Disappeared into Hue and wore the night like a t-shirt. Found my way to a little forest by the river, Christmas lights hanging across trees like the leaves were playing jump rope. There’s a hut with no walls that also serves as a coffee shop. I got a cold milk coffee and smoked two cigarettes by the river. When the lights went out, I saw the stars light up, and I realized that you were probably waking up at that very same moment.

No moon tonight, no romance either. I biked back to the hotel and passed by old ladies burning paper for the dead and herds of men sitting by a small television set watching the Germany-Mexico soccer match. This city is neither my home nor my stranger; just a town that gets dark at night, refreshingly free from neon signs, with bits and pieces that taste a little like Berkeley and Oakland. A restaurant by a bridge feels like the Smokehouse on Telegraph Avenue, and a late night walk I took with Jimmy and whitemike for burgers and shakes.

(Tan asked me where I got my bike. I paid a cyclo driver to let me bike him around town. And then I bought him a Coke.)