HANOI -- Like many American tourists in Asia, Kendall Stempel and Chloe Starr were on high alert for a hustle.
So when a gaptoothed, 6-year-old boy named Hieu approached them, they braced for the pitch. But he didn't want their money. He was after their vocabulary.
The women had just become the latest targets of san tay: the increasingly popular Vietnamese pastime of hunting foreigners for English practice. At Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, tourists of a certain complexion are coveted as living, breathing Duolingo lessons.
"We try to look for people who have blond hair, who look a bit Western," said Hieu's mom, Hoang Ngoc Anh. "White people."
It's a formula that made Hieu, who says you can call him "Theo," near fluent in just a few months -- and a social-media star. His mom posts videos of his conversations online, where commenters gush about his proficiency.
She has to take their word for it. Her own English is much more limited. "I don't really know how good he is," she said.
Stempel and Starr, friends from their days at Wake Forest University, tried to compliment Hieu directly, but he was strictly business. "Every time I would say, 'Your English is so good,' he would say, 'Yes, thanks,' and then move on to the next topic," said Stempel, a 34-year-old healthcare marketer from Nashville.
The English-practice phenomenon has long been a staple of Asian tourism. Future Chinese billionaire Jack Ma gave tours of his hometown lake in exchange for conversation before founding tech giant Alibaba. But nowhere is the practice more institutionalized than in Vietnam, particularly at the lake by Hanoi's Old Quarter.
On weekends, teachers deploy squads of children armed with clipboards of questions: Where are you from? What's your favorite food? What music do you like?
Teenagers and young adults strive for deeper conversations. They say they are driven by Vietnam's booming tourism and export industries, and a deep curiosity about the outside world.
After the Vietnam War, the communist country was under a trade embargo until the Clinton administration. "Vietnam has been open to the world for just about 30 years," said Le Van Tai, a 40-year-old English teacher. "The situation in school is not really good at preparing students with their English."
The grind paid off for Dan Truong. In the 1990s, he approached tourists in the riverside city of Hue to test whether school lessons and Voice of America broadcasts translated to the real world.
"We can learn grammar. We can write. But when we spoke, we had to think it in Vietnamese and translate it into English," he said.
One 10-minute chat with a visiting University of Oregon professor eventually landed him a scholarship there. He walked away with a master's degree and a wife. Now 56, he lives in North Carolina and runs a hat-manufacturing business.
San tay was already common at Hoan Kiem Lake when Hieu's mother was in college, but she never participated because she didn't know any English.
Now 34, she didn't want her three sons missing the world beyond Vietnam. She bought workbooks, made flashcards and constantly played English lessons on speakers at home. One day this spring, her oldest son suddenly began speaking mostly in English.
Realizing he had surpassed her, she started taking Hieu to the lake every Saturday. The campaign forced her to learn a few phrases. Her first English words to a tourist: "Excuse me, my son is learning English. Would you mind talking with him a little bit?"
On a recent Saturday, Hieu woke up in the suburban two-bedroom apartment owned by his parents, who pull in about $10,000 a year, largely from his dad's bank job. Hieu shares a Murphy bed with his brothers, surrounded by jars of balloons -- the tools of the trade for a mom who swapped an architecture career for freelance balloon artistry.
Soon, Hieu was wedged between mom and dad for a sweaty 45-minute moped ride. Once at the lake, it didn't take long to spot their targets.
Moving on from the Wake Forest friends, he intercepted a couple from Down Under. "I know about Australia!" he said. "There are 'drop bears.' They're just like koalas, but they drop from trees to people, to attack them." Asked if he had seen one, Hieu conceded it was a myth.
Hieu cornered some Italians and a German named Martin. "There are about 1,500 kinds of sausages in Germany," Hieu informed him. Martin said he hadn't known.
After practice, Hieu's parents rewarded him with ice cream. Back at home, Hieu said he likes English because it lets him chat with foreigners and watch a wider variety of videos.
He has no current plans to use the language professionally. When he grows up, he wants to be a policeman. "I want to catch thieves," he said.
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