In a restaurant three middle-aged couples – all old friends – scoop the last morsels of banh cuon (rice crepes) and gio (processed pork) out of the fish sauce and drain the last dregs from the bottles of Bia Ha Noi on the table. Everyone is replete but no one is relaxed. One man nervously wipes his face with a wet towel. Another chews on a toothpick with unnecessary focus. The third man lights up a cigarette and draws deeply. The normally loquacious women also fall strangely silent, as if the lunch had arrived at that awkward moment when people realised they had nothing else to say to each other. But no, there’s something else going on here. The wives keep glancing side-to-side through this pregnant pause, then, suddenly, each one jumps up and bolts for the front of the restaurant. Their husbands also stand up, trying to clear a path for their wife, while trying to block the others. Everyone is shouting, “Thoi! Thoi Thoi!” which is kind of like ‘no, no, no’, but in this case more like, ‘don’t, don’t, don’t’. Two women manage to wriggle past their opponents and collide in a strange, tangled dance in the middle of the restaurant, twirling with each other, holding the other back, while trying to spin forwards, grimacing and tut-tutting, each with a crisp VND500,000 note held aloft in the air. As these two wrestle each other into a deadlock, the third woman slips past everyone and triumphantly arrives at her destination beside the cashier-slash-cook-slash-owner, who is sitting behind the steaming pots and pans with a worried look on her face. The woman – also holding a crisp VND500,000 note – demands to pay but there are squeals of anguish and cries of protest from her two friends so the cashier-slash-chef-slash-owner holds up her hands as if to say, “let’s all be reasonable now, we don’t want anyone to get hurt here today.” The woman who arrived first turns red with frustration as she waves the note in the face of the cashier-slash-chef-slash-owner but by now the other two women have arrived at the same spot so there are three notes being waved by three women and sure who could tell them apart. The women now try reasoning with each other while trying to push the others back and grapple to the fore: “Let me pay. I haven’t seen you guys for such a long time”, “No, no, no… you both came such a long way today. Let me pay!”, “Oh, It’s been so long since I came to this part of town. Let me pay!” The cashier-slash-chef-slash-owner looks pleadingly at the three husbands for a humane resolution. But they only shrug their shoulders and pretty much parrot what their wives just said: “We’re inviting you as you travelled so far”, “No, we’re inviting you as it’s been such a long time since we all came here”, “No, we’re inviting both of you because we’re so happy to see you all again!” But eventually one woman’s patience snaps and she rasps, “Stop it! We asked you to come here today so this time it’s our treat!” and she plants the cash in hand of the cashier-slash-chef-slash-owner with a fierce stare of conviction that nobody would deny. Everyone knows the dispute is over, but for the sake of appearances, they don’t want to seem like they’re yielding too easily – especially the husbands lest their wives lay into them afterwards for being utterly gutless when it comes to paying restaurant bills – so everyone mumbles for half a minute or so, as the cashier-slash-chef-slash-owner is finally allowed to take money off someone. After that it’s all smiles again as everyone shuffles out to the road to their motorbikes but the banter continues and the winning couple’s aggressive generosity has not been forgotten. As one defeated woman lifts her leg over the pillion behind her husband, she points at the bill-payers with a wagging toothpick, as if to say, “We’ll get you next time. Just you wait and see. You’ll be sorry you ever paid for my lunch.”