While drinking cheap Bia Hoi in Hanoi, we had one weird experience that’s worth sharing here.
It was a very trustworthy looking place. Basically a keg in the door to the backyard of a house. Some of the omnipresent small Vietnamese plastic chairs and lots of happy people.
Our group of four settled down on some empty chairs with a cup each and enjoyed the watery drink.
Suddenly everyone around us became very hectic and stood up. In the blink of an eye, all those little chairs vanished – hidden behind the clearly visible keg.
Then a police car came by. The police didn’t seem to mind lots of people standing in front of a keg, drinking beer from plastic cups.
As soon as the police were out of sight, the little plastic chairs were handed out again.
We repeated this little dance a few more times. Whenever police were close, everyone scrambled to hide those chairs. Police gone, chairs were out again. But there was zero effort to hide the drinking or selling of alcohol – only the little plastic chairs had to be hidden from the cops.
I would love to know what kind of silly law we tried to avoid here. Some weird wording in the curfew? Some fine difference between an alcohol shop and a pub? Too bad, no one could tell us (in a language we understand) why hiding the chairs was necessary to please the law.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
