Bia! Bia! Bia! Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!

Allow me to walk you through the wonderful sights of Saigon.

Bia Hoi, seen above, is basically home brew on a grand national scale and served in 2L plastic bottles.

Here is Damo sampling one of the fine local brews about 500 metres later.

After extensive testing, Damo and I have concluded that Bia Hoi is mainly water, and so comes in at the banter-weight alcohol percentage of about 3%. That means that you don't need to have major fight fitness to kick some serious Vietnamese ass in the ring.

For example, above is a local cyclo, Luong, posing as Superman after a few quiet drinks with us this evening.

Here is a nice little brewski that I was particularly fond of. Note that Bier Hoi is the same at every Bier Hoi stall. It's like Macdonalds, but a more enterprising venture that I'm frankly surprised hasn't taken off internationally.

If Australians could vote in the world record holder for drinking a yard glass of beer as Prime Minister in 1983, surely their tenacity for drinking could bring such a miracle to our girt shores.

And so it would only be right to now introduce myself as Australia's new candidate for the highest office. My canditature speech will consist of a powerpoint of the above (delivered with a bloody good dose of the vietnamese dutch courage), and will feature the following press photo:

Note that as soon as I'm voted in I will sack Alexander Downer, Peter Costello, Amanda Vanstone and Wilson Tuckey, also pictured.

I leave you now to marvel at the wonderful spectacle that is Bia Hoi. It is 12:45am and that Luong guy is showing us around the city in the morning on his cyclo...