By Nguyen Huy Vu
Special to The Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/trav...uvietnam20.html
When friends ask me about my trip to Vietnam last year, I show them photographs from atop the Marble Mountains looking out at the South China Sea. I describe the miles of soft white sand and lush palm trees of China Beach. I beam when I think about the Hindu temples that managed to survive a millennium of war, famine and disease.
But I edit things out. I don't tell anyone about being in Ho Chi Minh City where people on the streets pointed, gasped and giggled as I passed. Or about keeping my shirt on as I surfed the South China Sea, afraid of what the slim fishermen would think. Or about spending an evening at a nightclub discussing with strangers possible reasons for my obesity.
I am 5 foot 3, about 6 inches shorter than the average American man. I weigh 260 pounds, more than 100 pounds more than the average Vietnamese man.
I've never looked like a typical person in either culture. In America, it is generally unacceptable to comment on a stranger's appearance. In Vietnam, physical flaws are freely discussed and my rotund body was fair game.
The words hurt in any context. But they go deeper in Vietnam.
I was born in Saigon during the waning days of the civil war and raised in Southern California's Little Saigon — the largest Vietnamese expatriate community in the world. I built my identity around being Vietnamese.
To my disappointment, I have found returning to my motherland is not really returning home. And the fact that I look different only reminds my brethren there — as if they needed to be reminded — that I am an outsider, a Viet kieu.
A friend, Tuan Anh Ly, and I had just returned from a surfing trip along the central coast of Vietnam where no restaurant within 350 miles served anything remotely resembling American food. But Tuan Anh was hoping to find a place that might dish up some California-style hashbrowns.
We had just sat down for breakfast when our waiters pointed to me and snickered to each other in Vietnamese.
"Hey," said one waiter to the other. "Check out the fat guy."
Tuan Anh's face darkened when he heard the waiter's words.
"You're joking right?" he snarled. "We speak Vietnamese."
One waiter's eyes widened as he leapt to apologize, explaining that we must have misunderstood him.
The other pretended nothing happened.
"So what do you want to order?" he asked plainly.
My first return to Vietnam had been years before, in 1997. It was a trip filled with emotion, a trip my brother and I made to visit my father's family for the first time. My grandfather had just died from a stroke, and my dad — who couldn't return for fear of being jailed, or worse — wanted to make sure my brother Viet and I could meet my grandmother.
I didn't expect the amalgamation of fear, sadness and animosity when I set foot in the country. I didn't expect that the communist flags and paintings of Ho Chi Minh would make me want to come out of my skin. I didn't expect the blatant corruption and abject poverty.
I promised myself I would not return.
But then, last year, Viet suggested we take a surfing trip to China Beach. It sounded intriguing. I had heard about China Beach, a tiny patch of coastline just outside Da Nang that offered soldiers a respite from the battlefield.
I figured there would be no more surprises, and I was mentally ready to return.
The place had modernized since my last visit. Ho Chi Minh City is a thriving, tropical metropolis inundated with Internet cafes, cellphone shops and fancy hotels catering to tourists.
But at least one custom had stayed the same. Our adventure along the central coast began in a nightclub in Da Nang. Six hostesses surrounded our table by the time we ordered our first round of drinks.
I eventually struck up a conversation with one.
We shimmied out onto the dance floor. She fed me slices of mango, pear and watermelon. She asked if I was married. Then the inevitable came.
"Boy you are fat," she said, groping my chest and giggling. "Your breasts are bigger than mine!"
My mother is slight. My father is thin. My brother has always been slender.
But it had always been different for me. Since grade school, I had been on a mishmash of weight-loss programs. I popped a myriad of diet pills that did little more than make me feel woozy and sick. I spent a lot of time looking at my family and wondering if I had been adopted.
I am 29 now, and I should be over all of this. I have tried to put those childhood memories away. But being in Vietnam brought it all rushing back.
One of these days I may be able to tell my friends that my trip to Vietnam felt like a homecoming. A place where I soaked up the earth embedded in my roots. A place where I blended among waves of fine black hair and sharp brown almond eyes and reclaimed a part of myself.
But that day feels far away.
It's been months since my journey, and I had hoped to bring myself some absolution by writing this. That hasn't happened.
I think of my father, who has since been able to return to Vietnam, something he never dreamed. He also revisited his hometown in the north last year, a place he hadn't been to since 1954. He's been able to put behind him most of the pain, agony and loss.
You can spend your life letting the pain envelop you, or you can go back and face your demons and let them go. He's been able to do this in Vietnam. I am trying.
I don't know if I'll ever go back to Vietnam. Maybe when I mature. Maybe after some therapy. Maybe when I can forgive myself.
Maybe in a hundred pounds.
