‘WHEN YOU DON’T like whoever is in charge, you can vote them out. Right?’

It’s two in the morning, and I’m standing in the middle of the street outside my hotel in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The speaker is a young xe om driver – one of those ubiquitous motorbike taxis that dart in and out of the traffic like busy mosquitos – and though he’s only twenty-six, the same age as me, Cuong has a wife and two children. On the ride from the canal-side bar back to my hotel, Cuong told me that this is his third job: during the day, he splits his time between working as a mechanic in a local garage and as a porter at a medium-sized hotel.