A plump figure clambered out of a nearby cyclo and waved at me. Bill and I had met briefly that afternoon and, in the manner of travelers, struck up an easy and uncommitted acquaintanceship.

He was an accountant by trade, divorced, living in a renovated garage, with few needs and fewer desires. He traveled religiously for one month each year, he told me, in order to experience exotic cultures and people. Thus far, Vietnam had not been a stunning success.

"I mean, it's cheap and all that," he said with a shrug, "but there's no culture to speak of. All they wanna do is rip you off." He gestured at the street around us. "Just take a look!"

I suggested there might be life beyond Kim Cafe.

"No," he said firmly. "I've been there. Cu Chi Tunnels, Cao Dai Temple, Mekong Delta, Jade Pagoda..." I read the list on the tour board behind him as he reeled off the names. "Nothing worth seeing," he concluded.

The soup arrived. I took pity on his hopeless quest and unthinkingly offered him a place on my journey north.

"By bicycle?" he said in horror, his hands fluttering, searching the air for an excuse. "No no, I don't have time," he concluded with obvious relief and relaxed back into his chair. "How far could I possibly get in two weeks? What could I see?"

A few hundred miles of the real Vietnam, the land of lazy afternoons on bullock carts, the muted clonk of buffalo bells and the soft, sensual feel of paddy silt between bare toes.

"I gotta go to Hanoi," he told me firmly. "There's a car heading up the coast tomorrow - two Americans and an Aussie. They're taking a week, stopping in Danang and Hue. It's an opportunity."

We finished our soup in silence. Bill handed the stall owner a blue five-thousand Dong note and stood, sweating in the sultry evening air, waiting for his change. I pointed out that he was suffering for somewhat less than four cents.

"I don't wanna get them started tipping," he said with barely a glance at the woman who had spent her evening hunched over a steaming cauldron of soup. He snatched the worn bill that emerged from the depths of her pocket and stalked off to find Vietnam in a car on Highway 1.