“You’re not finished with Hanoi, are you?” Hannah asks.

Matt almost jumps out of his seat in the lobby. Hannah usually wakes up at precisely 9:55. At which time she hustles out of bed and stretches the generosity of the breakfast staff who are trying to close up by 10.

Hannah’s breakfast preference is a pair of fried eggs and a toasted baguette, torn into strips and dipped into the runny yolks. She calls this ‘egg and soldiers’. She’s rather particular about her eggs and preens over having finally educated the cooking staff on the proper way to fry them for optimal yolk runnyness. It’s taken her two weeks, but it’s worth it. Two weeks? Maybe it’s been three. She isn’t sure. A frown. What will her bill be like? Maybe she should skip out on it…

“I, uh, yeah, I’m heading to Halong Bay today.”

Hannah’s frown hangs briefly in the sunlight that slants in through the glass front doors and disappears. She nods. “Well, come give me a hug.”  She spreads her arms and flutters her fingers softly as she does so, making her look like a crane or stork coming in for a landing.

She wraps him in an encompassing hug, an honorary member of her crew now. Her original crew is back home in the UK and not perhaps all free to come to Vietnam; they’ve had a history with the London police.

* * *

“My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, isn’t even allowed into certain neighborhoods anymore,” Hannah is explaining. “At first he’d sell hash and keep a bit for himself– we were teenagers. And then he started getting into coke and heroin.”

In sync, Alex, Kelly, and Matt widen their eyes.

They’re sitting in a ‘secret’ coffeeshop Hannah knew of overlooking the lake. The shop is ‘secret’ because to get there one has to walk through a semi-defunct clothing store, past a chained up and somewhat worse-for-wear lap dog, and up a flight of truly grimey steps (at least 85% grime by mass). But they made it, and now they crowd around a table in the corner on their wooden stools, penned in by local young men enjoying Vietnamese coffee and cigarettes while shouting incomprehensibly at their shared tablet screens.

Hannah lengthens her pause by swirling her own Cà phê sữa nóng [milk coffee, hot]. The oversaturation of the condensed milk in the coffee causes obvious stratification in her clear glass. What she eventually sips is a consistency and flavor more like coffee marshmallow.

“Let me get this straight: he was selling coke and heroin, on the streets?” Alex asks her.

She replaces the small cup on the table. “Oh, he was a nice boy at first, but dumb. He was always getting into it and he just got involved in more and more shit. At first I don’t think he actually had any coke, he would just sell loads of crushed up paracetamol [what Americans call Tylenol] or something fake. And I told him it was a bad idea, that the pigs would get him, but he was an idiot and kept selling, and he’d run away from them, try and hide when they showed up, but you know, they caught him and they’d rough him up a bit and just drive him a ways away and dump him out there. And then he’d call me to come get him and I’d tell him he was an idiot, getting mixed up in this kind of shit.”

“And you dated him?”

“Oh well of course! Free drugs!” Hannah shrugs and laughs. “I didn’t need all the stuff he had; heroin, never touched the stuff, but the rest of it, that was easy to keep up with.” She’s smiling as she tells the story, pleased at being the object of attention again.

Watching her start in on a story and answer the questions that yo-yo out from the narrative is like watching a piper lead children out of the city and through the forests.

“One time they nicked him and I was there, right there with him, and they were asking me if I had anything to do with it.” Hannah widens her eyes and assumes an innocent posture. “‘What are you talking about, officer? I’m not with him.’” She waves off the impression.

“And they believed you?” Alex is on a roll with his incredulity.

“Of course! I’m a nice London girl!” She laughs. “I remember the last time I saw him, when we were breaking up. He told me that the next time I heard from him, he’d either be in jail or dead.” She takes another slow sip from her coffee.

Alex is frustrated and eager for more answers. “And did you? Hear from him again?”

“Oh yes. Right before I came out here. He was in jail. Wanted me to front him bail or something.” She grimaces despite the sweetness in her cup. “I just told him to never call me again and hung up on him.”

Hannah’s full of stories like that. Sitting here in this coffee shop, with the cigarette smoke being swirled around by disapproving electric fans, it feels like sitting through a softer version of Trainspotting. Drugs, crime, overdosing… it’s not a big mystery why Hannah felt compelled to pack up her life, leave her current boyfriend to wait for her return, and look to subsist on what money she could make by painting murals and selling pen-drawn postcards. Thus far she’s made it through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and she has no intention of slowing down. None whatsoever.

To Alex, this type of lifestyle is almost unheard of. Well-educated, well-kempt, and generally on course through most of his life, he expresses his discombobulation. Kelly, however, being from Essex, is well-acquainted with this subculture. She’s joking with Hannah about some of the finer points of this London, the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into Shakespeare in Love.

Matt ignores his unfinished cup of far-too-sweet coffee on the table and turns to the Essex girl. “Surely you don’t go in for this sort of rubbish?” He’s picking up pieces of British English after spending so much time around the trio. ‘Rubbish bin’ sounds so much more sophisticated than ‘trash can’.

“Ooh yes! I could even show you a slutdrop,” Kelly says, sharing a giggle with Hannah.

“A slutdrop?” The boys are nowhere in the vicinity of ‘the loop’.

She pantomimes something with her hands starting high in the air, then clapping down, but is prevented from the full maneuver by the chair. “I don’t have the space right here, and it’s ahem,” she smooths her tanktop, “a bit more risqué than is appropriate.” She looks at him beneath conspiratorial eyebrows.

“It’s like twerking and stuff, isn’t it?” Matt asks.

Hannah and Kelly nod with a wishy-washy gesture. Slutdrops are so much better than twerking.

“Alright, well, on that note, I’m pretty much done with this place, why don’t we get out of here?”

They’re outside, eager to get to the lake, Hoàn Kiếm Lake to be specific, that’s looked tantalizingly close from their balcony window. Before they can get there, though, they must cross a four-lane main road. This may seem trivial to most Westerners, but in Hanoi there are seldom lights or officers to direct traffic. So despite being a communist nation, Vietnam has adopted a very laissez faire approach to traffic: you just go.

Matt commends his soul to any higher power that’s listening and takes confident stride after confident stride away from the clothing store/coffee house. The bikes tilt and turn around him and the wind ruffles his hair, raking a cool breeze across his sweaty face like some demented bullet-time scene.

Once he reaches the other side, he finds himself in the company of Alex and Hannah. But Kelly is still looking up the stampede of oncoming traffic for a good opening.

“Come on, Kelly!” they call out to her, “You can do it! You just gotta keep going!”

She’s shaking her head, but gingerly takes a step forward. In an instant she’s back on the curb, a motorbike occupying the space where her foot had been.

“Seriously! You just gotta go!”

She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves and starts her own march of death. A bike passes just behind her, the tap-tap of horns from oncoming vehicles announcing their presence on the road as they too part to avoid the speedbump pedestrian.

She’s a bit shaken up on the other side, but flashes a brilliant white smile anyway. The adrenaline rush after just crossing the street out here compares to any roller coaster back home. Except, of course, Vietnamese streets don’t shut down in the case of fatalities.

The group’s jitters mellow out as they meander the scenic lake. There are no less than three pairs of brides and grooms taking advantage of the clear day by posing for wedding and/or engagement photos. And no wonder, the mostly-clear sky is reflected in the lake, girded by the verdancy of the trees that shield the water from the honking, smoggy city around it.

From one end of the shore a walking bridge leads to an islet with some historical shrines or something. The backpackers balk and about-face when they’re asked to pay to continue past the bridge. Further in, toward the middle of the lake, a mouldering and undoubtedly haunted stone structure stands, brooding across the rippling water. Matt tries not to stare at it for longer than a few seconds at a time; there’s no reason to attract the wrong kind of preternatural attention.

“Did you just see that?” Alex asks.

“Yea, the dude pissing on the wall back there?” Matt jerks a thumb over his shoulder. He had seen.

Alex laughs at the affront to western sensibilities. “Right in broad daylight!”

“He was what?!” Kelly hadn’t seen.

“You didn’t wonder why the sidewalk was wet… and smelled like piss?”

“No! He was…” she lowers her voice for the impropriety, “he was just, you know, on the street?”

“Yeap.”

She makes a face, but the vulgarity of it all is forgotten when they happen upon a woman selling steamed and stuffed buns on the roadside. The ladies are somehow full enough from the coffee, but Alex quickly discerns that it’s fifteen-thousand dong (~70 cents) for a pork and egg bun. He promptly forks over the cash.

Matt, however, is a savvier haggler; he knows how this game is played. “Fifteen seems a bit expensive. I’ll do ten.”

The woman seems bored. “Ten no-meat, fifteen meat.”

“Meat for ten?”

“Fifteen meat.”

“Ten meat?”

She half-rolls her eyes at the presumptuous backpacker, deftly swings open the steamer, and snatches a bun with the tongs. She offers it to him. He notices that this one is shaped differently from Alex’s nautilus-shell swirled bun. This one is more of a turnover shape.

“No, I want the meat one.” He twirls his finger to indicate this.

She rolls her eyes, fully this time, replacing the first bun and pulling out a swirl-shaped one from the bottom of the stack. She hands it over for the proffered ten-thousand dong.

“Mmm!” Alex mmms once they’ve continued down the street, “I like the meat in this one, what is it, pork? And the egg really works with it too.”

Matt probes his bun, but finds no egg. Or meat. “I think she just gave me a swirl-shaped vegetarian one,” he pouts.

“Ahahaha! That’s what you get for over-haggling!”

Thoughts of lake-ghosts and meatless buns are forgotten when they return to their hostel to find a camera crew pitching up in the lobby. Over the gentle thrumming of the lobby’s refrigerator Ana, the woman at the front desk, asks if any of them want to participate in a Vietnamese mobile phone commercial. They’re advertising a new SIM card for travelers.

The Brits decline, over and over. At first, so does Matt, feeling a bit embarrassed to be on TV with his cheeks flushed and sweat dripping down his neck and back. And then he remembers that he’s in Vietnam and here’s one of those rare instances where opportunity (this time in the guise of a diminutive and smiling Vietnamese lady) is literally pestering him to take part.

“I’ll do it,” he says, “but what do I get in return?”

Ana confers with the woman in the business dress who seems to be in charge of the film crew. “You can have a beer when done.”

“A beer? That’s like, twenty-thousand dong, tops [~1 USD]. I think my time is worth more than that. What about a free night’s stay here?”

Ana’s eyebrows reach for the spinning ceiling fan. Maybe that was a bit too much.

“Okay, maybe not a night’s stay, but what about… what about one of those SIM cards?”

More conferring. It seems Business Lady doesn’t speak much English. Matt turns back to his British audience. They grin and urge him on.

“One SIM card and you have to pay fifty-thousand dong,” Ana counters.

The card’s selling for something like 100k.

“Oh, I’m not paying for one of those cards, no offense. I don’t even really want to use it, I just want it as a souvenir. One card, no payment, and I’ll do your commercial.”

They confer once again, and then agree.

“Okay, so what do I have to do?”

They usher him to a tall stool by the desk and the cameramen check the lighting, the angles, and whatever else cameramen check for.

Matt swings his feet and reads the back of the SIM card’s packaging. “So you want me to just read this kind of stuff? Three hundred minutes, 3G network, et cetera?”

Ana doesn’t even bother to translate, giving an answer of her own. “Yes, perfect!” She’s smiling and nodding enthusiastically.

“Anything in particular you want me to say though, or just… like say generic infomercial stuff? And am I pronouncing this right? Vinaphone?”

Ana translates and relays Business Lady’s response. “Say the call quality is very good. Very clear.”

“Sure. And do you want me to speak slower or anything? I imagine the Vietnamese audience can’t really understand it when I speak regular speed?”

“No, no, you fine,” Ana assures him.

And with that one of the cameramen points his oversized, unblinking glass eye at the soon-to-be star. Business Lady shushes the lobby. A small red light flips on.

Matt wipes off his forehead, surprised at the quickening in his chest. He clears his throat. “I travel a lot, all over the world, and I’ve tried a few SIM cards, but Vinaphone’s by far the best one that I’ve found. It has two gigabytes of free data, 3G–”

“Wait,” Ana cuts in, Business Lady whispering in her ear. “Can you speak slower?”

Now it’s Matt’s turn to roll his eyes. He takes another breath and starts again in a clear and even voice, making a mental note to avoid some of the more complicated phrasing he’s used to. “I travel a lot, I travel all over the world, and I’ve used several SIM cards, but now that I’ve found Vinaphone, I don’t need to try any others. With two gigabytes of free data, a super-fast 3G network, and one-hundred-and-twenty minutes,” he’s been counting off the benefits on his fingers and at this last one he cocks an eyebrow, “I don’t know why every traveler doesn’t use Vinaphone. When I call my friends and family back home, the call quality is so clear that I can’t believe they are on the other side of the world!”

Business Lady beams and Ana gives him the thumbs up.

“I don’t always buy a SIM card when I travel,” Matt continues, bringing up his right arm in front of his chest, “but when I do, I always buy Vinaphone.” He pauses. “How was that?”

“Good! Now, say your name and where you from.”

“Matt Schiller,” he says, emphasis on the ‘shill’ in his name, “from New York City.”

* * *

The lobby in the morning is far emptier than during filming, though Hannah’s hug makes up the difference.

“So maybe I’ll see you around?” Matt asks her.

“Of course. I’m going south towards Ho Chi Minh, too.”

Matt smiles at the prospect of running into her again. Of running into any of these Brits. He hasn’t bumped into many of the same people on his travels yet, but everyone’s been saying that since Vietnam is so narrow, you can’t help but see the same people over and over.

Before he can respond, an all-business local man steps into their conversation from outside. “You Matt?” he asks.

“Yeap!” he replies, hoisting his backpack up onto his shoulders.

Halong Bay awaits.

Matt and the cameraman in the hostel lobby just before filming. If you look closely you can see Business Lady smiling in the background