I’d been in a stupor all day. A word of warning: one pipe of Cholon’s finest is never enough, but five … and on a school night. Tut-tut old boy. It’s true what they say. Saigon is a dangerous town, mostly because of what a man can do to himself. Exhibit A: the elite French parachutists, who routinely rely on penicillin to save the day (i.e. whenever a nocturnal mission to Le Parc aux Buffles goes south).

Only hunger dislodged me from my room at the Continental, but feeling rather tender—I could still taste the traces of vermouth cassis on my breath. Never again!—I planned only to descend to the hotel’s adequate restaurant, hoping perhaps that a dish of pot-au-feu et une petite carafe de pastis might slap the capillaries in my pasty cheeks back to life.

• Tags: Connla Stokes, Graham Greene, Issue 25, Vietnam