24-hour Vietnamese eatery in Bản Thung. This was where Italian Coredo was eating the other morning. He comes in maybe twice a week for breakfast. A bowl of noodles here is just 20,000 kips [$1.17]. They make their own excellent noodles.

Two related families live in that building. The owner has a brother in the US, and another in Canada. They escaped into Thailand in 1978, then went from there. People always flee from Communism, but hey, go for it in the US! If you say anything bad about Communism to an enlightened American, you must be a Fascist.

With grandparents from Hà Đông, Quảng Bình and An Giang, his accent is hard to place. He has the weird habit of asking the same question again and again, half an hour or days later. "You lived a long time in the US?" "America has two parties?" "That man is Italian?"

Every day, he works alone from 2AM to 3PM.