Who'd a thunk? Myanmar has hands-down the best beers in Southeast Asia. Maybe all of Asia. Where most of its equally hot and transportation infrastructure-deficient neighbors liberally utilize preservatives and stick strictly to glass bottles so that a centrally located brewery can ship headache-inducing brews all over the country, Myanmar's several breweries have gone down the opposite path. Myanmar, Dagon, ABC, and a few others, all brew beer locally and sell it by the keg to beer halls around the country, where it's sold by the pint for as little as 50 cents per glass. To a cyclist at the end of a long, hot day, a cool, refreshing brew was a little slice of heaven. I averaged one beer per day over the course of my month in Myanmar.
| Photo courtesy of www.threeruleride.com |  Photo courtesy of www.threeruleride.com |
Photo courtesy of www.threeruleride.com
Any sizeable town in Myanmar has at least one beer hall, like a pub where you can of course down a few brews, but also get good hardy food, and generally lounge around for as long as you want. The beer was always tasty, fresh, and relatively cold, depending on how many hours of electricity a particular town had received that day.
Aside from the standard lagers, there were extra strong lagers, and my favorite, ABC Stout, a totally legit stout that would leave any self-respecting Irishman content.
Below, left: the beer hall people here were kind enough to let us take our beers out onto the street so we could wait for the ladies and flag them down before they rode past. Is Mirek double fisting his brews? No, he is drinking and walking at the same time, bringing me my beer.
Below, right: One of the beer halls even had a small pond out front, where yours truly took an oh-so-refreshing dip to cool down in the afternoon. It was often 50 degrees C/ 120 degrees F in the middle of the afternoon, so for us, finding a way to stay out of the sun and keep cool was vitally important.
 |  Photo courtesy of www.threeruleride.com |
Below: One peculiarity of beer halls (and labor in general) in Myanmar, was the child labor employed. Quite often, beer halls, restaurants, shops, farms, etc, use children for the menial labor jobs, like cleaning, serving, etc. What would be totally illegal in most developing countries is commonplace here. How to feel about this? Obviously it would be better if the children could go to school and get an education, but where that is not available, isn't learning a skill, like how to run a business, the next best thing? I did feel kind of weird being served beers by 10-year olds, but I feel better about that than I do about them wandering the streets with nothing to do. Are they making money for their families? Are most of the children who work in these places relatives of the people who own them? I don't know, but the kids generally seemed pretty happy and on good terms with their employers. And I didn't see a single child downing pints in his free time.
Photo courtesy of www.threeruleride.com
