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| Photo by Phil Nguyen on Pexels |
"My heart is here, the Lady of Many Tongues had said days before. Here, where I see how beautiful Đà Lạt is. I had thought the same of Saigon, despite the smoke and lights and buildings—how it could've been mine in another life. A different one, not necessarily better or worse." ~ She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh TranI know it's cheesy to say that, but it's true.
In some way, going to Vietnam for the first time helped me figure out that I'm not alone in this universe and that I still belong somewhere. Even though a lot of Vietnamese people don't view me as Vietnamese at all or more Việt Kiều than anything else. I feel like a fucking oddity, honestly. I can understand the language to a certain extent depending on the context clues given, but when it comes to speaking... Well, a baby can speak it better than me at this point.
Everyone is also always trying to show me how to eat Việt food, even though I grew up eating it. And there are always the comments about my body, cao quá, and wow, you're so skinny. (That does not help my eating issues.)
It's annoying and sometimes frustrating.
Yet despite it all, my heart bloomed when I was over there. And a part of it is still over there.
If it weren't for world events that led to one thing after another, which eventually led to my parents coming to the United States, maybe, just maybe, I would have been born in Vietnam and had a different life. Not necessarily better or worse, but it would have been mine.
And now the weather:
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