Can I Go Now?

4 am.

I awoke today at 2pm after getting to sleep after 5 am.

Tracked down the so-called Apple store, among the sea of computer shops jammed together in this district (looks like a computer flea market. You may as well buy your laptop off the back of a truck).

After going up and down the street at least twice, I found it, and was relieved that it was a store with an actual lock on the door. More than that, a gate and a guard.
It was clearly closed (I'd been warned it might be open only weekdays), so I took a quick look, saw the lights off, and started to walk away.
The guard approached me.
I asked him if he spoke English and he stared at me, without any acknowledgement that relevant sound had emerged from my lips. Like my dog does.

So I started to gesture, more or less with a wave of my hands and a smile, as in "No problem, I'm leaving."

But he didn't let me leave. He kept blocking my path, and got a motorbike guy to help him. So ... I can't communicate with him in English, or in my best international mime... but he still won't let me leave until he learns why I'm there. So what's left? fluent Vietnamese? Wouldn't I have tried that first?

I'm standing there, trying to figure out how to pull a language out of my pocket, and he notes the paper in my hand with the address on it, examines it, then points to the street number to show me that I'm at the correct address.

Thanks, man.