“South Vietnam is not beautiful. Everyone says it, and it’s true. The buildings are either covered with enormous billboards or abandoned—half-built. The streets are a jumble of saddles, headlights, and mirrors, as if a thousand-wheeled Transformer were wandering the city.
Motorbikes are everywhere; they are sacred, like God, who has the gift of ubiquity.

In fact, they don’t believe in God; they worship their grandparents—their grandparents’ grandparents—whom they share the floor with. And as soon as they die, they nail their faces to the walls. I know this because many houses don’t have doors, so you can walk by and peek inside, like looking into a shop window. Maybe a watch shop. A shop of broken or stopped watches, because in Vietnam, time doesn’t flow. Not in the sense that they’re stuck a hundred years ago, but in the sense that no one cares what time it is. You eat when you’re hungry, you sleep when you’re sleepy.

You eat on the street, sitting on a tiny plastic chair, and sleep wherever—resting your head on a motorbike’s dashboard, your feet dangling. There are no ‘times’ or ‘places.’ There is only light and shadow. Beware of those who get a tan, or they’ll be considered ugly and poor. If you want to compliment a girl, you must tell her: ‘Da em trắng thế!!!’—”Your skin is so white.”