bad metaphor

Woke up early, whether due to jet lag, or maybe my body has become accustomed to sleeping in cramped seats on planes, trains, taxis, subways – and isn’t able to fall asleep that well on such a soft, luxuriously pillowy king-sized mattress (a surprise and extremely generous gift from our roommate while E and I were away). Or maybe somehow, I can still hear the call of my aunt’s neighbor’s rooster: a triumphal annunciation of dawn in Saigon, taking twelve hours to float across the ocean to wake me up at precisely six in the morning here in Kansas. Whatever the reason, I got out of bed and got onto a bicycle seat, riding along the river, trying to sort in my head all the places I’ve been.

Japan, with its fastidious attention to detail: nothing is left to chance there, not even the unfurling of tree limbs. Korea, flocked with duck-billed visor bearing women, vigilantly shielding their faces from the sun in an attempt to preserve their beauty (and ironically enough, looking awfully silly in the process). I think of all the countries, I had the toughest time in Vietnam – not just because I have the language capacities of a two year old (and a particularly slow one at that), nor simply because like a slow two-year old, I couldn’t cross the street without holding my aunt by the hand. It was in Vietnam that I had to deal with conflicting loyalties and identities. Here I could blend in, certainly better than E, who got the devil’s eye from an elderly woman in a market (who possibly took offense at his devil-colored hair) – but never fully. Even before I’d open my mouth to reveal my poor command of Vietnamese, my plumper frame and general look of wide-eyed cluelessness identifies me as foreigner, and I’d get stuck with the foreigner price. Vietnam is freshest in my mind, so I’ll begin recounting my days there – even though my journey actually started on the gaudy, noisy streets of Shinjuku.

Vietnam has price differentials – if you’re a foreigner, expect to get charged more than locals. This puts off a lot of tourists, including some of our friends who visited recently and got really tired of getting ripped off all the time. After awhile, though, I concluded that this is not because Vietnamese people hate foreigners or anything (although some might, like that old lady in the market). It’s not so much that they’re gouging foreigners, as they are helping themselves. First: Vietnam is still a third world country, in the process of rapid expansion, but getting a late start because of decades of ravaging war. So people are still very, very poor. Second: Vietnamese are extremely loyal to their kindred. Whenever possible, they’ll cut deals or try to go easy on their fellow countrymen, who they know probably need the help. Foreigners (and plump Vietnamese-Americans who can’t even speak the language) are probably rich and therefore don’t need the local “discounts.”

Every now and then I wondered how my life would have turned out had, instead of being born in the States, I grew up here. If my parents hadn’t traded rice paddies for wheat fields as scenery. If I grew up eating fresh mang cut every day, knew instinctively the proper pedestrian technique for avoiding death by herd of motorcycles, donned a face mask to shield my lower chin from sun-induced darkness. If there hadn’t been a terrible, protracted war that forced my parents to abandon their beloved homeland. If twenty million gallons of Agent Orange hadn’t been dumped onto this land, melting Viet Cong-shielding leaves from trees, skin from bones. As I toured the War Remnants Museum, looking at the photographs of the devastation inflicted upon my parents’ country by my own, the thought came to my mind: gosh, what if my family had been fighting for the wrong side?

But then, my family and other South Vietnamese suffered at the hands of their brethren up north. My uncle, much beloved by his sisters and mother, was shot by Viet Cong while serving an extended tour of duty (he re-enlisted to protect his younger brother from having to serve). I remember my dad’s voice, choked with rarely displayed emotion as he declared he’d kiss the soil, once the people responsible for wreaking utter devastation upon his hometown were brought to justice for their crimes.

I must stop here, because I don’t mean to make my vacation to Vietnam sound like a constant angst-fest. I had a wonderful time, eating the freshest, ripest, sweetest fruit – fruit whose paler, less flavorful cousins might be accessible to you in the States if you’re lucky – and spending time with dear old Auntie Needles, who doted on me like I was her daughter for the week. She’s the sweetest auntie one could hope for, and now it seems silly to me that I was so afraid of her as a wee lass – though, witnessing some of the ire she directed at cab drivers and waitresses, maybe I could see why a ten year old would fear her. For her part, she was ecstatic that I had made the trek to visit her, pinched my cheeks red in the manner of doting aunties, was endlessly patient with my bad Vietnamese and E’s culinary pickiness, and went to great lengths to make sure we had an amazing time there. I’ll miss having an Auntie Needles around to guide me through traffic and yell at taxi drivers!

More to come later, and as soon as I find my card reader for my camera, photos.