IN HUE the Huong Giang Hotel has agreed to call Nha Trang and have the hotel manager there ship the passport to the hotel manager here. The complications at the front desk seem endless.

"They may want to speak with you," Miss Twi says regarding the police.

"About what?"

"Your passport."

"I don’t have a passport."

"I thought you left it in Nha Trang."

"I did leave it in Nha Trang. That’s why I don’t have a passport."

"The police might want to know that."

"And what should I tell them?"

"Tell them you don’t have a passport."

"I don’t...wait, you tell them I don’t have a passport. Tell them it’s in the mail, that they’ll just have to wait for it to arrive, same as the rest of us."

"They may not let you stay." She produces a piece of paper from behind the counter entitle: Rules for Foreigners.

Item #1: No foreigners allowed in Vietnamese Hotel without passport and valid visa.

Item #2: All foreigners must stay in Vietnamese Hotel.

Item #3: Only Canh Sat can determine foreigner’s status as foreigner.

"Please read Item #1, sir," she asks, handing me the laminated paper.

"I see your point. But what about Item #2?"

"Your problem is Item #1, sir."

"I understand that, but Item #2 says that I MUST stay in a Vietnamese hotel."

"That is not your concern, sir."

"But if I can’t stay in a Vietnamese hotel, then why did you take my money?"

"Because of item #2."

"But what if they don’t let me stay here?"

"I cannot determine that, sir."

"You can’t determine what exactly?"

"I cannot determine whether or not you are a foreigner."

"Why not!" She wasn't blind after all.

"Because of Item #3," she said.

"It’s obvious that I’m a foreigner."

"You’ll have to wait for the police, sir."

"To do what?"

"To determine if you are a foreigner."

"How are they going to do that if I don’t have a passport?"

"You don’t have a passport?"

"Forget it. Call me in my room when they arrive."

"We will, Mr. O'Been."

-----------------

I'VE BEGUN to identify each city by the postcards I pick out to send home, and the laborious method by which they are chosen. They are the easiest form of deceit, conveying meaning and a relaxed stance on life. I must have spent a half hour spinning the carousel in the hotel’s lobby before deciding on one that I liked. The black and white shot of the octagonal pagoda would send the right message.

I show it to the hotel’s manager. “Where is this?” I ask. She has on the same uniform as the day before. I recognizes it from a slight food stain on the lapel. She has not yet looked up, but when she does, Miss Twi recognizes me immediately.

“Oh, good morning, sir,” she says, turning her back to open the safe on the wall behind her. “Your passport, sir,” she says, handing me a white envelope.

I open it immediately, and, checking the picture, am relieved to recognize the face as my own. “No police then?” I grimace, still expecting them to appear at any moment.

“No, no police, sir. They did not come at all yesterday.” She smiles quickly. “You are lucky.”

“I need to pay for this,” I say, referring to the postcard of the pagoda. “Is this monument in Hue?”

“No,” she answers. “Nearby Hue. Shall I call you a cyclo?”

“Is it possible to rent a motorbike?” I am uncomfortable taking cyclos; too white-man colonialist for my liking despite the fact that Vietnamese take them all the time.

Five minutes later I was spinning around the parking lot in first gear with the bellhop running in circles motioning for me to shift. It would be days before I learned to go from 2nd to 3rd gear without lurching into the traffic ahead of me. I stalled continually at intersections.

While I would never have thought to drive in Ho Chi Minh City, Hue somehow seemed manageable. Less people, fewer bikes, friendlier faces. Finally the bellhop waved me on my way. “Good luck,” he called as I pulled out of the parking lot and began to bob and weave my way through the traffic. I crossed and re-crossed the Cau Trang Bridge to get a feel for the bike and then zipped down the opposite bank to view the hotel from across the way. From this vantage, I could see my room. In fact, I could see all the rooms stretching out down the river side of the hotel. Then I noticed a man on the near bank, down by what looked to be a sycamore tree. He was laid out on a blanket like a sunbather, except that he was fully dressed and was himself watching the hotel through a pair of conspicuously large binoculars. I slowed further still and noticed that someone was in my room! Or was it my room? It was hard to keep my eyes on the hotel and drive at the same time. Only then did I realize that I had gone straight through an intersection, and that the little sound I was hearing was a not so little whistle of a policeman waiving me to the side of the road with his billy club. He had actually come after me into the street and from the look on his face would have clubbed me had I not complied. From there things only got worse. I will call him the sergeant because there was actually a second, younger canh sat coming out of a booth by the intersection. The sergeant was middle-aged with nasty wrinkles around his eyes that came from a squinty Clint Eastwood-type stare he’d perfected. He spat when he talked and proceeded to ball me out in Vietnamese right there in the street before yelling to his young counterpart who, as it turns out, was barely English-literate himself. As they back and forthed for a minute by themselves, I could feel a nerve ticking away in the side of my neck. I wanted to flee then and there and be done with them and this day, but I knew I wouldn’t get far because that’s when I noticed the two big C.H.I.P.S.-style bikes parked in the shade by the side of the road. A small crowd was gathering. I looked back towards the grass and the river where the man with the binoculars had been sunbathing, but he was gone.

They motioned me to get off the bike and to come stand by them.

“Are you a spy,” said the younger cop in the sternest manner he could muster. Throughout the conversation that followed, the sergeant continued to slap his billy club against his palm in a threatening manner.

How do you answer a question like that? It was so preposterous. I started to smile, but quickly realized that that was not at all the proper response. The sergeant barked obscenely in Vietnamese and the younger man repeated the question.

“Are you a spy?”

He wasn’t joking. Could the Vietnamese really think that Americans were still sending over spies in 1995? From the spittle forming to either side of his mouth, from the tone of his voice and the wild gesticulations, it was obvious what the older man was saying: what’s wrong with you? Don’t foreigners know how to drive? You’re so stupid, you must be a spy. His skin was dark from days in the sun, a sign of his lowly stature.

“Are you a spy?” the younger of the two asked again.

“No,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I looked back again towards the hotel, but could not locate my room from the angle I was standing. The sergeant had unsnapped the holster housing his gun. My bike, I could tell, was boiling in the sun, and so was I. I felt like a crook.

“Are you a spy?” he wanted to know.

It was, without a doubt, the most absurd situation that I’d ever been in, and I was on the verge of saying “Yes” just to get it over with—“Yes, detective, I am a spy, good work!”—when the two of them simultaneously began waving towards a dozen or so PAVN officers who were coming down the street just then.

The sun continued its rhythmic pounding while they conferred with the sergeant. After a while the young cop came back over to stand next to me. He smiled sheepishly.

“Are you American?” he asked, struggling over each word. I wasn’t sure, but without his commanding officer around, he seemed happy for the chance to practice his English. I felt sorry for him.

“Yes, I am American,” I replied, “but I am not a spy.” His smile came as some relief. Yet I was still undecided. Either he too saw how ridiculous the situation was, or else this was the Vietnamese version of good cop/bad cop. Before each sentence, he studied the ground as if willing the words to appear in the dust at his feet.

“I study...” he began, but somehow lost the rest of the sentence. He was a good looking kid with large, almost girlish eyes that tended to mist when embarrassed.

“You study English?”

“No...” he laughed. “Math-e-ma-tícs.” He was blushing now. “My name—”

“Manh!” screamed the sergeant starting back towards us. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone age before my eyes as Manh went instantly from the boy practicing his English to the creased brow and bad teeth of middle age.

“I think you are a spy,” he said suddenly, his face contorting in anger. Manh tried to straighten himself further so that he’d appear taller than the foreigner they’d captured.

The sergeant’s tone was curt as he gesticulated at both me and my bike and then back up the street I’d come down.

I pleaded with Manh. “Please tell him that it won’t happen again,” I said, my hands folded in prayer. I bowed to the sergeant as if he were the Big Buddha of Nha Trang. “Xin loi,” I said, suddenly remembering the word for sorry.

“He say no moto,” Manh interpreted.

All I could do was stare. I had no idea what that meant.

"No moto,” Manh repeated. “Go,” he said, pushing me back down the street. Were they really confiscating my motorbike?

“But it’s not mine!” I protested. I looked at the faces of the small crowd for help. A number of girls had stopped on their way back from school. “Hotel,” I shouted, pointing across the river towards the Huong Giang. “Hotel moto.”

They conferred again.

The sergeant handed Manh a pen and Manh handed it to me. “Hotel number,” he said.

“Phone number?” I asked. Luckily I still had the business card that the hotel’s manager had given me.

The sergeant strode over to his bike and pulled a cell-phone from one of the saddle bags. I don’t know why this surprised me, but it did. I guess I assumed Vietnam was somehow not modern enough for cellular phones. The sergeant spoke rapidly into the receiver to whomever it was he had called. Then he handed me the phone.

“Hello,” I said tentatively, not sure who to expect on the other end.

“Hello,” said a voice.

“Yes.”

“Mr. O'Been?” It was a woman’s voice. I recognized Twi, the hotel manager, by the way she butchered my name.

“Miss Twi? I’m sorry. I...”

“What have you done, Mr. O'Been?”

“I,” I stammered, “I’m not sure. I think I coasted through a stop light.” She’d been so kind in helping me retrieve my passport, she was the last person I wanted to get into trouble. I could feel my face flush.

“It is not a problem, sir,” she said into the other end. “I will send Mr. Chi for the bike. Do you think you can find the hotel on foot?”

“What? Yes, but...I can see the hotel from here.”

“Follow the road back to Cau Trang Bridge. The Huong Giang is just the other side. Do you think you can do it?”

“Is it okay to leave the bike?”

“Perhaps I should send a cyclo for you, sir.”

“I...No, no please don’t. I can find the hotel, it’s just that I’m. I’m worried about the bike.”

“Mr. Chi will come for it. Remember, the Cau Trang Bridge.”

“But...”

“Goodbye, Mr. O'Been.”

---------------

VIETNAM WAS a country of extremes. Unfettered pettiness was matched by genuine good will. On the way back to the hotel, Mr. Chi, the bellhop, passed me on the confiscated bike, slowing down long enough to make sure that I saw him wave. I saluted and turned away, following a small dirt path down towards the river and the sycamore tree. What had he been looking at, I wondered, recalling the man with the overtly large binoculars. I counted down the row until I found my room, but it was dark, so I continued on towards the Cau Trang Bridge.

As I entered the gravel roundabout in front of the hotel, Miss Twi appeared at the front
door.

“You must be more careful, Mr. O'Been,” she began, handing me back the key to my motorbike which was parked off to the left in the shade of a banyan. “We have driving regulations in our country.”

“Yes, I’m...sorry. I know.”

“Will you go to Thien Mu Pagoda now, sir?”

I couldn’t believe they were giving the bike back to me and said as much.

“Everyone gets in trouble with the police, Mr. O'Been. You just more than others. Mr. Chi tipped the sergeant on behalf of the hotel.”

“Tip!” I was astounded by her choice of words, but instinctively reached for my billfold. “Can I at least pay you back?” I looked towards Mr. Chi who was standing in the doorway talking to a maid.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Something for Mr. Chi’s trouble then.” I took out two ten thousand dong notes.

“Enjoy the pagoda, sir,” she said, refusing to take the money.

I tried to read her face, but it was impenetrable. Miss Twi bowed, but when she turned to go back inside, she stopped as if she’d just remembered that I had a message waiting.

“Mr. Chi likes orange juice,” she said. She did not turn back around, but merely watched me this time as I took the bike off its kick stand and wheeled it slowly out of the parking lot.

----------------

THE LANDSCAPE was dotted with nón as far as the eye could see, the yellow straw hats look almost like sunflowers on a sea of green. Somewhere in the middle distance between the a dark mountain and the road, a child ran along one of the bunds searching for a breeze that would keep his red kite afloat. The engine beneath my seat had achieved the state of mind-numbing thrum, vibrating in a way that was pleasant without being sexual. As far as I could approximate, the sound hummed along nearly a quarter-mile ahead of the bike itself, causing a brief cessation of work as one by one farmers popped up from beneath their yellow hats to wave or nod or simply smile, stretch and get back to the task at hand.

I am a good twenty minutes outside of Hue before I realize that I am lost, and it is with quiet acceptance that I let the idea of the pagoda slip away. Some things are not to be. Instead I kick my feet out straight in front as if I were sitting spread-eagled on the floor and rev the bike harder, swerving, following my toes like a divining rod. Ten minutes pass before I heard the motor of a second bike coming up fast behind me. I tried to look without turning the wheel, but was so shocked by their proximity—they were really barreling toward me—that I inadvertently found myself skidding briefly on the rice somebody had been drying on the road’s shoulder, and nearly spun myself into the closest paddy before I regained control. It is entirely possible that I screamed, because looking back on it, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have, given the situation. There were two people on this second bike, two Vietnamese. The maniac driver was waving frantically and screaming “hey, hey” in the basso-staccato voice I’d come to associate with cyclo drivers here or, back home, with fans of American basketball trying to distract a free-throw shooter. At one point he swerved so close in an attempt to grab me—was he trying to fun me off the road?—that I could see my own terrified expression in the reflection of his black sunglasses. After the incident back in Hue, I didn’t feel like stopping for anyone. I was way too far out to walk back to the hotel should they confiscate my bike again. And what if this time they didn’t give it back?

“Hey, hey,” he continued. We were racing neck and neck, as first one then the other of us pulled ahead.

The woman on the back held a parcel between them. It was a good mile before my blood slowed down enough to allow me to think straight. What could they do, I wondered. They weren't exactly malicious in their intent. Nor did they appear to be officials of any kind, not wearing plastic sandals like they were. They looked as if they’d just gotten out of bed. The woman’s permanent was flat on the one side I could see.

I took my time slowing down. It wasn’t an easy thing to decide to do. But when finally I was stopped, they pulled up just behind my right fender, close enough to pat the back of my seat, which the man did, saying god knows what in Vietnamese. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled. The man did too. My image bobbed up and down in his glasses. Just then the woman jumped off, and carrying her package with her, climbed onto the back of my bike.

“Cam on, Anh,” she said, which I knew meant thank you. Then she motioned “weshh, weshh” up the road ahead as if she were digging a trough in the air before us.

I looked back to the man in the sunglasses, but he was already gone, back down the road he had come. Could he really be leaving his woman with me? I was stunned at their trust; I was not only a stranger, but a foreigner. Did he really think I would take her safely to journey’s end? This would never happen in the States. It’s not as if he’d waited around to see if I’d accept. Rather, he had quite simply, quite easily, driven off. I realized then that there was no malevolence here, no loneliness of the American freeway system that spawned movies like “The Hitcher” and "Freeway."

I asked jokingly if she was going my way, to which she replied in a very nice tone of voice and off we went. The bike was much harder to maneuver with the additional weight; consequently, I nearly shot us into the rice field across the road. She hesitantly put one arm around my waist, but kept the bag between us. We tried at first to converse, but quickly gave it up. I liked helping her.

After twenty minutes, we came to a bridge, and on the other side of the bridge was a town. It was also where the blacktop ended. This, I guessed, was Thuan An.

When I stopped at a T in the road, the woman got off. I had no idea which way to go. The beach could have been in either direction; neither way looked particularly more sandy than the other. I would have happily driven her all the way to her house if that was where she were going, but her back was already turned. I assumed that she assumed that I was going to the beach and didn't want to burden me further. Since she was heading down the road ahead, the beach must be the other way. So off I went. Already the day was hot, and I was driving slow enough to feel the heat coming off the engine. People came to the doorways of the small wooden huts as I passed. Whenever they waved, I tried to wave back, but soon realized that that was a bad idea because my tires shifted dangerously in random patches of soft sand. I was unaccustomed still to working the gears. The bike strained, and as I tried to downshift to keep the engine from conking out, it did just that. I tried several times to kick-start it, and even got off at one point to get better leverage. For all my effort I was left only sweaty and frustrated and, I admit, a little embarrassed to be standing there in the middle of road, stranded in the hot sun with a growing number of Thuan An natives gathering to watch.
The Vietnamese love to stare.

I did eventually get the bike going, but drove only as far as the nearest tall tree before I realized that the town itself was quickly dissipating. The road looked as if it could wind infinitely into a rice-paddy and palm-dotted countryside. The only indication that I was anywhere near a beach was the occasional skreen of gulls. Across the street a mother, father and a boy of no more than seven stood watching from the doorway of a dilapidated cement hutch. What the hell, I thought. I had never been afraid to ask for directions, taking it not as a sign of weakness, but common sense.

"Beach?" I said, pointing down the road ahead.

Of course they had no idea what I was saying, but at least they were polite about it.

I made a wave-like motion with my arm.

Nothing.

I made a hook of one finger and inserted it inside one cheek. “Fish?” I asked, pointing back down the way I’d come.

The woman looked a little frightened now. Her husband tried to smile and put a reassuring hand on his son's shoulder to keep him from coming any closer.

I cast a flimsy line with my imaginary rod. “Fish,” I said more to myself this time.

Again, nothing.

I felt like an idiot standing there, a big white flounder flopping around in the sun. But I didn’t really care. Communicate, remember? By any means necessary. It reminded me of all the foolish antics my parents went through in sponsoring any of the dozen refugee families that had lived in our basement during the 1980s. You’d think I’d have picked up a word or two, if not Vietnamese, then Lao or Cambodian. They’d all had keys to our front door and shared our table and stored food in our refrigerator. We even sponsored a Polish family and the only word I learned then was “sheist.” It made me sad. I remember the day my foster brother Minh’s real mom touched down on U.S. soil for the first time, having waited decades for her papers to snake their way through immigration. He was only my "foster" brother because he had left Vietnam when he was nine. His real mom had paid for his boat-fare, she had not given him up for adoption. We met her on the tarmac and I could feel the heat rising off the concrete, up through the soles of my sneakers. Although she was now in the United States, and in a way expected to learn English and dawn the style and manner of this, her adoptive culture, I was embarrassed that not one member of my family knew a single word of greeting in Vietnamese to make her feel welcome.

“Hello,” said the husband cautiously.

I waved, feeling a smile creep across my face. “Beach?” I asked again, pointing back over my shoulder.

I hadn’t thought they’d understood. Even the foolish swimming motions I made elicited no reaction. But just as I was turning the bike around to take my chances with the folk I’d seen back by the bridge, the father came forward with the boy and lifted him onto the seat behind me. Was he going to show me the way?

The son looked worried, but after a few encouraging words from his father, he tapped my hip and pointed back toward the bridge.

“Di di,” said the father—go, go—and waved as we drove off.

“Beach,” I said again when we came to the crossroads back by the main street of Thuan An. “Swim?”

My little guide only shrugged and pointed right, in the opposite direction of the road back to Hue. A few people we passed called out to him, astonished at what they saw. It wasn't everyday that they saw a Vietnamese on the back of a white man's bike, let alone someone they knew.

I should have guessed, where the town ended the beach began, and not five minutes had passed before we were parking the bike in a sheltered lot. From there we could hear the sound of the tide as one wave after the next broke successfully across a handsome expanse of white sand. I paid 2,000 dong to the attendant watching the bike, and it was only after I’d pocketed the rest of my money did I realize that my young guide had left me and was already halfway down the road we’d come, walking back into town.

“Wait,” I called after him, running to catch up. “You,” I pointed, “me. Swim. Cam on. After. You, me. Bike. Back.” I didn’t want him walking all the way home, what an ungrateful wretch I’d be. I had no interest in being just one more useless, dispassionate foreigner.

To my surprise, after staring at me and my antics for a good long while, he turned back around, took my hand and led me quite happily to the water’s edge. But he didn’t want to swim, only watch. I produced a hotel towel, which he refused to sit on. He wouldn’t sit in the beach chair I’d rented for him either (it cost money just to sit here), nor did he want the Coke or water or pineapple that the girls were hawking from the baskets they carried on their heads. So after ten minutes of this, of trying to please him, I gave up and ran into the waves.

It was a luxurious swim. I was alone in a world of Vietnamese beach-goers on the edge of the South China Sea, and yet it was as if I were viewing myself through the lens of an ad spot for some ambitious blue jean commercial. I felt strong in ways I hadn’t in years. Back then I’d skipped days of high school to ski or rock climb depending on the season, I’d grown lithe from months of soccer practice or running lines of the tennis court in the 100 degree sun. But what was it really? I certainly wasn’t that kid any more. The only other foreigner I saw that day was a distant spot down the beach. I wasn’t exactly the youthful strapping male my ego envisioned me to be. My jeans clung to my thighs, my T-shirt to my chest, more from sweat than from any real muscle tone. I stripped them off and ran front-flipping into the waves. This whole wonderful adventure I realized had just begun. It was one of the few moments in my life when I was truly happy. The sky was such a thin hazy blue I thought the stars would poke through, a blue mirrored only in the clear water around my feet. Couples passed me on their way in or out of the sea, chatting to one another. A group of teenagers were constructing a human pyramid not twenty meters south, the waves lapping around the legs of those on bottom. I watched, mesmerized, until they collapsed in fits of laughter. Others slept in the sun, or read their books in the shade of a covered chair. I certainly had enough to worry about. I was 10,000 miles from home, was not yet in love, knew no one in this country. But I felt an ease then, standing out past where the waves broke, as if I were one with the gentle back and forth motion of the tides, as if this afternoon would stretch on forever, seamlessly filtering into everything that I would one day call my life. I looked back up the beach to where my little friend sat bored in the sand next to my backpack; he’d overcome his shyness enough to nibble at some pineapple. Suddenly I felt bad. It was selfish of me to be out here doing handstands when he could easily have been off playing somewhere.

I dried quickly and drove him back. We were friends now. He held on to my waist as we maneuvered through the sand pits on the way back to his house. He hopped off quickly and ran inside without looking back. My bike stalled and I got off to turn it around. His father came outside.

“Cam on, anh,” he said waving to me.

Why thank me, I wondered. For bringing his son back in one piece?

“Thank you,” I bowed slightly, “it was beautiful.” At this point my guide came back outside and wrapped his arms around his father’s leg, shy once again. I didn’t like to give money, but I had nothing else that he might want. I held out 4,000 dong that I had crumpled into my pant’s pocket back where we'd parked the bike. “It’s for food,” I motioned, pretending to eat. “Buy some sweets.” Encouraged by his father, the boy ran forward and snatched it from my hands.

“Cam on, anh,” said the father once more as I pulled away and began my journey back to Hue in search of orange juice.

christopher o'brien