Hello Vietnam

For more blogs by Tran visit her wonderful blog at: tranibanani.wordpress.com

(You might think I’m really uncreative with blog titles. I am. But it’s also the title of a really good and appropriate song.)

I’ll be the first to publicly admit this, if no one else in the program will: the transition is hard. Coming from the well-paved sidewalks, functional transportation systems, ritzy restaurants of the Washington DC to the pollution, the dirtiness, the crazy (understatement!) traffic of Hanoi. It’s a difficult transition, and I’ve forgotten what it was like to be in a developing and industrializing, but still very impoverished country.

But I’m amazed at the human capacity to adapt to change, and to find and settle into a routine. Just a few days into a new country, I find an easy rhythm of eating breakfast at home, walking the same route to school, eating lunch at the street shops near class, coming home in time for dinner. My homestay-mate and I have even found a gym near our house, and we see the same people, do the same routines at the gym every day. Sooner, rather than later, you get used to the new conditions. You get used to breathing the air, smelling the odors, walking down the dusty sidewalks, navigating through the traffic.

It amazes me how quickly I’ve gotten used to it, because now that I’m settled in, I remember why I love Vietnam and how much I love Vietnam. There’s something about here that feels like home. Even if I’ve never been in northern Vietnam. Even if United States will almost certainly always be home for me, because that’s where my immediate family is, and where I spent my formative years. But there’s an innate familiarity that I sink into when I’m in Vietnam. I’m in a place where everyone looks like me, speaks the language I speak at home, eats the same food I eat at home, shares the same values that my parents have imparted on me. It’s like home, magnified a thousand times. It is warm and compassionate and tight-knit.

I know that children of immigrants can feel as if they’re straddling between two cultures and never quite fitting in one or the other. But I feel very Vietnamese, and I feel as Vietnamese as I do American. I’m Ok with being Vietnamese-American, or “Viet Kieu” (people who were part of the Vietnamese diaspora) as how I would be referred to by Vietnamese here. I stumble around with my Vietnamese and I walk the streets or ride the motorbikes wide-eyed, perhaps the same way I did in the United States as a five year old. But I don’t feel like an outsider here in Vietnam. People ask where I am, and I give the whole schpiel. I’m from the US but I was born in Saigon and immigrated when I was five. They take it in, and they take me in. Perhaps Vietnam is a very national/ethnic-centric country. I’m part of the ethnic majority that makes up ~86% of the country, and I will always be part of that community because 1) I look it, and 2) I speak it. I’m privileged to benefit from this culture, to be an insider at a home away from home, and I’m grateful to be here.

Here’s a bunch of photos, with some captions, of all the things I’ve done in the past week and a half. Because that’s what a blog is supposed to be, right?

Sorry, there aren’t tons of pictures. As a traveler, I’ve been trying to be more hands-off with the camera, and take in the moment as it happens. I tell myself that I’ll always be back here, so there’s no need to photograph every place. And you can find a lot of sites and sceneries on Google Images. But the memories you make, and how you remember them later on, are very much your own. So I try to remember and feel as much as I can.

#Vietnam