Teenage school dropout Tran Mai Hoa's sad, soft voice lowers to a hush as she recalls how on a whim she accepted an invitation from a woman she barely knew to go on holiday.
"I never go out with people who I don't know well but I went with her," says the 17-year-old, her eyes downcast as she moodily traces patterns on the floor.
Hoa set off in a car with the woman, a friend of her older brother, thinking she was going on a short trip to a nearby town. But after her companion spun her an excuse about needing to take a detour, the naive girl was taken on a three-hour drive north from her native Halong City and then on a ten-minute boat ride across a river. Unwittingly, she had crossed the unpoliced Kalong border river into Chinese territory.
sold into slavery
"When I was taken to a house, I found some Vietnamese people there and they told me I was already in China. In the beginning I didn't know what was happening. Later the Vietnamese people told me I had to be a prostitute," Hoa, not her real name, says.
Like countless thousands of other young Vietnamese and Asian women, Hoa had been sold to a human-trafficking syndicate. She was bound for a life of sexual slavery, forced to sleep with up to 10 men a day until a lucky break helped her escape the gang's clutches and return to Vietnam after just a few months.
And save for that happy chance, her story is all too familiar across much of Asia.
Hoa, who looks older than her years, with waist-length hair neatly tied behind her neck, never once breaks down as she recalls her ordeal, sitting in an office of the Women's Union in northern Vietnam's Quang Ninh province, of which Halong City is the capital.
The woman who allegedly lured her there and who has since been arrested, was once a victim of trafficking herself, before joining the criminal operation and tricking young women into following her footsteps.
Experts say that many Vietnamese women, either themselves past victims of trafficking or those who sought partners across the border, are engaged in the sex trade.
"We understand that a lot of the brothels are just across the border and a number of them are run by Chinese men married to Vietnamese women," says Andrew Bruce, Director of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) country mission, saying the wives may be pivotal players in the trafficking business.
Nguyen Huong Giang, of Save the Children UK in Vietnam, says the two main trafficking destinations are China and Cambodia, but trafficking to other countries in the region as well as to Europe is on the increase.
six categories
Giang identifies six categories most vulnerable to being trafficked: girls, school drop-outs, the unemployed, children from large families, those from broken or single-parent homes, and working children.
Hoa fits the first three types. Three years ago, the teenager quit school believing her education was a burden on her poor parents living in Halong City, a relatively affluent tourist destination famed for its spectacular bay dotted with limestone formations, caves and grottos.
Her 51 year-old mother, who works for a coal company, is the sole breadwinner. Her father, 60, used to do seasonal construction work but does so no longer.
For a young girl unable to find work, the idea of a brief trip away with her older brother's friend was too tempting to resist. But once in China, the enormity of her mistake dawned on her and she pleaded in vain to be taken back home.
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