beer but it wasn't the same stuff that they sell at Bia Hoi. It was malty and tasted like ... real beer!
Look at that nice brown beer in my Kansas glass. The bottle is how you get a liter to-go. At first we thought it was just a re-used bottle. Here is the lid:
Custom made!
This is starting to sound sarcastic, but this truly is good beer.
It is even better tasting because even the imported beer here is terrible. You can either pay 8,000VND for local beer (330ml) or 68,000VND (500ml) for imported beer that tastes the same or 30,000VND (330ml) for Heineken which we all know tastes like minty garbage.
1 liter of Fifth Ocean, fresh from the tap to your own plastic bottle: 100,000VND.
Now that we can just pop a bottle of beer onto our bikes and head home, it is a good time to mention bikes...
I'm done renting a little semi-auto Honda Wave. I bought myself a manual Honda Win. It needs some work, but it runs fine. For what I paid, I don't mind putting a few bucks into it. More importantly, I now own a motorbike (sorry mom).
-Jeff
