beer drinking

Vietnam: A Hot, Humid Country that Loves Cold Beer

Asia, Business, Travel

Drinking beer is woven into the social fabric of Vietnam. At family affairs and business lunches, impromptu meetings and private karaoke parties, beer flows like water. Cartons of beer — Saigon Special and Bia Hanoi, 333 and Larue, 24 cans to a box — balance in towering store displays and on the backs of motorbikes that careen through swarming traffic en route to their final destinations. A 2022 survey reported that Vietnam’s annual per capita beer consumption is 41.6 liters (over 11 gallons), or about 125 standard-sized cans per person.

There’s More to Romania than Transylvania, Dracula and Ghostly Carpathian Forests

Culture, Europe, History, Travel

Romania conjures mysterious and sinister images of Count Dracula and the Transylvanian forests. The foreboding Bran Castle high in the Carpathian Mountains certainly looks like the location of Irish writer Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s story of vampires rising from their coffins is an invented tale. But in autumn when twilight comes early it’s easy to imagine ghostly spirits of the undead lurking in the shadows.

Yet the Bucharest I saw was a bustling metropolis with museums and traffic jams, wide boulevards and cobblestone streets, good restaurants and late-night clubs. And a handful of lakes and gardens.