Ha Noi proposes ban on warm beer halls in VietNam

Beer, cigarette...
Vietnam streets are covered with both.
If you want a unpolluted atmosphere, just stay home 
I remember that the cigarette smoking is banned in public places. Is that lifted?

In the UK you are not allowed to smoke in a bar, you have to go outside. This is a problem when it is very cold and wet, so alot of the bars or pubs as we call them lost a lot of cuctom.

Yeah, many countries already tighten the law against tobacco usage. Cigarette  and beer will bring a good revenue in the treasury!

Jaitch wrote:

An official at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, NGUYEN Phu Cuong, in Ha Noi, is trying to outlaw the sale of beer in bars with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius in a bid to "protect consumers".

This was a headline in today's Independent of Britain today.

Nguyen proposed the regulation last Wednesday which, if imposed would hit the country's popular beer parlours hard.

Many Vietnamese drinkers think the move shows how out of touch the ministry is with the outdoor bar scene.

"The rules are not realistic," engineer NGUYEN Van Dan retorted. "They just can't force us to drink beer in air-conditioned rooms."

Another drinker TRAN Ngoc Son added that drinking beer in outdoors restaurants was just the "culture" in Vietnam.

"We just enjoy our beer at outdoor parlours much better than in air-conditioned places," he added over a beer and beef with peanuts. "We don't need the government to take care for our health."

VietNam has the most beer drinkers per capita in Southeast Asia, consuming 3 billion litres of the stuff last year.

Ba, Ba!

What a crock of shit, I drank thousands of Lts of warm beer during my mis-spent  youth, and it never affected me, ( or did?, I'm still living in VN ), car accidents, fights , cirrhosis of the liver, etc, will happen no matter what the temperature is.
Vn's seem very proud of this consumption figure, however they forget the population is 90 mil , and tourists/ex pats/illegal workers, etc, drink shitoads as well?

Jeff Brewster wrote:

In the UK you are not allowed to smoke in a bar, you have to go outside. This is a problem when it is very cold and wet, so alot of the bars or pubs as we call them lost a lot of custom.

IN Aus now , it is an offence, ( and rightly so ), to smoke in a car with kids in it.
The problem with smokers going outside for smoke breaks all the time, is the lost work time, and now many non smokers also go out, why should they have to keep working?, although this defeats the whole purpose of the ban?

What they should outlaw is putting ice in beer. Thats a crime. Anyone cought doing this evil act should be punished. Made to drink warm coca cola for a month.

The posts above show how silly the proposed law is.

Fights, accidents, drunken driving, smoking related health problems, and everything else, but you can't get above 30 degrees in a tropic country whilst killing yourselves.

Jeff Brewster wrote:

What they should outlaw is putting ice in beer. Thats a crime. Anyone caught doing this evil act should be punished. Made to drink warm coca cola for a month.

Haha, but then VN's couldn't boast about how much " beer " they can drink.
I watched a session at a wedding once, after a few hours they stopped drinking, then drank that green tea shit for a while, then started drinking again, WTF?
When I drank, it was like going on a mission, ( NZ rural culture of the 70's- 80's, to get pissed, try and keep the car on the road, and most of all, not get caught pissed driving, which meant many hours of enjoyable, back road driving ).

Jeff Brewster wrote:

Made to drink warm coca cola for a month.

Cruel and unusual punishment?

I hope the no ice in beer idea does not catch on here in Laos. 
No other way of cooling it down otherwise in the back blocks, and warm beer is even worse than warm coca cola

stumpy wrote:

I hope the no ice in beer idea does not catch on here in Laos. 
No other way of cooling it down otherwise in the back blocks, and warm beer is even worse than warm coca cola

They have ice already, so why don't they use those polystyrene boxes, ( poor mans Esky ),  they are very cheap.

bluenz wrote:

stumpy wrote:

I hope the no ice in beer idea does not catch on here in Laos. 
No other way of cooling it down otherwise in the back blocks, and warm beer is even worse than warm coca cola

They have ice already, so why don't they use those polystyrene boxes, ( poor mans Esky ),  they are very cheap.

They do but ice is not cheap so better to put it in the drink than just use it to try and cool the beer down. My wife used to get ice only 3 times a week in large 20 kg blocks which she stored in a bin of sawdust. The ice came from an ice factory which filtered the water. Other places used Mekong water. A bit disconcerting to see bits in the ice along with a muddy color.

stumpy wrote:

bluenz wrote:

stumpy wrote:

I hope the no ice in beer idea does not catch on here in Laos. 
No other way of cooling it down otherwise in the back blocks, and warm beer is even worse than warm coca cola

They have ice already, so why don't they use those polystyrene boxes, ( poor mans Esky ),  they are very cheap.

They do but ice is not cheap so better to put it in the drink than just use it to try and cool the beer down. My wife used to get ice only 3 times a week in large 20 kg blocks which she stored in a bin of sawdust. The ice came from an ice factory which filtered the water. Other places used Mekong water. A bit disconcerting to see bits in the ice along with a muddy color.

Yes, that's why I avoid ice in small country restaurants/coffee shops, etc, , been sick twice , but of course the VN's I was with never got sick. I wouldn't even drink the bore water up here, far too many septic tanks everywhere now. Good business to be in, is selling filtered water.

If i go to a place that hasent got cold beer, i dont stay. Im not waiting 20 minutes to chill the beer in a bucket of ice water. I dont put ice into a beer, ive seen ice being cut up on dirty floors, and people with filthy hands handling it. Apart from that it waters it down and tastes like piss. In some places its easyer to score heroin than get a cold beer. Not that i take it but i have been offered it many many times. Ive seen loads of people jacking up outside, not even being discreat. So i think the goverment have got thier priorites mixed up.

Warm beer? How very British!

Seriously 'Thanks!' for two business ideas already on my list of biz ideas for landing in VN. 

I don't want to sound like an American a-hole [ok, maybe no way to avoid that one] but ice cold beer?...well ice cold drinks?...seems to be an N. American thing as I don't find much obsession with cold drinks in Central or S. America....chilled..not exactly warm....maybe put in a moutain stream for 30 minutes...it's about all you can expect in Cololombia as kitchen fridges tend to be small and I never see beer stored in home fridges.   In my restaurant in Colombia we had to hold back a small amout of beverage bottles at room temperature four old timers who grew up with no refregiration and they will not drink a chilled beverage.  In my pueblo in Central Colombia you cannot buy commercial ice, not available anywhere.  In fact, recently when to a big shindig weekend party with bunch of folks and visited a very large supermarket in Medellin to buy our contribute booze, snacks, meats, etc.  I wanted to buy some ice to chill the cheese for the car trip as I already had an insulated bag with me... the huge supermarket had a total of 5 5lbs. backs of ice for sale. So things are surely different in other countries and it's just something to get used to or work your own solution.

On the other hand, I think that a beer chilled to 34 degrees gets slammed like a head into a turnbuckle of a WWF wrestler and a second asked for within 30 seconds.   A warm beer....geez... going to take me at least 30 minutes to finish that POS just to be polite to the host and then find an excuse to leave ASAP to find a cold one.