They call him Lộc, but on the Mekong he’s just “Guitar Man.”
Thirty-three. Too young to be this tired, too old to still be hustling on boats that reek of fish guts and engine oil. He slings a knockoff Yamaha over one shoulder and steps onto the planked deck of a rust-painted tourist boat at 6:10 sharp. Every morning. Like clockwork. Like debt. The other guides shout stats: water flow, Khmer empires, French canals. Lộc doesn’t bother. His English is rough, self-taught from pirated DVDs and drunk Australians. But his voice? His voice cuts through the diesel and dragonfruit air like a knife. He doesn’t do “Hello my friends.” No fake charm. Just one nod, one strum.
First song? Always “Người tình mùa đông” – Winter Lover – but slowed down, warped into something muddy and cracked. He sings it low, like he’s whispering to a ghost.
The tourists half-listen at first, snapping photos of stilt houses and boys bathing naked by the shore. But then his voice drags them in. It’s not pretty—it’s hoarse, like riverbank gravel. But it’s real.
“My brother drowned here, 1998. Stole a mango, fell from the boat. My mother never forgave the river. I sing to it so it forgets me.”
They think he’s joking. He’s not. The guitar has a hole in its body, patched with tape and a beer label. The strings buzz. But every chord hits like a confession. Between verses, he spits overboard, lights a cigarette, lets the ash fall into the wake.
Lunch stop. Some overpriced tourist trap on stilts. He doesn’t eat. Just plays under a palm shack, back resting on a crate of warm 333 beer. A little girl watches him, barefoot, nose running. He winks at her and shifts into a song that only the old folks remember—one his father used to play after drinking rice wine from a plastic jug. By the afternoon, the foreigners are quieter. Sun-stunned. Some film him secretly, thinking they’ve discovered something raw, “authentic.” He knows. He lets them. It pays the bills. Most days.
He lives in a shack upriver. Tin roof, one fan. His ex took the baby and moved to Cần Thơ. Says she didn’t want her daughter growing up “with a man who sings for foreigners.” But what else is he gonna do? Fish the poisoned waters? Drive tourists without a smile?
Every night, he takes the last tip, counts it with stained fingers, buys two packs of smokes and a bottle of Hà Nội vodka. Then he sits at the river’s edge, strums for no one, sings like the Mekong owes him something. He knows it doesn’t.
But he sings anyway.