He was generous with his advice and prodigious in his wrath at all things Vietnamese. He had apparently arrived in Ho Chi Minh and picked up a traveling companion - a broken-toothed Swede who had agreed to an overland bus trip into Cambodia. Somewhere near the border they had been wandering the streets late at night when they ran into a gang of drunks, spoiling for a fight. With admirable forbearance they extracted themselves from the confrontation and hurried back to their guesthouse lobby. The proprietor was just pulling down the heavy grate to secure the entrance when the drunks appeared, armed with machine guns. They were off-duty soldiers and they were hopping mad. "One of them pointed his gun right at my chest and tried to pull the trigger," the Hamster said, breaking into a sweat at the memory. "Luckily the clip fell out before it went off." The proprietor called the police, who arrived and immediately arrested the two Westerners for disturbing the peace. They were marched to the station and fined two hundred dollars, then ordered to return to Ho Chi Minh. Too scared to spend the night at the guesthouse, they shouldered their packs and hiked out of town until they found a vacant lot, where they spent a miserable night in the rain. In the morning they found themselves sharing the local garbage dump with the rats. "I've had enough," he declared loudly. "I'm outta here. And if you have any sense," he pointed a stubby finger at me like the barrel of a gun, "you will too."