chapter two of the hoi an robbery
Last July in Vietnam, motorbike thieves snatched my bag out of my bicycle basket and sped away. I've told this story before, but today I'm adding a new chapter - one that starts in this NYC cafe, with this weird smile-grimace on my face.
A recap of the robbery story: I went to the police station with no luck. I cried. I cancelled my cards and ordered new ones. I tore up my leg the week after, and then waited weeks in Saigon for my cards to arrive and my stitches to heal. The robbery kicked off the roughest weeks of my trip.
About a month ago, my friend Ashmi and I were getting dessert in an Upper West Side cafe, as we caught up on our city lives. My phone buzzed with an email from a sender named Nguyen, with the subject: "Regarding your (likely) lost belongings". The email simply read:
Hi, I came across a Facebook post from a page I follow which shows your lost belongings in Hoi An, Vietnam. So I'm sending you this to see if you want to check this post.
It included a link to what looked like a Facebook page.
"Should I open it?" I asked Ashmi with wide eyes, and after a moment of hesitation, decided yes. I pasted the link in an incognito browser (semi-cautious about phishing, but not cautious enough to check if that actually helps) - and it opened to a post by the tourism center in Hoi An - the city where I was robbed 10 months prior. "Help this US citizen get her belongings back," the auto-generated translation read, above a photo of my student ID, driver's license, and credit cards.
"What...the actual fuck.” And this is the moment Ashmi captured my smile-grimace.
I messaged the tourism center page, thanking them (and politely asking them to remove the post with all my personal info). As we messaged, I learned that someone had recently found my cards discarded in a rice paddy. Then, whoever ran the page wrote, "I met you before. I remember you came into the police station." Of course, another layer of insane coincidence. I PayPaled money over to send back my driver's license and student ID.
In my email back to Nguyen, I thanked him profusely, explained the robbery in July, and asked how in the world he found me. "I saw your name on a card and tried to look you up on Google, where I found your Wordpress page." he wrote. "P/s: Funny that July is also the month I first moved to Hoi An."
We continued emailing back and forth. His emails read like a native's, almost entirely free of errors. I learned that he was born and raised in Vietnam, focused his high school years on mastering English, and now makes his living freelancing in English copywriting. I learned that he moved to Hoi An from his hometown village to be with his girlfriend. I learned that he was supposed to be the best man at his friend's wedding in Boston last year, but his US visa was denied. He made jokes about Trump, wishing for a future in which he’ll more easily be able to visit the US. We’ve promised to meet in person, if we're ever in the same city again. He ends every email wishing me well for my day or week.
I don't know why my cards turned up 10 months later, or why the Facebook algorithm served up this post to a selfless Samaritan who went through the trouble of tracking me down. But I know that I’m in awe of my new pen pal, and comforted by this ridiculous ripple in the universe at a time I was feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty. I find myself getting lost in the possibilities of this big, unruly world, and then - here is this warm reminder that we all exist in it together. And not just exist, maybe even find joy in the chaos - like a havoc-wreaking robbery that forged a random connection between two humans across the world. I think of bicycling through the humidity of Hoi An last July, as Nguyen was likely settling into his new apartment, both of us unaware of the other as we went about our lives in the same city. And now, 10 months later, I read Nguyen’s well wishes from Hoi An, and I smile in NYC.
