Backpacking

developed an aversion to budget accomm-odation?

Day 155: 5th July Beer and Pizza

Hanoi, Vietnam

Vietnam has the cheapest beer this side of Beijing (which had a hostel offering two large bottles of Tsing Tao for just seven pence). Here, simply look out for a sign proclaiming "Bia Hoi" (literally "fresh beer", so I'm told). No doubt you'll see the hordes of Vietnamese drinkers sitting on tiny plastic stools spilling out onto the street first. The beer is pulled from a keg into a glass, often with lumps of ice added, hacked violently from a huge block of ice with a meat cleaver. It took me a long time to get used to ice in beer - I hate anything that waters it down - but you come to appreciate anything that keeps your beer from boiling away.

There haven't been enough Dong jokes in this travelog as yet (Dong is the Vietnamese currency). So after you get your dong out - and pay - a bitter-tasting glass of gnat's pee beer is yours, and here's the thing: for the equivalent of Five English Pence. An amount that if you dropped onto the gold-paved streets of London, you may not even bother to stoop to pick up.

And so as night fell on an uneventful day, Noesha and I found a Bia Hoi place and drank a glass each - well, I drank hers as well actually. I'm not actually convinced you can get drunk on the stuff. In fact, I challenge anyone to achieve insobriety before chronic backache sets in from sitting on that shitty colourful plastic stool. Still, it's a Vietnamese institution.

Anyway, we had a date with an all-you-can-eat pizza place. AYCE almost always sounds more appealing than it actually turns out to be, and unfortunately this was no exception. We had the pick of three equally dry pizzas, that made Jacob's Crackers seem positively mouth-watering by comparison. They even made the salad look appealing to me. This is a worrying situation. Still, it was cheap and had the knack of curbing your appetite one way or another.

The extent of my Victor Meldrew-style griping shows how used I had gotten to South East Asian pricing. Had I just arrived here from England, I would be in awe at 5p beer and almost free dry pizza. But with a little bit of searching, and if you get just a little more of your dong out (Strike 2), you can be fed and watered beautifully. Such is the joy of South East Asia, and this is only one of the many reasons why it will pain me to leave.

Let's just hope my Dong stretches far enough to