Doors and Alleys

The ‘Eclipse Club – Relax and Dance, Open from 8 till late’ signboard led to a hotel complex. There was only a sticker on the small window at the corner that showed exactly where it was. Inside, my friends stood with some strangers in the middle of the room. The club had laser beam and disco ball as its main source of light. That's where I met Hung, Hao, Mai, and Duc.

Half an hour before we just arrived at the hotel after going to the love market in Sapa Square. I was calming myself, I couldn't find my phone. The last time I had it was when I asked a friend to exchange jackets at the square. I took the phone out of my jacket's pocket, put it on the bench, but never put it back in. It's the second time I lost my phone that day. Earlier, the hostel owner helped me got it back when it fell in the car we used to get to the trekking spot. He told me to be more careful, “In Vietnam, they usually just take things they found. You're lucky."Luck rarely repeats.

"They got the phone back, they're at the Eclipse with the finders now," said a friend who waited in the room with me. My other friends had ran back to the square to check. In my pyjama pants, I rushed out to Eclipse where I caught bits of information. Except for Duc, they're all tour leaders. They saw the phone, and decided to wait for an hour for the owner to claim it. Ten minutes before the hour ended, my friends arrived.

I was still processing all of the information when Hung, Hao, and Mai, pulled me to the dance floor. I gulped my beer to get my foot loose and dance my head off. We then took them out to the street barbecue under the clear starry night. In between the apple wine and grilled chili oil marinated mushrooms, I heard Hung's thick Australian accent in his English and found out that Mai and Hao were excited that they're practicing their English with us. Duc, the only non-tour leader of the group remained quiet. He apologised for his lack of English. I pulled the Vietnamese phrasebook I'd been carrying around and asked him to be our tutor. Duc timidly thanked that we came to 'Eclipse'. The bar was his cousin's and he felt honored that the first time any foreigners came were ones he could refer as friends.

I passed the Eclipse again on our walk home. For a second I question, ‘How did we end up there?’ But the thought was irrelevant. Why think of that when I could think the fun ways to tell the hotel’s owner that I lost my cellphone and got it back again - with four bonuses on the side.