The box...

I never sweat more than I sweat in Vietnam. To turn a phrase of my father's, one of his many odd idioms coined somewhere between hills of Eastern Kentucky, Vietnam is hotter than blue blazes. The country is exceptionally humid as well. While I sit on my tiny twin bed, I am pondering these matters, sweat beginning to bud in my eye-brows, and hallucinating the most dazzling of phantasms extreme heat can conjure.

By the time I was sweltering on my little bed, nearly two weeks of my travels had passed. Two weeks prior, when Card had aided me in securing a suitable dwelling space, I had had no idea the relative tribulation I would thus encounter. I learned, paying up front is a mistake in Vietnam. Likewise, I learned, nothing goes as planned in Vietnam.

Our debacle began an hour after Noon, a time Card and I would eventually realise to be the hottest of the Vietnamese hours...

"Where in the hell is Tam Thung?," I pant while looking cross-eyed at a map of Hanoi's Old Quarter.
"I think you're saying that wrong," Card replies.

Card is leading the way through the labyrinth of odd-angled streets. Everywhere I look seems like everywhere I've been making navigation impossible. At this point, traversing Hanoi is like traversing a block of Swiss cheese.

"I think it's this way, and then up there on the left," Card says while stepping confidently in to on-coming traffic.

I cringe as I follow my friend. All the while, I am thinking he is completely wrong in his assertion of which direction we are heading. Of course, Card has it right. His direction sense is ridiculous.

The two of us walk down an alley I am sure I remember from an Indiana Jones movie. The street must not be more than 10 feet abreast, most of which is cluttered with all manners of food stuffs. Raw fish, hunks of cow-somethings, vegetables I have never seen, old men playing Chess, the ever-present motorbikes roaming to-and-fro, and multitudes of people pushing and shoving weave around me unaffected by such chaos.

We find ourselves outside of a hostel named Manh Dung Guesthouse (that is, Mah-n Zoo-ng in Vietnamese). The place looks fairly nice on a cursory inspection. Clearly visible are four computers with internet connections, a shiny elevator, and a well-endowed female receptionist. All of these noted, save the elevator, would play integral roles during my stay in Vietnam. The elevator was excluded after a sudden, though brief, power outage...