......as my brain slides out my left ear....
I remember generic beer when I was a kid. It looked KINDA like the products in the film Repo Man, but the kind I remember seeing was a yellow label with black lettering. Obviously, being as young as I was at the time, I have noooo idea what it tasted like....
...needless to say, by the time I started drinking beer, the "store-brand" generic beers went the way of the 16¢ candy bar (fiften cents...and a penny for sales tax).
But, upon a recent visit to Big C (a hypermarket in SouthEast Asia.....Fred Meyer/Super Target kinda thing)....found out it's alive and well here in Hai Phong.......
Now, whilst my beers of choice here are Castle Milk Stout and Tiger.....I gotta say, for 4,000 Dong a can (meebee 20 cents USD), it really doesn't taste too bad at all....nothing to make me go "WOW" about, but still.....
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Been playing badminton with my mother-in-law over the past few months. There ain't any racquetball courts anywhere in Vietnam (my energy-expenditure of choice), so this is the best that I can do.
Still, it AIN'T your backyard barbeque dink-dink fun sort of badminton........nawwww.....they take that shit seriously here......and my mother-in-law routinely kicks my ass at this game, it is still amusing to me.....
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.....and, on the driveway to the badminton court, I saw this sign and wondered....can we now call her "Hai Phong Jane"??
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So, you is done playing, and you go back to the local hypermarket to go grab a grill for some Bia Lager Wow and some meat after the match. And you see this....
....and THEN you check out, and you find out that this grill will set you back all of 75,000 Vietnam Dong.......
.....or $4.50USD......
Now, I don't givva shit HOW Chinese or HOW shittily-built this thing is.....for four bucks......come on.....
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Because, after the dinner party, you is gonna go out and have beers later. Never thought, though, that I'd have pints with His Holiness, The Dali Lama!!!
Naw....this was actually a Viet Kieu ("Overseas Vietnamese") guy I met on Nguyen Duc Canh (the street that I live on) who lives in Montreal. Still wonder, though, if he realises that he could have QUITE a gig going sitting out on the sidewalk dispensing wisdom on Rue Sainte Catherine......
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Ya know that your wife/girlfriend/significant other is preggers (or that she's just Vietnamese) when she starts putting sandwiches together containing the peanut butter that you brought back from The States and just introduced her to and some cocktail wieners......
The ingrediants......
The preparation.......
...and the....uhhhh....."reward".....
Now, I gotta admit - I was a bit taken aback by witnessing this. Kinda brought me back to high school parties where we'd dare drunken friends to eat some of the nastiest mixtures that we could come up with.
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And, finally....a fotograff of typical Vietnamese commuting life....
(Actually, they DID take off with five people on there, but they left before I could get that shot).....
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More next week (or thereabouts)....
-E-
