My brother and sister-in-law love to travel. I am the complete opposite--I'm a complete homebody, I like to stay indoors, and the unfamiliar gives me anxiety.
However, one thing on our common bucket lists is to see Vietnam, especially the cities our family are from. Unfortunately, with a young child, that's not going to happen for me anytime soon (I am not traveling to another continent with a toddler, sorry), but my brother and SIL are definitely in a position to go relatively soon, and are working on planning a trip with our parents.
Last week, they were showing us some travel vlogs from Americans visiting Ho Chi Minh City (aka, Saigon). Scrolling through the YouTube search results, we were seeing, well, a lot of white travel vloggers, and this had me feeling some type of way.
These white Americans have been to my home country, and I have not. In that moment, I felt a weird sort of possessiveness, and a sense of shame.
But... like... can I even call it my home country? My parents are from Vietnam, but I was born in California. I grew up steeped in Vietnamese culture, but it was always tinged with Americanness. We were always trying to assimilate to survive and be successful.
If I traveled to Vietnam, I'm pretty sure I would be immediately flagged as American. Not only do I speak minimal Vietnamese, but also... there's no way to sugarcoat this... if my size 00 mother is considered fat in Vietnam, then I can only imagine the whispers that I would elicit. It's already hard enough accepting my body here in America, but in Vietnam, the country of my roots, I would categorically be othered. (Also, I've heard on good authority that the specific dialect/accent that I speak is like, the weirdo Vietnamese accent, so that adds another element of othering. I remember talking to other Vietnamese people as a child, and them being so surprised and amused at my accent, and I never understood why. And I always had to repeat myself because they never understood me the first time.)
It makes me wonder if there will ever be a place that feels like home to me.
And then I remember, there is. The Bay Area, which I left almost six years ago, because it was starting not feel like home anymore thanks to the widening wealth gap between the Silicon Valley tech class and everyone else, is still the only place where I feel like I can be both Vietnamese and American, and not feel like I'm obligated to act on behalf of either.
I don't know if I will ever get to see Vietnam, but I definitely want to. I don't know what I'm expecting to see or feel. I don't know if something will magically click and I will feel a sense of home, or if I will feel like just as much of a tourist as I do anywhere else I travel.