drinking in dalat

we've had some really good and really bad drinking here.

first the bad... we asked around and managed to find a bia hoi. they served a locally brewed lager beer for which i can't remember the name. well, regardless of it's real name me and ronda nicknamed it bia ass. the reason is that it smelled like sewer. literally. i was really excited when we found the place and i immediatly ordered a pitcher of beer. we got it and started drinking, and then we realized that it smelled really really bad. at first i thought that the cup and/or pitcher had been washed in sewer water. (not an uncommon practice.) or even that a joke had been played on us by the staff. but the staff was not laughing and the serving ware was not being washed in the gutter. we ended up leaving the rest of the pitcher on the table and going to dinner with the hope that we wouldn't be sick. then the next day, we were on a day trip and went to a small resturant. i ordered a beer with lunch, and low and behold, they brought out a bottle of the same beer. this time i smelled my glass first and realized that it was just the beer that was stinky. it was funny because the beer tasted fine. (most lagers don't have much of a taste in my opinion anyway.) but the damn thing still smelled like rotting shit, which makes it a bit hard to drink.
now onto the good drinking. there's a bar called saigon nite in dalat, and if you're in town you should drop by. the drinks are resonably priced (not bia hoi prices, but resonable) and the owner rocks. i got my ass kicked repeatedly at connect four. i was trying really hard to win and he wasn't even paying attention. i lost about 95 games and tied about 5. (he was actually a few pieces short of a complete connect 4 set and this really helped me tie a few games.) we also played a bunch of connect five, which is completly unlike connect four, and i fared a little better at this. while i was busy getting my ass kicked, ronda discovered his guest book in which many people warned of his "mad connect four skills." a really friendly guy in a pretty low key bar. we stopped by there three times for night caps and ass woopins.