SHOELESS IN THE STREETS OF HUE
Hue, Vietnam

They were playing cards, smacking down their stacks of pairs, threes, fours, straights, and flushes hard against the paving stones. The boys had wads of cash that they carefully removed from under their sandals to place in the kitty.

One called out, "Where you from?"

I told them.

"Here, you sit down," said the oldest boy, 20, giving me his stool. "Soon you know how to play this game. I get you silk paintings. You take a look. My name Cu Ba, like the country near you. What's your name?"

"Oh, no thanks," I began as he dashed off to get his notebook.

When he returned, he started in on the sales pitch. "My uncle paint these," he began as I thumbed through the stack. "I give you good price."

While this was going on, the younger boys, 16 and 14, began to beg me to let them shine my shoes. I looked at my dirtied running shoes. "What shoes?"

"I got no parents, no money, no shoes." I wondered where the sandals were that he was stuffing money under.

"But you were just gambling," I told him. "You have money to play cards."

By this time, they had removed one shoe and I had selected a few paintings from the stack. The older boy convinced me the price he quoted was "very good, very cheap." And, indeed, the boys didn't have any parents.

I reluctantly opened my purse to give the boy what seemed like a good price for the paintings. He displayed the president's picture on the clear section of his wallet.

When I tried to pay the shoeshine boy 10,000Dong for the shine (about 6 times what I paid in China) he said "why you give me such cheap money?" He wouldn't take it. He kept telling me about his dead parents, how he needed to buy shoes and food. I couldn't take it and how the solution he used on my shoes cost 20,000Dong. I couldn't tell fact from fiction and gave the money to the older boy to give to the shoeshiner when he calmed down.

Down the street, with my purchase in hand, I confidently stepped into the Mandarin cafe and asked the owner--an amateur photographer from whom I bought a few prints the night before--if I indeed had paid a good price for those paintings. He laughed at me. I should have paid about a third of what I did. But the difference was only a few dollars. Still, for a moment, I lost my appetite, then ordered a Coke and fries. Ah, comfort food. And now I've regained the stomach for it!

After lunch, I approached the older boy, Cuba--the other boys had run off--and implored him to please buy those kids some food with the money he made off me. "No, I sell you paintings at good price. My uncle's paintings not the same as down the street."

"Whatever," I said. "If you ripped me off, you know it. Take care of those boys."

"Sure, I do that," he said convincingly enough (though he could have easily been lying) and he shook my hand. I don't know what will come of him. His "uncle's" paintings looked the same as the ones down the street.

So now I say farewell to Hue, a place I have felt, despite my fever--or is it because of the fever?--more at home than anywhere else in Vietnam.

~jjw