Transient Beings Barely Glimpsed

[Vung Tau, 2/26/25]

On Lê Lai, there’s a tutor of math, physics and chemistry. About 60-years-old, this bespectacled man can also help to prepare you for that terrifying university entrance exam. Though I have walked by his business, or academy, if you will, at least a hundred times, I don’t recall seeing any student. At two wooden table, there are four chairs and a long bench to accommodate his ghostly pupils. They’re never there at sunrise, midday, after school or near midnight. Many times, I’ve caught him lying on his bench to sleep or to stare, with obvious boredom, at his phone. With no one giving a fig about trigonometry, calculus, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, kinetics or theoretical chemistry, our forlorn brainiac is forced to dangle this sign, “MOTORBIKES FIXED, TIRES PUMPED.” I have never seen any distressed motorbike at his multi-service universe either.

Leaving my room, I walk towards downtown by a slightly different route. Quite miraculously, I’m admitted or, rather, shoved into an entirely novel galaxy. It’s alarming. Though Petro Hotel is visible from my window, I’ve never looked at it. Now I notice it has a Spa-Massage on the third floor. A conversation overheard maybe a year ago returns to explain everything.