Cheap Beer in Somalia: Website Lists Prices of Pints Around the World

Air travel is becoming more affordable and places that had been shut off from the rest of the world are opening up – like the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan for example, or Hamilton, Ontario Canada. But what good is visiting another country unless we know beforehand exactly how much a pint of beer will cost when we get there? Thankfully, UK tabloid The Sun helpfully directed the attention of its readers today to www.pintprice.com, a website that allows users to find out the price of a pint of suds in various places around the world.

The website also lists the countries with the cheapest and most expensive ales in the world. Unfortunately, the cheapest beer, 10p (20 cents) a glass, is to be found in places to which your travel insurance is unlikely to extend, like the Congo and Somalia or locales so inaccessible that even the natives have forgotten how their ancestors made the trip originally like Tuvalu in the Pacific Islands. Monaco tops the list of countries that we’ll never visit – there a pint of beer is over US$15.

Planning a summer getaway? Here are some other average pint prices from around the world:

• Go to Cuba (unless you’re an American and not Michael Moore) and celebrate the recent lifting of restrictions that kept locals out of Cuban hotels and beaches by toasting those no longer treated like second-class citizens in their own country with a $2 pint.
• Former Maoist rebels recently won an election in Nepal and many believe that former King Gyanendra might seek asylum in India because he fears for his life. A jar of jam can be had in Kathmandu for $2.05.
• The junta in Myanmar (Burma) will be holding a nationwide referendum on its constitution in May with many critical of whether the Army is truly capable of allowing democracy in a land it’s ruled with an iron fist for so many years. A glass of the good stuff there will set you back a mere 62 cents.
• An official from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran, Iran today to find answers after Western intelligence reports suggested that the country had been secretly studying how to make nuclear bombs. The average price of a pint of the amber elixir in that country is $7.71.
• Pope Benedict has returned to Vatican City after a goodwill tour in the US. A glass of hops in the Holy See goes for $3.30.
• Oh, and Bhutan, along with being the world’s newest democracy, is also home to some cheap booze – the average price of a pint there is $0.73.