Conversations that Happen

The night before a man and woman stopped him on the street. The woman held a knife and wanted money. 'She was very afraid. She didn't know what to do with the knife. Women are more unpredictable with tools. It was two million dong (about $125), but all they got was money.' The guy -- very blond, slouching in the wicker lounge chair at Vietnam's only hostel -- the superb Backpacker Hostel in Hanoi -- had invited himself to a lounge conversation. His slurring and droopy eyes made me tired, but I slowly realized he knew what he was saying, even if he was on his second beer in the eight minutes I knew him. 'I was born in Sweden and grew up in Finland... I'm a Swinn,' he said slurring. Very drunk, yet quite coherent. It's just another hostel conversation.

On a typical day for this 'online guidebook' research of mine, I go to about five or six hotels, a couple museums no one wants to see (like the stifling and almost unattended Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hue today), a couple restaurants, a couple cafes, a few travel agents to ask about bus times or renting a motorcycle, and a shop selling the same 'Tin Tin in Vietnam' t-shirts that I declined 12 years ago on my first trip to Vietnam. I stop for a bottle of water a couple times a day too. Often if you offer a 'nuoc nho' (small water) you get the usual responses: 'you speak Vietnamese!,' 'where did you study?,' 'do you work in Hanoi?', ['are you married?,' 'how many children do you have?' Sometimes you get sideswiped by conversations with folks with more time than you. Usually it's welcomed.

I stopped by an half-expat bar in Hanoi yesterday recognizing someone I had met a couple weeks ago and got to talking with a ponytailed German, Mr O-- , who half-heartedly worried about his Vietnamese wife. 'She goes out all the time. Leaves me at home to take care of our son,' he said emotionlessly. His son's name? 'Tim.' He plans to go back to Germany soon, taking his son. I asked how he filled his days in Hanoi: a shrug and a smile. Nothing really. He's been living here for four months, after meeting his wife a few years ago during a long trip. He called Hue, where I am now, just a 'bunch of stones.'

Landing in the superb Hue today -- a central city with a funny accent that lies just south of the former Demilitarized Zone that divided Vietnam into North and South following the 'French War' in 1954 -- I met several older guys who spoke English fluently. One, Mr Dung, stopped me as I pedalled in the blissfully humidity-free heat along the Perfume River. 'I worked with the US Marines for three years,' Mr Dung said. 'So my English is American English. But I forget so much.' He wondered if I wouldn't want to go to some ethnic minority villages in the area on a daytrip. It was an unusual tact. All the group tours here offered by the usual whirlwind of travel agencies -- to the DMZ, to the former king's tombs up the river -- pile tourists into the same bus or boat. This was something different. 'It's not about personal economics. I just want to create a memory,' he said, this coming after a 10-minute, very unpushy conversation. I believe him, generally. I said I'd call him in a few days, and I will.

Later at a travel agency plugging 'motorcycle tours,' an ex-South Vietnamese officer, Mr Trung, sat with me as I ate nem lui, a very delicious Hue-style meal of pork strips wrapped around bamboo, that you pull off in a cucumber and lettuce filled rice paper. 'The south is much nicer than the north... how do you like the north?,' he asked.

My northern taxi driver this morning -- heading to the Hanoi airport (I splurged on the flight, since the train was full the next couple days) -- was a hilarious guy who used to taxi for Vietnam Airlines and was delighted by his "$37,000 car" he was weaving past motorcycles on the 40-minute drive to my flight. He was the sort of guy who knows a pretty good amount of English, as long as he's talking. He spoke of Fulbright scholarship winners he's driven, and trips he's taken of Australian couple to Hoi An, about meeting his (Vietnamese) wife in Czechoslovakia 21 years ago. His daughter's just graduated from high school -- he's proud of that. He speaks well, but understand maybe 10% of what I said. 'Ho Chi Minh!,' he said at one point. 'Number one, number one.' I forget why. He had a TV screen playing the softest of pop hits from the 70, 80s and 90s on the dashboard: often things like A Supply, E John, B Adams playing behind snippets from Raiders of the Lost Ark or Terminator III clips. He stopped himself mid-sentence talking about Vietnam's hospitals, 'Wow! Listen, oh this is very good!' And started singing along. It was Richard Marx. When we got to the airport he gave me a bottle of warm water out of his trunk.