We (me, my wife and a friend of ours, Melina, who is a Singhalese Malaysian living in Singapore and complaining about it all the time) went to Hanoi first. Hanoi is crowded with bicycles, especially, and people riding and walking around all day and night; I'm not sure just what they are doing, but they sure keep busy. All night long they yell and spit in the streets, and seem to be having pretty much a hell of a time.

Of course, what you're really interested in is what they drink. As far as I could tell, the most important beverage in the entire nation is bia ho'i (this last word is pronounced as if you are trying to swallow an oyster while saying it; I think American tongues are incapable of getting it right). Bia ho'i is really just draft beer. It is sold mostly at small stalls in the street, where they put a barrel of beer in a tank or cooler filled with ice, and dispense it with a plastic tube. It's served in glasses that are sort of rinsed in a basin of rather unclean-looking water, but that's part of its charm. Bia ho'i, which generally has no brand name (every time I asked, I was told that it was bia ho'i, and given looks like I was pretty stupid for asking at all), ranges in quality from weak, carbonated dishwater to pretty decent stuff. It's never very strong, though, which is good considering it is consumed from the break of day until it runs out, usually in the early afternoon at the roadside stalls. I saw someone drinking it at 6:30 one morning! Actually, it was the guy drinking beside me at the stall across from my hotel. He insisted that I take a drag from his bazooka-like pipe, from which he was smoking something that tasted sort of like dried weeds.

One of the outstanding features of bia ho'i is the price. Generally, it was about US18-25 cents per glass, or about 35 cents for a litre, which was served in a plastic bottle that looked as if it had recently been holding laundry bleach. In a "cafe" in Nha Trang, I had a hard time communicating how much bia ho'i I wanted, so I just pulled out $1; for this we received two huge plastic jugs of beer which, even with the help of Melina, who is basically a wuss when it comes to drinking anything alcoholic, we couldn't finish. By the way, if you ever visit Nha Trang, you should know that its primary industry seems to involve the large number of pretty young prostitutes plying their trade at the hotels (this is an observation, not a recommendation). We even saw a prostitute supply store, selling fishnet stockings, high heels, cute little sequined dresses, and other assorted hookerwear.

But wait! There's more! In addition to beer, the Vietnamese are quite fond of snake wine, which is just what it sounds like. Huge glass jars are filled with coiled snakes, topped up with rice wine, then allowed to age for a while. As I was told every time I bought some (sure, I drank this stuff! I'll drink almost anything...), "It's good for men!! Heh heh...It makes them...strong...heh heh heh..." It was usually pretty good, and the price ranged from about 20 cents a glass to about $1.50, depending on the poisonousness of the snakes and the gullibility of the buyer (me). The best (and most expensive) snake wine I had was from a little stall in Ho Chi Minh City. The proprietress, who served her snake wine in a teacup (just one, from which every customer drank), had a very pretty young daughter, and when I told her how pretty her daughter was, she replied, "You like her? Drink more snake wine! It's good for men! Heh heh...it makes them...strong! Heh heh heh..." Unfortunately, I couldn't test it out on her daughter, because my wife is pretty old-fashioned about stuff like that, which really puts a damper on things. Wives are like that.

At the Ho Chi Minh City airport, as we were getting ready to leave, I bought myself a quite nice and appropriate souvenir of Vietnam: a bottle of snake wine in a really cool dragon bottle. According to the pamphlet that came with it, it was a made from a recipe given by Chairman Mao to Uncle Ho on his birthday (and I didn't even know they were friends!). Mao told him that it was good for men, and that it would make him strong...strong enough to make love six times a night and father four sons. I can't really tell you if it works or not; my ability to father was surgically altered years ago, and making love six times a night is pretty commonplace for me. Heh heh, heh heh heh....

Dr White teaches at the write to him.