This happened last autumn in Hanoi, near the Old Quarter, where I work in a small travel insurance office. I was walking back from lunch when an older woman with a large backpack stopped me. She was from Chile, called Isabel, and she spoke a little English and no Vietnamese at all.
She was looking for a small guesthouse she'd booked online, but her phone battery had died, and she only had a screenshot of the address written in Vietnamese without the accents. The problem is that many streets in the Old Quarter have similar names, all starting with 'Hang', which means 'goods'. I tried to explain the route, but after a few sentences I could see from her face that she was completely lost. So I decided to just walk her there. It took about fifteen minutes through crowded lanes full of motorbikes, and on the way she asked me about street food, so I pointed out a stall that sells the best bun cha in the area.
When we found the guesthouse, she was so relieved that she gave me a hug, which surprised the owner. I felt genuinely happy for the rest of the afternoon, partly because it was such a simple thing to do. I think I was also thinking about my own first trip abroad, to Bangkok, when a stranger helped me in a similar way, so it felt like returning a favour. A few days later she found my office and left a small bag of Chilean coffee for me at the front desk, which made the whole thing even more memorable.