Goodbye Saigon

Last night I said goodbye to a good friend. He was going back to California. We sat and listened to Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World (Vietnamese singer but if you closed your eyes you would think the black legend was there in person). I recalled a scene from Good Morning Vietnam whose subjective shot of a chopper take off from the lush paddy field of Vietnam country side.

It’s hard enough to befriend then having to say goodbye.

Today a graduate from our school also had his goodbye at the airport.

Australia-bound. Health-care job. Brain-drain. Foreign currency gain. Such as fate of emerging countries whose citizens went abroad on guest-worker visas (Philippines and Thailand).

When I left the city for the first time – I thought it was for good.

No preparation. No Visa. Just take off.

I managed to stop and say goodbye to my best friend.

But that was it.

Seeing this young man with best friends at Departure Gate stirred up some envy (good emotion) in me.

After all there should be a proper way to bid farewell.

We are built with innate desire to connect.

To be torn apart from the land of birth and tossed into the wild unprepared is akin to suicide.

Yet it happened to the best of us .

Strange land (wheat vs rice) strange custom (football vs soccer), culture (fast food vs slow cooking) strange measurement (british vs metric) and strange socialization (the wave).

People might be overly friendly. But that was just customary. Beneath the facade lies an iron core: don’t get near me – stay away from me.

The loneliness of being a stranger in a strange land, of leaving the familiar (identity) for the unfamiliar (a Social Security number).

The rejection one gets when trying so hard to bend the new surrounding after one’s own image.

The abandonment after years of trying to integrate oneself into the mainstream (anglicized names, or first name first in reverse order of the old).

It could be exhausting. No wonder tourists found themselves on Saigon‘s Main Street (Dong Khoi) whose shops conveniently catered to their taste: beer – beef- and R&B (I even overheard California Dreaming last night at Bier Garden).

One cannot appreciate a place or a person until one experienced total loss. No one misses the well until it is dry up.

I love My Saigon on the double because I thought I had lost it.

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Despite the dust and noise I have experienced during my re-entry.

No lush green  field like in Good Morning Vietnam.

But I love it. For I had once thought I would never get to see it again.

Now I cherish the pavement and the monument.

Someday I hope to convey this lost/found sentiment to a wider audience.

But for now …I think to myself ……What a Wonderful World.