We must visit the fish-feeders today, not tomorrow. We're amused, as well as baffled, but Mr Lac is embarrassed.
Tomorrow is the first day of Tet, lunar New Year.
They believe their luck will be affected by the first person to visit them that day. If it's a happy, successful, rich person, that's very good for them. They don't want to take chances with strangers. So as evening falls over Chau Doc, in Vietnam's northern Mekong Delta, we row out to the floating homes of the fish-feeders. Pairs of wooden houses ride on pontoons, looking oddly suburban, many of them decorated for Tet with yellow apricot blossom to ward off devils.