Into the hereafter

A piece of satirical fiction about the online reaction to a man's disappearance in Vietnam.

Photo by Fré Sonneveld

WHEN NEWS BROKE THAT A FOREIGN MAN had gone missing in Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam, online editors across the country noticed modest traction at first. Every single one of the digital news sites had chosen a generic picture of the Hoang Lien mountain range with some variation on a theme. One went with a wide shot of winding country road with a H’mông woman carrying a rattan basket of firewood. Another used a panoramic shot of a cloud-covered Fansipan – the country’s highest peak (now accessible by cable car, as noted by a caption). A third site had a picture of an anonymous backpacker, walking with their back to their own camera, one arm reaching behind them with a selfie stick, as they walked toward the distinctive terraced rice fields of Vietnam’s northwest. But, when updating the story, a resourceful news editor at Today in Vietnam used an image of the missing man, copied from his Facebook page. The resolution was rather grainy and the vertical shape also didn’t suit the website’s template, designed to accommodate pictures taken in landscape mode. But it didn’t matter. The image caught the attention of netizens across Vietnam because the missing man – with his thick blonde curls, blue eyes and wide-grin – was outrageously handsome. From that point, the story quickly went viral. 

IN HER ONE-ROOM APARTMENT in District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, Pham Ngoc Chau, a 22-year-old biotechnology student from Dong Nai province, literally sat up on her bed when she first spotted the picture of the missing man. Beforehand, she’d been lying down and blithely scrolling through her Facebook and Instagram feeds, feeling only the mildest sense of pleasure as she worked her way down through a litany of selfies, cat videos (she had two of her own) and the latest TikTok dance trends, when suddenly there he was… the most beautiful young foreign man she had ever laid eyes on. Thuy, a university friend of Chau’s, had shared the post, commenting: ‘Trời ơi – I hope they find him soon [insert fearful face emoji].’ 

The linked article was short. It merely confirmed that a search was underway for Mr. Jack McCauley (24) from Derry, Northern Ireland. Chau shared the post on her own Facebook feed. A number of comments from her friends soon appeared: ‘So terrible…’; ‘If he’s injured, I’ll nurse him back to health, hic.’

Later on, Chau searched for an update on Twitter but all of the news websites had the same information: ‘Mr. Jack McCauley, a British citizen visiting Vietnam from his home in Northern Ireland, has gone missing in the mountains of Lao Cai Province. He was last seen leaving his guesthouse in Sapa at 5am.’ 

Chau turned off her laptop and slid under the sheets. It was 2am. Struggling to sleep, she played songs by Cigarettes After Sex, and briefly checked Tinder (she had no new matches, which didn’t surprise her as she never posted a clear picture of herself; her cats took centre stage). She then returned to Facebook and, with little enthusiasm, watched a couple of viral dances, a video of an (adorable) otter, and security camera footage of a bus being swallowed by a sinkhole in China. Then she fell asleep, still clutching the mobile phone, an umbilical link to the world outside. 

AFTER SHE WOKE UP IN THE MORNING, Chau discovered a new image of Jack had appeared, along with a slightly more detailed online report. Chau zoomed in on the picture, taken on Jack’s graduation day at Queen’s University of Belfast. With his large, muscular physique, he looked older than his peers. Everyone around him seemed to be giddy, as if they were with a celebrity. Chau briefly fantasised being among them before wondering who might be Jack’s girlfriend (and her rival).   

The report revealed Jack had been staying at the Mountain Prince Guesthouse 2 in Sapa, a city that served as a gateway to the mountainous northwest. He had gone on a solo trek across the slopes of the Hoang Lien mountain range, where the country’s highest peak, Mount Fansipan (altitude 3,147 metres), is located. Authorities had dispatched a search party. Jack, a dual citizen (British and Irish), had two embassies calling for, and promising, urgent support. However, one expert (a former park ranger) explained the scale of the task, i.e. searching for one man in a vast densely forested mountainous area. “Assuming he left the established trails, it’s a needle in a haystack situation,” he was quoted as saying. 

This same report also underlined the risks of trekking in the area, especially when the weather is inclement and the terrain is even more treacherous. It added that two foreign men, in separate incidents, had slipped to their death while solo trekking in the area in recent years. Chau never considered why she hadn’t heard of these other foreigners.  

THAT AFTERNOON, Chau, unable to focus on her course work, entered Jack’s name into Facebook and found his profile. The last post was an image taken the day before he went missing. Jack, topless and beaming from ear to ear in the picture, declared himself satisfied with a morning’s free-climbing: ‘Locals think I am crazy. But mum, don’t worry. I know my limits…’ The post before Jack had filmed himself performing handstands and cartwheels with some H’mông teenagers, the languorous misty mountainscape of Sapa looming in the background. One of the H’mông teenagers outperformed Jack in a cossack squat dance-off to the delight of all. There was much laughter and high-fives all around. 

Chau, who described her personality type on two different dating apps as ‘a mix of ISTJ and ISFJ’, sighed longingly at Jack’s exuberant, extroverted nature. She then found herself wishing she hadn't recently fallen out with her best friend Ngan, who had slept with a guy that Chau had liked but had inadvertently friendzoned. Ngan had never feared strangers or shied away from approaching anyone (or sleeping with a guy). She was spontaneous and free-spirited. The chalk to Chau’s cheese. When they were still in school, Chau and Ngan used to hang out in the centre of Ho Chi Minh, where Ngan would sometimes walk right up to foreigners who were standing around, either looking lost, or just a little unsure of where they were going, and say: “Excuse me, can we help you?” 

It was a way to practise English. But Ngan would always insist foreigners needed help when in Vietnam – a developing country that was, she believed, too hot, rather dangerous and often confusing for most visitors. Chau knew that Ngan would be following the story of Jack’s disappearance and be annoyed by the shyness of her compatriots, who hadn’t insisted on guiding him up and down the mountain.  

As Chau scrolled back through Jack’s Facebook feed, she not only gazed at the images but read all of the comments. Under a selfie of a topless Jack, taken while trekking in Phu Quoc National Park, one young Vietnamese man called Vu gushed: ‘Anh Jack đẹp trai¹ waaa.’ Vu, who judging by his avatar (him with a cute looking girl making a duck face) was straight but suffering from an immense man crush. 

Chau then opened a new tab and ran a search on Google. There was a story in a news website from Jack’s hometown. It quoted his sister, who said Jack’s father and uncle were flying out to Vietnam. The British and Irish embassies in Hanoi were coordinating with local authorities. Time, everyone agreed, was running out. Back on Facebook, Chau found some comments from expats living in Vietnam criticising the tardiness of the response. ‘Hate to say it, but that poor bugger is up shit creek without a paddle,’ wrote an Australian called Nate. 

An American travel vlogger released a video post on the many dangers of going off the beaten track in Vietnam. He, like many others, expressed hope but warned that Jack, if injured, could need urgent medical attention. But many young Vietnamese netizens, commenting below his clip, remained optimistic: ‘He is so strong. I am sure he cannot die,’ wrote a teenage girl called Phiphi from Thanh Hoa city. 

Chau slept in fits and starts that night. While awake she pictured Jack, still alive, but unable to crawl to safety. Chau, who had never been north of Dong Nai Province, didn’t have the words to describe the places she now imagined. She pictured darkness and stillness and mud as well as slithering snakes, creepy-crawlies, wolves and wild cats all around. When she fell asleep, she dreamed she was in the wilderness. It was night and she sensed she was in great danger. But when she tried to get up and run, she couldn’t. It felt as if her back was glued to the ground. When she woke up, she was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack, gasping for air but utterly convinced she was unable to breathe. This is it, she thought, this is the end of me.

THE NEXT DAY, Chau kept checking Facebook every few minutes. All across the country, many passionate young netizens had seen, shared and commented on the news of this beautiful, young foreign man’s disappearance, as if collectively hoping, or perhaps even believing this digital vigil could help to retrieve Jack. On Twitter the story was now trending: #PRAYFORJACK #FINDJACK #VIETNAMWILLFINDYOU #CỐLÊNJACK

Official commentary, however, remained circumspect (no one failing to mention the ‘coordinated efforts’) while experts sounded bleak. A representative of Hoang Lien National Park surmised Jack had slipped into a creek, some of which are 10 to 20 metres deep. A conservationist working for an NGO based in Hanoi stressed the scale of the mountain range (30 km wide and 180 km length): “This is the tail end of the Himalayas. It’s vast, imposing and many parts are inaccessible. Hoang Lien National Park alone is twice the size of San Francisco. But it’s also a mountainous wilderness.”  

But in the late afternoon, an update revealed that Jack had a mobile phone with him and had managed to send a message to a friend: ‘Battery about to die. Fell from a height. Bleeding. Badly hurt…’ The text offered some hope that police would establish Jack’s coordinates. However, his injuries also increased the odds that he would die before being found. 

Chau found solace from returning to Jack’s personal timeline. She discovered that he had been nicknamed Adonis by his university friends. When Chau translated the name with the social media app Zalo, it read: ‘Anh đẹp trai’. Under a video of Jack hanging upside down from a tree branch, somewhere in the Mediterranean, and talking up the health benefits of inversion, a male friend had a euphemistic dig: ‘Keep your feet on the ground, mate. You’re not actually a Greek god.’     

Chau scrolled up, back toward the present, and discovered that Vu was a receptionist at a guest house in Co Giang Ward, near the backpacker area, where Jack had stayed in Ho Chi Minh City. He’d taken Jack for ‘oc’ (snails and other shelled creatures), taught him some local slang while sinking beers. The previous day, Jack – dressed in jogging gear – had gone sightseeing and ended up in the zoo, where most of the animals were asleep or just hiding from the heat of the day. Jack ended up posing for multiple photos with Vietnamese visitors. ‘Turns out I was the most interesting creature at the Saigon Zoo today [insert weeping and laughing emoji],’ he wrote as a caption for a picture of him standing head and shoulders above a Vietnamese family from the Mekong Delta, all of whom are grinning ear to ear, as if they couldn’t believe their luck to have stumbled upon this beautiful young foreign man.  

After days in Ho Chi Minh City, Jack had travelled by bus to Lam Dong province in the Central Highlands, where he lost the trail when trekking through forest, somewhere outside of the city of Dalat: ‘Not all who wander are lost … but I bloody was… [insert floods of tears emoji],’ he wrote in a post with a picture of himself standing by a rocky waterfall. ‘Worth it though. This place is breathtaking.’ 

‘And so are you,’ read the first comment, written by an attractive looking western girl called Penelope that Chau instantly envied.

In the next post, there were two videos – in the first one, Jack is filming himself on the back of a motorbike riding under a canopy of trees along a road dappled with sunshine; in the second he is diving from a height of at least 5m into a pool of water. His brief description: ‘I have never felt so free.’ 

Western friends had commented: ‘Living the dream.’ , ‘Any good pubs nearby?’ A woman with the surname McAuley (his mother, or an aunt, Chau guessed) expressed concern: ‘I know you won’t pay any attention to this but can you please be careful of your handsome head…’

Uninterested in visiting beach destinations, and seeking higher peaks, Jack had flown from Dalat to Hanoi from where he’d taken the overnight train to Lao Cai, a province that skirts the border of China. When he woke in the morning a bag of dirty clothes had disappeared. ‘Theft on the Sapa Express!’ he joked on Facebook. ‘Good luck to whoever now possesses my smelly underwear.’ His western friends listed more pros: ‘Well, you’ll save money on laundry from now on, Jack…’; ‘This means no one can complain about you walking around Southeast Asia with your top off…’ 

Vu chipped in: “Anh Jack dở hơi biết bơi!”² 

Returning to the present moment in search of updates, Chau noted that there were now hundreds of comments from Vietnamese netizens under each shared story. Most were still urging for a speedy rescue. But jealousy and bitterness had creeped into each thread. When a Vietnamese girl with a western name (Madeline) wrote: ‘He’s so brave to go alone.’ A male called Manh Hung snapped back: ‘Du ma, if he’s alone, who is taking all the fucking photos.’ An anonymous user with a mysterious avatar (a skull and crossbones) wrote: ‘So one foreign guy goes missing, and the press goes into overdrive, but when protestors go missing in Vietnam nobody cares…’ Someone else with a patriotic avatar (a statue of the 13th century military general Tran Hung Dao) assured the masses: ‘Vietnam has the manpower, they can find him [insert flexed bicep emoji].’ Another added, both grimly and giddily: ‘He must have been kidnapped by traffickers, who have cut him open and sold his enormous organs to Tung Của³!’ 

When someone mentioned Jack had been robbed on the train, a young woman from Danang said that people in Sapa should prepare him some clothes. ‘But he’s so big! No Vietnamese clothes will fit him!’ replied another woman. ‘We’ll have to make some!’ chimed in a third, who may have been joking, but some thought this was a good idea. ‘How could someone that big climb mountains anyway!’ wondered Giang, who may have been male, female, or non-binary, and it wasn’t clear from the comment whether he/she/they was/were being cynical or awestruck… 

Sitting in her one-bedroom apartment, Chau found herself briefly wondering who all of these people really were…  she wanted to think it didn’t matter, but she soon noted that Jack’s disappearance was causing a strange divide. When an entrepreneur offered to send his high-grade American video drones to support the search, he was swiftly accused of trying to advertise his overpriced products. He subsequently deleted the post. Then a famous model and Instagram personality, Pham Thi Nguyet Anh – the winner of a beauty pageant ‘Ms. Eco International Tourism 2018’ – shared a livestream, tears streaming down her face, lamenting that her self-care routines had gone out the window. She said in clipped English: “How can we sleep when a beautiful, young, foreign man is missing?” She was subsequently abused and derided in such vast numbers that she deleted her account. 

To cheer herself up, Chau scrolled back a year or more on Jack’s Facebook page. She would discover Jack is a talented young stage actor, fluent in French (his mother hailed from Paris) and a talented gymnast. There were videos of Jack doing headstands and handstands, abseiling, canyoning, canoeing and trekking; always outdoors, and always in the sunshine. Chau failed to suppress a feeling of self-loathing because all she did was sit in her room, day after day, and night after night, staring at screens.

THAT NIGHT, SOMETIME AFTER 3AM, Chau fell asleep and slipped into a dream in which she was travelling north, first on a train, trundling along the tracks, then ethereally drifting down into a valley, not only longing to see Jack but believing it would be her who would discover and save him… 

But, just as she sensed that she would find him, Chau woke up and somehow she knew. She opened her laptop and checked the news. The body had been found. Jack was dead. Chau couldn’t bear to read the comments that were flooding in. Underneath the first post she saw, she wrote: “RIP the lovely backpacker Adonis.” Then she shut her laptop and opened a window in the hope she might catch a breeze, and standing there, Chau was at first overwhelmed with an unbearable sadness. But she managed to push these emotions to the side and instead, she felt a surprising clarity. She knew that everything would be different from that moment on. She would text Ngan and ask her to meet up and together they would start planning a trip the very next day. 

JUST OVER TWO YEARS LATER, Jack’s father, sitting at his kitchen table in county Derry in Northern Ireland, would once again find himself checking his deceased son’s Facebook page, and wondering why ‘those Silicon Valley fuckers’ still hadn’t deactivated it, as he had requested multiple times. It was strange for him to see that comments were still being made by Vietnamese people, calling his son Adonis and praising his handsomeness. Under Jack’s very last post, the most recent comment was written by a young woman called Nguyen Thi Yen Cháu: ‘Xin chào anh đẹp trai. Your spirit belongs to Vietnam now.’ 

Jack’s father would literally wince on reading this, and grapple uncomfortably with the thought that people from another land, a land where his son had tragically died, appeared to be claiming him. Out of curiosity, he would click on Chau’s name and see her latest post: an image of seven young men and seven young women, all Vietnamese, on top of Mount Fansipan and wearing t-shirts and headbands in the colours of their national flag, but what Jack’s father also noticed was that one of the young women was holding a framed picture of Jack. Chau’s caption, when translated, would read: “Today is the death anniversary of the most beautiful young, handsome man I ever set eyes on. RIP Jack McAuley. Seeing you changed my life. I only wish I could have met you, even just once, but today we celebrate your life on top of Fansipan, where we are close to the heavens. After trekking through the wilderness and climbing up the mountainside, we did handstands, and cartwheels, and no one whispered your name, for we each knew where we were, and why we were here. But the strangest and most magical moment was when we heard a guide say out loud to a group of tourists in at least five different languages: ‘Look all around you – do you see? Yes my friends! This is Jack’s playground! He is everywhere you look!’

1. ‘đẹp trai’ = handsome

2. A nonsense rhyming slang, literally ‘Mad, know how to swim.’

3. A mocking and deliberate mispronunciation of Trung Quoc (China)