The Beer Corner experience is so good I almost don’t want to spoil it for you. But I’ve never really shown any restraint before, and I don’t intend to start now.
Beer Corner is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. So far as I can tell, this is the party district, but we tend not to be out late enough to confirm this. Beer Corner is an intersection with tiny tables and chairs set out on the street that multiply as the evening progresses and it gets busier and busier until the entire intersection is more or less completely filled with tables and chairs and people drinking cold beer and eating fried snacks, including fries and cheese sticks. The tables and chairs are different colors depending on which quadrant of Beer Corner you’re in. The density of tables and chairs and people enjoying beers and snacks on Beer Corner in no way deters the motorbikes from driving down the street.
Here’s what happens when you sit down at a table on Beer Corner:
All at once, you will be surrounded by four or five foxy beer girls wearing outfits that indicate the beer brand they represent all pointing to the part of the menu that lists their beer and yelling at you because this is clearly the most effective way to get you to choose their brand:
“Bia Saigon! Fresh taste! Cold beer!”
“Bia Trúc Bạch! Local beer! You will love it!”
“Tiger Beer! Make more virile and handsome! You order!”
This goes on for about 20 seconds before you order the beer from the foxy beer girl you find foxiest and all the yelling and pointing ceases immediately and the foxy beer girls go back to sort of hanging out and chatting and having a normal day at the office and after which the girl you ordered from is the girl who will bring you beers for the rest of the night. It’s clear that the foxy beer girls are in competition. Maybe there’s some commission involved. But what’s truly amazing is that once the table surrounding and pointing and yelling is over and the beer has been ordered, there are no hard feelings. No one’s at each other’s eyes. Not even close.
And in case you’re one of them judgey types and are looking at the photo thinking, “That foxy beer girl in the red Bia Saigon dress isn’t all that foxy,” you are dead wrong. The photo does justice neither to the foxiness of the foxy Bia Saigon beer girl nor to the cuteness and virility and premium marriageableness of the male she laughed at because he ordered the beers in Vietnamese. In fact, if my wife who still loves me ever stops loving me and leaves, I’m going to marry a woman who yells at me the way this one did.
Also in case you’re reading this and thinking, “That sounds a little aggressive. I don’t think I’d enjoy that,” you are also dead wrong.
The whole Beer Corner experience is amazing. Amazing. And the best part isn’t when it happens to you the first time, which just happens when you first sit down and which can be so overwhelming and confusing you might miss the amazingness of what’s happening. It isn’t even when a new group sits down, first day in country, with no idea of what’s about to transpire, who just want to have a cold beer on a tiny stool, and you get to watch their overwhelmed and confused expressions before they, in a panic, almost, order beers from the foxy beer girl they, as a group, have determined is foxiest. Although, this is, admittedly, pretty enjoyable. No, the best part is when you go back to Beer Corner a second time and can experience the table surrounding and pointing and yelling of the foxy beer girls again like you were never there—there’s no such thing as a regular at Beer Corner: they assume everyone is an FNG—but you have been there and so you are not overwhelmed and confused but are instead primed to take it all in and enjoy the subtle, practically delicate, beer-promotional techniques and maneuvers deployed by the foxy beer girls to persuade you to buy and drink and enjoy their brand. It’s an art.