About fifteen years ago or more, I met an American artist called Bradford Edwards in Hanoi. Never seen in public without his trademark floppy hat, and always dressed for mild Californian weather, the lightly bearded and bespectacled Bradford had an air of youthfulness about him. You wouldn’t have guessed that he was in his fifties.

As Bradford often created art from quirky objects and evocative images that he found, Hanoi must have been like a giant treasure trove for him, though I recall that his spells in the city were seasonal. Like me, the footloose Bradford loathed the long, hot and relentlessly humid summers, but, unlike me, he also had digs in Phnom Penh and Santa Barbara.

• Tags: Bradford Edwards, Connla Stokes, Issue 21, Vietnam