Arriving in Hanoi felt like a crash landing on an alien planet. If the journey up to this point had softened something within us, Hanoi immediately disrupted it. Nothing flowed in a straight line. The bus from Thanh Hóa dropped us on the outskirts, and from there everything fragmented—taxi, bus station, conversation—each moment disconnected from the next. We asked for Yên Bái, but our words seemed to dissolve before they reached anyone. Faces looked back at us without hostili