As informal as it gets, an evening at this street-corner bar in the Old Quarter of Hanoi is a rite of passage for any visitor to the Vietnamese capital. Every night, from sundown to the wee hours, the intersection of Ta Hien and Luong Ngoc Quyen streets bursts to life as locals and tourists take up the sidewalk (and much of the road) to drink dirt-cheap Vietnamese draft beers and shoot the breeze. The beer is decent—and only about 20 cents for a tall glass—but it’s the people-watching (young Hanoi residents and baggy-panted travelers tightly crammed together atop plastic stools) that makes a trip here a memorable occasion.
