Day 1
After four years and a hundred lifetimes, we stepped back onto Vietnamese soil. It was a long-overdue return, postponed by the inertia of American life and the sheer logistical gravity of distance. One doesn’t just hop over to Vietnam for a long weekend. It takes planning, money and time off, and a recalibration of your entire nervous system. But here we were, dazed from the journey and blinking into the blinding Saigon light.
Saigon hadn’t stood still, of course not. It never has, and it never will. The skyline was fuller and the scooters somehow louder, and the chaos was more choreographed than I remembered. Luan and Duyen, my brother and sister-in-law, had built some new additions, and their house is now vibrating with the energy of a growing family, with one new baby girl added and a boy on the way. Next door, unfamiliar walls stood where open space once lived. But even with these shifts, the city felt less like it had changed and more like it had continued in our absence.
I missed all of this. I missed the sounds of morning, the low murmur of neighbors and the sizzle of oil, the perfumed incense that perpetually hung in the air and the distant bell of a bicycle vendor announcing his wares. "Bánh Bao, Bánh Bao Đây." The scent of lemongrass and fish sauce hung in the humid air. The specific rhythm of life here is slower in its pace but louder in volume, and chaotic in a way that initially seems overwhelming. In the States, everything felt muted, wrapped in asphalt and obligation, with car insurance and business licenses, mortgage rates and scheduling apps. Let us not forget our quarterly tax bill. In Vietnam, daily life never pretended to be easy, but it didn’t apologize for itself either.
It had been hardest on Diem. The U.S. offered a different kind of freedom, one laced with restrictions, fine print and invisible costs. We bore it all silently, the paperwork and the bills and the rules layered on top of rules. In Vietnam, she was light. In Georgia, she seemed to carry everything, not as a burden but more as a kind of cost of doing business in the freest economy on earth. Or so we are taught. But now, walking through the streets of Vietnam again and trading smiles with old vendors and new mothers, I could see something ease in her shoulders. This was a recalibration, more than a visit.
We came back for family, for reconnection and for something less tangible but no less urgent. We should’ve returned sooner. But life, messy and relentless life, always intervenes. Still, Vietnam had waited, maybe not waited exactly, but held space for us, like a table in a favorite restaurant that's always open and always ready, no matter how long you've been gone. And now we were back, all of us together.
The greeting at the airport was as usual, a small family reunion. It's always a significant event when someone returns from the U.S., and it is treated as such. Everyone livestreaming our return for the Vietnamese masses. It often feels a little like being a celebrity when we return, and I often wonder what kind of status Diem may quietly evoke from being married to an American. For it seems every single person in Vietnam wants to be. I remember all of the posts in the old expat groups I was a part of, with young Vietnamese offering their qualities to any American, or European, for that matter, looking for a devoted mate.
It's not the grand privilege it once was, at least not in my eyes, as the complexity of life in America has far outpaced any privilege and comfort it may bring. In America, life often dances on the edge of paradox. There is, undeniably, a privilege to possessing a blue passport, in the doors it opens and the ease with which one moves through the world. It's a kind of silent power that spells “access” at border crossings and in emergency rooms. But with that privilege comes complexity. The American dream is riddled with fine print. There are student loans, fractured healthcare and social inequities, and a cultural obsession with productivity that too often mistakes burnout for success. You can have a closet full of clothes and still feel threadbare. You can have a fridge packed with food and feel spiritually starved. Privilege, after all, is not immunity.
Living in the U.S. can feel like having front-row seats to a show you helped pay for but don’t always understand. You’re told you’re lucky to be here, and maybe you are, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The cost of that luck, at times, is isolation, anxiety or a gnawing sense of restlessness. Privilege doesn’t cancel out struggle. It just changes its flavor. In the end, American complexity is its own kind of seasoning, rich and sometimes bitter but unmistakably part of the meal.
We spent our first day back at Luan’s house, where the welcome was less fanfare and more a feast. There was durian split open on the ground, Vietnamese chicken salad mounded in ceramic bowls, meatballs made of fermented pork and fish cake, and fresh vegetables and greens. Duyen had set the table low and placed the pot of cháo at the end, with dishes for nước chấm, towers of fresh herbs and laughter from every corner of the room.
After the meal, full of fermented funk and citrus tang, we wandered down to the local massage shop, with its tiled walls, plastic stools and the ever-present reflexology chart. We melted under the pressure of fingers that knew every muscle by name. It included an intense "coining" session, and by the time it was over, my back was streaked in the unmistakable blood red ribbons of a sort of physical exorcism of pain and discomfort.
Cạo gió, or “scraping wind,” is more than a folk remedy. It’s a ritual of release, both physical and emotional. Using the edge of a coin or spoon, practitioners draw dark, purposeful lines across the skin to coax illness out and to summon relief where language may fail. The bruises it leaves behind are not wounds but echoes of healing. In Vietnamese households, cạo gió is comfort, where the body is listened to and suffering is named and then gently scraped away. I would have slept entirely through the process, but the occasional spikes of pain always brought me back to the realm of the living. Though, as seemingly quickly as it began, it concluded. With the massage session complete, there could be only one thing left to do.
Coffee, real cà phê sữa đá, strong enough to punch through time zones. It had worn into late afternoon, which in Vietnam means the sun is not long for this part of the world. We sat overlooking the river, framed in bamboo and fairy lights, with a red ribbon. The girls snapped pictures and Diem leaned into me. For a moment, the weight of the past four years dissolved into the swirl of sweetened condensed milk and crushed ice. The sun set behind the water. It was Lisa's 13th birthday, and we celebrated under the new moon at the river's edge.
We wandered the streets of Saigon deep into the night, and not long before the clock struck a new day we found ourselves hunched over mismatched stools in the golden haze of a roadside grill, the looming silhouette of Landmark 81 casting its electric afterglow across the makeshift plastic tables. We had arrived just before midnight, bodies adrift in jet lag, but the city was beginning its second wind.
The air shimmered with motorbike exhaust and charcoal smoke, and every inch of the narrow alley was alive with late-night hunger. Vendors worked their stations, flipping marinated pork skewers over open flame with the fat crackling. A boy with a tray of cold Tiger beers threaded his way through the crowd.
Diem ordered gà nướng, bắp xào and hủ tiếu in a casual voice, and within minutes our table glowed with amber-lit plates. There was sticky rice with meatballs and quail eggs, and hủ tiếu with thin strips of deliciously marinated pork. And of course, what late-night snack would be complete without bánh mì? Around us, locals leaned in close, murmuring through mouthfuls, their laughter punctuated by the clink of glass and scooter horns.
Around us, locals leaned in close, murmuring through mouthfuls, their laughter punctuated by the clink of glass and scooter horns.
Across the street, a dog slept belly-up beneath a tree wrapped in LED light vines. We didn’t speak much, and we didn’t need to. It was all there, the heat and the scent of a city that had waited for us.
Day one had already fed us, healed us and caffeinated us. More than that, it reminded us what we came for, the people and the food and the city, and also the version of ourselves we left behind.
For more articles on Saigon and southern Vietnam, check out the links below.
