Bia hơi in Ha Long Bay

Luckily Kristina had read something about the northern Vietnamese tradition of bia hơi, otherwise we might have missed this great local beer custom. Bia hơi (bia for beer, hơi for gas) is a type of local draft beer brewed daily and delivered to small bars and street corners (needless to say, it’s not subject to any oversight or official health standards). It cost us about 25 US cents for a glass, so you can understand that this is pretty much what the locals drink (for comparison a can of beer in a bar might normally run around 1-2 dollars).

In any case, we had an amazing time at two local bia hơi in Ha Long City. The first was run by a mother and daughter where the mom snuck herself a glass while she explained with a wink that the daughter kept a close eye on the inventory (of course all of our communication was in sign language so that’s really just our interpretation). At the second street bar, we sat on kid size plastic chairs and had a nice “conversation” with some locals (mechanics possibly) just off work. They poured us beers from their mini keg, insisted we pound a couple of glasses with them, shared some food, and the oldest guy explained (also in sign language) that he had learned some English when he was little but had since forgotten it all. However, after another beer, he remembered “thank you very much”. Amazing how you can manage to meet people and have a fun time when this sentence is the only point of common understanding. Or maybe it’s just the bia hơi talking.