Mist hangs in the air, thickening into the distance. Ferns the size of streetlamps loom up and hang down in the mountain jungle. Green, waxy leaves bigger than elephant ears obscure what the fog cannot. The light drizzle falling through the sky is filtered by the canopy into slower, fatter drops that drip into puddles, ripple, and disappear. Drip. Drip. Drip. It is the only sound. Nothing stirs.

A swishing of leaves interrupts the stillness. It’s coming from deeper in the valley and is growing steadily louder. The swishing sound is overtaken by the thudding of footfalls on stone. Two pairs, three pairs, more pairs. Louder still. Soon they’re so close that a great huffing and puffing can be heard. The wheezing and thumping crashes through the underbrush, knocking fern and leaf aside.

“I should’ve brought my inhaler,” Matt mumbles.

Omar leads in front of him, the tico having no problem with the temperature or the hike up the mountain. Thibault and Wallis bring up the rear as the group treks up Cat Ba Island in the south of Halong Bay. Matt is the only one breathing heavily.

“It’s like Jurassic Park out here,” Wallis observes, her voice as awestruck as if she had seen real dinosaurs.

They continue on their way, the steps getting steeper, the easy flats between them coming less and less frequently. They pass a young couple, waylaid on their journey by the woman’s choice of footwear. Who the hell wears short heels on a nature hike?

There’s no time for the four backpackers to stop and check if everything’s okay, however; Sergeant Snaggletooth has commanded they be back to the bus by 11am. Assuming about the same time spent getting back as going out, they have fifteen minutes before they have to turn around, lest they be ‘left behind’. Fucking Snaggletooth.

“What’s the hold-up?” Matt asks Omar when he stops his steady pace.

Their shirts are soaked through and shorts nearly so. It’s uncertain where the sweat ends and the 105% humidity begins. Omar wipes the forehead where his curls once danced. Damply, they now plaster his face, drooping over his eyes. He leans to the side and points above them, shaking his head.

They’ve reached the final part of the trail, which is more vertical than horizontal. The winding trail has given way to iron ladders bolted into the skin-shreddingly porous crags ahead. Vines and tree trunks explore crevices in the rocks all around, obscuring all but the next few feet at a time. Still, it’s obvious that the ladders are decrepit and rusty. Brown holes eat through the metal completely in some areas. Thank god for tetanus shots.

Omar is pointing to the scene in front of them. A local guide is ushering a group of middle-aged Australians along the ledges. They yelp when they slip and he helps catch them, then they joke about their lack of athleticism. They inch upwards, gripping the railing with each tottering step. Matt’s not one to talk, having only just recently regained his breath, but they’re on a strict timetable. And with the narrow path through the haze being a series of broken ladders and razor-sharp chutes into the abyss below, it’s single file up to the top.

Matt checks his watch, watching the other group dally.

Thibault looks up at them with the same slight scowl. “Come on, guy…” he murmurs.

After the stop-and-go traffic, they make it to the top. They break through the clouds to find themselves perched on an emerald crest amid similar waves of greenery. In every direction the be-jungled heaps ripple into the distance. Perhaps best of all, better than the view, a cool– no, cold breeze tickles goosebumps up their arms and necks. Their faces dry. The backpackers exchange grins.

It’s fleeting, though, this scenery and the wind’s caress, because they need to head back. They leave the Aussies to their selfies and cheer on other hikers making the ascent, assuring them the summit is worth the climb.

At the base of the ladders, a pair of young women chat deploringly about the impending verticality of their trek. Their sleeveless shirts droop down to expose their lacy bras, their long blonde hair is somehow frizzless in the humidity, and their faces pop with the the gentle shades of makeup, an unnecessary luxury for most backpackers (especially on a hike). They point and chatter in French.

Thibault stops briefly to let them know it’s not long to the top, maybe thirty more meters, tops, all in French.

“You speak French?!” one of the young women sputters.

“Yes,” he says in English, “I am from France.”

They look at him as though expecting more. He merely looks back at them. One of the girls frowns. Thibault turns without so much as a shrug and continues down the path. The girls stare and then they, too, continue their hike. Wallis watches the whole exchange, her grin growing. Everyone is silent. She sees Thibault go, turns back to Omar and Matt, and bursts out laughing.

“Dude, what just happened? Why didn’t you talk to them?” Matt asks after catching up with the Frenchman. He looks back up the trail in time to see their not-even-to-the-thigh shorts disappear around the bend, “They were cute!”

“Eh, whatever, guy. Back home, in a club, these girls, girls like this, they do not talk to me at all unless I buy drinks. But out here they now want to talk? They want to make friend? I do not care, I am not here for this.”

“Sure, but at least you could get their number, or meet up with them tonight, or something.”

“Eh. I do not care.” Thibault adjusts his grey baseball cap, shadowing his face, dismissing the conversation.

“I love it!” Wallis cheers and picks her way between small boulders and rain-slick steps.

Matt sighs, but Thibault seems to know what he’s doing. After all, he had booked bungalows on the beachfront for tonight (as had Wallis, completely separately). Matt and Omar haven’t, but at Pizza Chris’ recommendation, they’re thinking maybe they should reconsider.

When they get to the bottom of the hillside they meet up with their minibus. It’s 10:58, right on time.

Snaggletooth is sitting under a blue tarped lean-to playing cards with some locals. “We wait… Thirty minute,” Snaggletooth informs them.

“What?!” Matt bursts out, re-dampened from the hike down.

“Incroyable [Incredible],” Thibault huffs and stalks over to a nearby coffee stand. He throws himself into one of the chairs and tosses his too-damp cap on the table.

Wallis saunters over after him. Omar looks at Matt. Right, they have another item on the agenda.

“So we were thinking,” Matt starts, pushing his displeasure of being rushed from the summit for no reason aside for the moment, “maybe instead of staying at the hotel in town tonight we could stay at the bungalows on the beach instead.”

Snaggletooth Timmy purses his lips in thought, without a doubt tonguing the errant tooth from whence he draws his power. “Hmmmm…” He stands up, sticks a hand out from his rain shelter to see if the grey sky has stopped drizzling (it has) and sneaks a look back at his imploring tourists. “Hmmmm…”

Ole Snaggs reaches into his pocket which opens a tiny wormhole to the year 2000. He pulls out a flip phone and punches in a number, gesturing for the two to sit down with the other pair. The damp backpackers all stew at the fold-up table set up under a plastic tarp. They warm up with hot coffee and wait.

“Okay,” he says walking over, phone in one hand, the other tapping his lips, “two people, one night, sixty dollar.”

“Sixty dollars?! Thirty dollars for a single night? We paid seventy-five for this whole trip!” Matt’s frustrations come rushing back. “Come on, maybe fifteen each.”

But the tour guide won’t haggle, he won’t budge as they work their way up to twenty, then offers of twenty-five. They ask for other options, they ask for maybe a shared bed or a cot in Thibault or Wallis’ room. It’s just one night! Thibault tries arguing on their behalf, but this serves only to disgust the guide. In a whirlwind of Vietnamese and disapproving broken English they’re ushered onto the bus, their moods as dour as the weather outside.

Half an hour later at the clean, but sparse, hotel they reconsider.

“You know, we’re only here for tonight and then we go home, so we might as well splurge on a beach view,” Matt admits. “And it’s only thirty dollars, which is crazy for out here, but back home that wouldn’t be so bad, right?”

Omar nods once, then again more decisively. They turn to their guide.

“Alright, we’ll do the thirty dollars deal.”

“No,” Snaggletooth tells them.

“No? But we’ll do it, thirty each.”

“No, is too late.”

“It’s been like thirty minutes! What do you mean it’s ‘too late’?!”

“No,” Timmy waves them off. His scowl from earlier reappears. “Too late now!”

“You’re being such a dick!”

The guide’s scowl deepens and he rattles off a string of Vietnamese. It doesn’t sound nice.

“And where is my hat?!” Thibault jumps in to accuse the tour guide and his card-playing buddies of stealing his hat. It’s been missing since they were escorted onto the bus from the hike.

Their guide denies the accusation, naturally, but after almost twenty minutes more of arguing, he admits that yes, he saw one of the men steal the hat from the table at the coffee stand while they were haggling over the bungalows. No, Thibault can’t go back and get it now, he needs to get on the bus to the beach. Or did he want to forfeit his night there?

The Frenchman smolders, dancing between English and French in his disgust. “Everywhere I go in this country is terrible!” He throws up his hands and let’s loose a tirade of unintelligible French. Then he points a finger at Timmy. “You, you are horrible. You are uncivilized! I will rent a bike and go myself!”

The other tourists are really paying attention now, though they’ve been tuning in since the shouting started. They sit in fold-out chairs and watch over their smartphones and books.

To placate the Frenchman and avoid more of a scene, the guide promises to get Thibault his hat back the next day, if he would only be quiet and get on the bus to the beach.

* * *

“But Thibault never got his hat back,” Matt tells Lily the next evening.

He and Omar are standing in her brightly colored office in The Old District of Hanoi once again. They’re going into all of the issues instigated by Snaggletooth to the usually-smiling, currently-frowning face of their travel agent.

Lily looks like she’s about to cry in her empathy of the situation as they tell her that on the first night, Omar and a few others had to sleep on another boat. It was a mostly decrepit junker that pulled up alongside them at port as their guide commanded, over and over, that those chosen to move had to grab all their stuff and go.

“It was not the worst thing in the world,” Omar says, shaking his head, “but it’s not what you expect. It’s not what we paid for. He was very rude.”

Lily had known this was coming, though; Matt had sent her WhatsApp messages from the hotel the prior evening, letting her know he’d be stopping by to go into more detail.

“And staying at the hotel wasn’t terrible,” Matt admits. “I ended up DJ’ing at one of the bars in town for a while.”

* * *

“Nice job with the music, man!” a young man holding a pool cue calls out in a surfer drawl.

“Thanks!” Matt high fives him, having just returned from the nextdoor alley.

“But what’s up with this gay shit now?”

Matt listens and realizes that the music playing is not how he left it and rushes up to the desktop computer at the bar that’s connected to the sound system.

“Why do you keep putting on these horrible songs?” Matt asks, pushing his co-DJ, Lee, out of the way.

“It’s important to have variety!” Lee defends. Lee is another tourist on Snaggletooth Timmy’s Death Tour, albeit one that Matt hasn’t spent much time with yet. He’s British, but lives in mainland China these days, and it seems the extended expatriation has destroyed the tall, boney man’s sense of taste.

Matt stops whatever Marvin Gaye song the Brit has chosen and switches to the next song they have queued. It’s “One Style Closer”. Matt smirks as one of his choices comes on.

“No, it’s important not to make people wonder if we’ve gone insane, it’s important to stick to our playlist, and it’s important to literally never play Marvin Gaye at a bar at–” Matt checks his watch, “at eleven fifteen.”

Lee tries to argue the point, but he’s pushed out of the way by a small crowd of other bar patrons.

“Where’s my Taylor Swift?!” one girl pouts over the sound of the Linkin Park/”Gangnam Style” mash-up.

“I told you, she’s terrible. Veto!” Matt dismisses her, pointing to the next patron.

“What about mine?” asks the guy who had asked for a trap song.

Matt has been soliciting the bar’s patrons for their favorite songs to play for the better part of the last two hours. He’s DJ Democracy, bringing a shred of popular representation to the communist barbarians (or at least their playlists). But of course, he’s reserved the right to veto.

“It’s in…” Matt checks the queue of Youtube tabs in the computer’s browser (which is the only piece of equipment they have for playing music), “two more songs.”

“But it’s been forever!”

“It has not been forever, it has been three songs and however many times this guy,” he shoots Lee a look, “snuck in “Let’s Get It On” while I was finding the bathroom.”

He hadn’t found it; after a fruitless search through the various storage rooms in the back of Rose Bar, Matt had settled on the alley.

“It was only one song!” the impeached co-DJ sputters.

“Taylor Swift isn’t terrible!” the girl cuts in.

“Play Imagine Dragons again!” someone calls out over both of them.

“Let’s do another Caravan Palace!” yet another shouts.

It’s like playing whack-a-mole except the moles are drunk and you’re not allowed to actually hit them. Maybe all of those communist dictators aren’t so wrong after all.

Matt drains the rest of his bottle.

* * *

“You said there would be free beer when we got back…?” The American asks Lily. Complaining is thirsty work.

“Yes, yes!” She nods vigorously and rushes to her mini-fridge. “Here, take two!” She hands over the cans. “And what is the name? Your guide?”

“Oh, Snaggletoo– I mean Timmy,” Matt says, cracking open his beer.

Lily still looks confused.

“Right, there are like, hundreds of boats and dozens of tour guides. He… he has a third tooth? Right here.” He points in his mouth.

“Ah!” She tries to hide her smile, embarrassed at this identification. “I know him. Yes, yes. Thank you. You want more beer?”

* * *

“And that’s how I got the free beer!” Matt concludes to his audience in the Hanoi Backpackers dorm room later that evening. “Though I’m sure it’s not as good as the bungalow was.”

Wallis shakes her head. “Seriously, for how shitty Timmy was, even Thibault was all smiles after the bungalows on the beach.” She’s lounging on her bottom bunk, playing with her phone and chiming in to add to the story where appropriate.

They’ve since separated from Omar and Thibault, the others having arranged other accommodations/travel destinations. Now they’re settling into their new beds and meeting their next round of friends. Billy is by far the most… interesting of them.

“You gotta check out Koh Rong, down in Cambodia,” he tells them in a thick Australian accent. Cam-bohd-ya. “It’sa island and it’s beautiful, mate. I bet it’s just as good as these bung’lows, eh? Heaps better, even!” He cups his mouth like he’s sharing a secret, but doesn’t bother dropping his voice. “I bet your bung’lows didn’t have shrooms and weed at every restaurant.”

That gets the reaction he was looking for.

Billy laughs. “Oh yeah! Sure! You just sit there and when they bring you the menu you look ‘em in the eye and ask, you gotta look ‘em right in the eye, and ask for the secret menu. That’s got all the drug stuff on it.”

“Is it any good?”

“Any good?! Mate, I was tripping all day and all night!” He screws his face up and looks at the ceiling for a second. “I did drink a second mushroom shake around sunset, so it’s not crazy.”

Because that’s not crazy.

Billy’s still looking up, lost in the memory. He rubs his chin, from which hair spreads across his jawline, but never touches his rounded cheeks and barely throws a shadow on his upper lip. One day a few months ago he just stopped shaving and now lets the patchiness breed and multiply as it wishes, like the street dogs of the city. Billy and Matt had high-fived about beards within seconds of meeting.

The Australian isn’t thinking about beards right now, though; he only has thoughts of Koh Rong. “That place is wonderful, mate. It gave me feelings.”

“What do you mean ‘it gave you feelings?’” Matt asks.

“You know, feelings. Like, I was walking along the beach and the sun was shining and I just felt, like, happy? Like, in my chest, I felt happy? You don’t get that every day, you know.”

“Sure,” Matt concedes, not really sure what he’s agreeing to, “but you feel something almost every day, right? Like not always that real happiness, but something.”

“Noooo,” Billy scoffs. Preposterous! “Feelings every day? Back home I’d go weeks, months without really feeling anything sometimes!”

“That can’t be true!” Wallis objects.

“Yeah, you went weeks without feeling mad, happy, sad, excited? Like, nothing?”

“Nah,” Billy scratches his head, “I reckon that’d be exhausting!”

The pair from Halong Bay share a look.

“Mate– I mean dude,” the American corrects himself, “I don’t think I go a single day without something. That’s like the color of the world. Seeking out real happiness, that’s like, part of real motivation in life.”

Wallis is nodding, but Billy is looking at him like he’s admitted to enjoying eating dog meat (which is a story for another day).

“Come on,” Matt tries. “What’s your average day like? I mean before you were traveling.”

“I dunno. I guess I’d just sit around and drink or smoke all day. Never all them feelings you’re talking about.”

“That… sounds a lot like being depressed, man. I’m not trying to judge here, but are you sure you’re okay?”

Billy laughs and his curly brown hair chuckles with him. He insists he’s not depressed, just different. “I’m a bogan, mate. It’s who we are.”

“A bogan?” Matt had heard the term before, but couldn’t hurt to get another explanation.

“Yeah!” He grins. His face is like watching a time lapse of a forest through the seasons. Smiles come, grow, are ditched for grimaces and scowls, and traded once again for an even goofier grin than before. Again and again. “We like to drink, be loud, be Australia, mate! I even have a tattoo!” His grin stays still for the moment, but his eyebrows waggle. “Wanna see?”

“Sure?”

Billy pulls his singlet (Australian for tanktop) up over his head to reveal a pale and slightly pudgy torso criss-crossed with tattoos. He turns around and on his back, in calligraphy reads ‘Bogan’ almost shoulder to shoulder. It’s written on a banner that’s being spread by birds. Across the main part of his back, using something like a square foot of continuous ink, he displays the Australian flag.

“That’s… actually pretty impressive,” Wallis says on inspection.

“Right?!” He pulls his shirt back on, still grinning.

“I didn’t think ‘bogan’ was a good word, though? Like being called a redneck, no? I thought people didn’t like being called it?” Matt asks.

“Nah! Bogan and proud of it!”

And that’s just who Billy the Bogan is. He’s big, he’s in your face, and he’ll never apologize. That’s not just a written observation, that’s a direct quote.

He joins up with Wallis, Matt, and a few others from the hostel to sit in the narrow-for-cars-but-fine-for-motorbikes alley and drink cheap bottles of Beer Hanoi, the local Chang equivalent. He and Matt vie for being the loudest in flagging down more groups of backpackers to come sit with them and join the conversation.

The circle grows until there are maybe twenty-five backpackers from around the world doing what backpackers do best: sharing stories of their travels. They’re too rowdy for one conversation, so they cluster into fours and fives.

“It still hasn’t happened,” Billy’s telling a group of guys. “I haven’t fucked anyone in Hanoi yet, and I make a point of at least one girl in each country. But none here.” He shrugs and bugs out his eyes.

“You mean like, local girls?” Matt asks.

“Mmmm,” Billy squints in distaste. “Other backpackers, English teachers, whatever, but I don’t really go for local girls.”

“And how long do you travel? In Vietnam?” a neighboring Spaniard asks. He’s on a two-month tour of the area before going home and working for IBM again.

Billy swigs his beer before answering. “Like, two, three weeks.” He burps. “I’m actually leaving tomorrow with Ulrik over there,” Billy points to a thin, well-groomed young traveler at the other end of the circle. “I’m sure I’ll find someone. Beats sleeping in an alley.”

Again, Matt rises to the bait. “Come on, you’re not serious.”

“I am! I am! I’ve slept in an alley here once, and in Cambodia and the rest of Vietnam… four, no five times?”

“Aren’t you worried about someone stealing your stuff? Or knifing you or something?”

“Nahhh. Never had nothing stolen so far.” Billy the Bogan believes in an ‘act now, plan never’ approach to life. He stands up gracelessly. “I’m getting a báhn mì [a Vietnamese sandwich consisting of a baguette loaded with pâté, veggies, and sometimes meat]. See yas later!”

* * *

“Have you seen Billy?” Wallis asks Matt as they leave the hostel the next morning.

Stefanie, a youthful elementary school teacher from Austin, traipses with them. She’s on vacation in Southeast Asia and it’s the last day of her two week jaunt (though she’s wishing she could stay longer). She’d met the Timmy’s Death Tour survivors the night before, so she’s aware of Billy and his… boganicity.

“Oh, no. I haven’t seen him since I went off after him for a báhn mì too, but couldn’t find him,” Matt says.

“I don’t think he came back last night. Ulrik was looking for him and seemed kinda pissed.”

“Looks like he spent another night in the alleys†.”

“I hope he’s alright…”

“He’s probably fine.”

Last night had been warm and today is no less lovely. They put thoughts of the Aussie out of their mind and make their way to one of the city’s parks. A fountain burbles among neat stone trails that wind between patches of the recently mowed grass. Actual butterflies zag through the air and old men cluster around board games. It’s a beautiful oasis in an otherwise uncivilized–

“Đi đi! [Go away!]” a Vietnamese woman shouts.

Matt jumps, having not noticed her squatting on the short stone wall fifteen feet to his left.

He starts to apologize, not understanding what she said, but she’s not looking at him. She’s shouting into the empty air in front of her and making angry gestures. The woman waves the imaginary interloper off and grabs a half-liter bottle of something definitely alcoholic and empties it into a small plastic cup. She doesn’t stop scowling for an instant as she gulps it down, and her appearance would indicate that she’s been drinking for a while. Her yellow-and-blue t-shirt is scuffed with dirt and grime and her blue-and-yellow gym shorts complete the homeless-chic ensemble .

The trio gives her a wide berth and wanders off to observe the circle of old men.

Wallis, however, can’t stop watching the shouting woman. “She won’t stop…” she mutters, hypnotized. “Oh! Watch out, she’s coming around here now…”

They skirt closer to the old men and Matt fends off the offer to play a game of Chinese chess with them. It’s been years since he learned how the pieces move.

“Oh, oh my god! You won’t believe this!” The British girl gets their attention, having not taken her eyes off her object of interest for a second. “She’s squatting by the bikes! She’s– ahahaha! She’s actually peeing on the sidewalk!”

Wallis wasn’t lying. Angry Woman isn’t even hiding behind a tree or anything, just pants around her ankles, doing her thing.

“Oh god, I can’t watch. That’s gross!” The carefully made-up and put-together Stefanie makes a retching motion.

Matt snaps a picture of the squatting woman before politely turning away. Stefanie changes the subject by pointing out a young woman off by a tree playing with her parrot. She has the bird on her arm and is making faces and hand gestures at it. The bird squawks and turns its head from side to side–

“You guys! Guys!” Wallis is excited again, still riveted to the woman. “She just smacked some lady on a scooter!”

“What?!” they whip around in unison.

“Yeah! She was just shouting like a crazy person and this lady is coming down the street on her scooter and pow, she just slaps the sunglasses right off her face! Look, she’s still going at it!”

Sure enough, Angry Woman is standing on the curb shouting down the street. Somewhere in downstream traffic a woman is clutching her head.

The Americans shake their heads and turn back to wonder at the ridiculousness of the city–

“She just did it again!” Wallis squeals. “She just punched the helmet off another woman! I think she’s going for the lady bikers.”

Matt and Stefanie don’t dare look away anymore, worried they might miss another attack. They’re the odd ones out, however, as the rest of the locals are ignoring the scene unfolding around them. This is just commonplace, apparently.

But unfortunately for her audience (and fortunately for her potential victims), a city bus hisses to a stop in front of her, obscuring their view. When it’s gone, so is she, off to distant lands. Now, only the other passengers will know what shenanigans she gets up to. And maybe the police.

“Are you sure you’re leaving tonight?” Wallis asks Matt after they watch the bus rumble around a corner and out of sight.

He’s sure. He’s already booked the overnight train south to Hoi An, about midway down Vietnam. He’s heard there’s a different kind of ‘culture’ further south and Matt can’t wait to see what that will entail.

† After the events of the day, it would be discovered that Billy hadn’t slept in the alleys and instead had indeed found a Swedish traveler that night. Having seduced her (somehow), he convinced her to buy and then try marijuana for the first time. They then went back to her rather fancy hotel room wherein the pair (but mostly Billy) drained the entirety of her minibar. He absconded late the next morning before she awoke, but after he forgot her name. He did not apologize to Ulrik for causing them to miss their bus.

The majestic view from atop the Cat Ba Island hills

Double feature for images! Here’s a quick (and PG-13) shot of Angry Woman in Hanoi. Nice calves.