Pin 51 Shares We were at the end of our dubious four-and-a-half month voluntourist teaching placements in Northern Vietnam. We had by now overcome the shock of the noise, the rotten smells, the lawless throngs of scooters and bicycles, the power lines tangled like balls of wool on their poles. We crossed the churning roads fearlessly. We knew the names of the bartenders around town, and it was in Vietnamese that we toasted the locals at our favourite bia hoi, holding dripping glasses of cent beer.
We took pride in knowing how much we should pay for a xe om into the tourist district, and in being able to advise travellers merely passing through on where they could keep drinking after lock-out. We were getting comfortable, and worse, cocky.
It was on one of many drunken Saturday nights that we were abruptly reminded that we were, in fact, not local at all. Our teaching placements now finished, we had moved out of our provided accommodation in Cau Giay and were staying in a cheap hotel in Hoan Kiem, the tourist hive of Hanoi.
Before we headed out to bloat ourselves on Tiger beers, we asked the owner how late we could potentially stay out β it had happened before that we had returned home to find the roller door down over the glass, and ourselves locked out in the steaming streets.
Any time was fine, he assured us. She said the manager spat on her. Mistake number one: we had allowed her to return to the hotel alone to grab some more cash. Doody, Katie and I entered the hotel to find a very messy scene, and noted with alarm that the hotel manager had padlocked the chain behind us.
