Beer!

This one’s for the boys back home. Each of the four pictured brews can be had for 60 cents. The set of three sells for as low as 45 cents, most for 55 cents (but really aren’t worth buying twice). The Chinese beer is made by Tsing Tao. Stella sells in the bars for $1.50, and Guinness and Heineken are less than a buck for a can in the supermarket. You can get Bud, but I haven’t even bothered to look at the price. Available also is a nice local stout, ABC Stout, with 8% alcohol. And Chinese and Japanese beer that we can get in Canada is also available. So far no sign of the Speckled Hen.

I haven’t made it there yet, but there is a brewpub, run by a guy who trained at the Tsing Tao brewery in China. He has four categories of beer, designated by a colour code system; the lightest is made with kelp (seaweed, for you landlubbers) and the strongest is described as not a bad approximation of Guinness. Will give you a full update after I’ve been. This may be soon. While Anna-Marie has no interest in exploring a brewpub, she met a Canadian on the street the other day, with a PhD is philosophy and a passion for hockey. I get as excited by hockey as Anna-Marie does by beer, but a group of ex-pats play street hockey once a week in the evening; and they must go somewhere for suds after. I hope to hook up with them—near the end of a game—and champion the brewpub. The concept of playing anything on the streets here is dumbfounding (see my posting on Traffic).

And on the topic of intoxicants, we have yet to encounter the (perhaps, semi-mythical) Happy Pizza, which has a layer of marijuana under the cheese. I’m going to the Canadian Embassy this afternoon on other business, and will ask after it.