$1.26 breakfast of broken rice with just grilled pork. The unsweetened iced tea is free. Normally, I get rice vermicelli with grilled pork, fried spring roll and pork rind for the same price, but this morning, the rice vermicelli hadn't been delivered. I got to the joint too early, around 5:50AM.

With extremely rare exceptions, prices at Vung Tau eateries and cafes have stayed the same in the last +5 months, and I have only heard people grumble about inflation maybe three times.

Living on this street is a rather ragged looking old man. Sometimes, he comes to this eatery, where the lady gives him a free meal. One day, he arrived with exactly $1.26 [30,000 đồng], so the lady asked, "Who are you buying it for?"

"For myself."

"But you don't have any money!"

"Today, I do."

"But you don't have any money!" she insisted, so gave him his usual meal without charge.

In Oakland more than a decade ago, I met a Vietnamese restaurant owner who gave free food daily to two people, one black and one Vietnamese.

In Harrisburg around 2012, I ran into a pho joint that charged anyone who said he had lost his job just $2 for a bowl