Repatriation

You can take a boy out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the boy.

This happens to me, not once, but twice. Culture shock upon culture shock! until I feel numbed.

I jog on the street full of motorbikes (nice people would say “Co len”, bad people would try to run me over), or tell jokes at music jam session, oblivious to the fact that half of the audience barely catches the meaning, much less the punch line.

So I made a few mistakes upon repatriation.

Mistakes I have had to pay for dearly, monetarily or otherwise (just stop short of  becoming a social stigma since it’s more acceptable to backpackers to come across as free and loosed, not someone whose outward looks exactly like locals).

There are Viet Kieu, and there are Viet Kieu.

The former, tourists – waving their US dollars , and the later, expats – hiding their VN dong.

Or, as I often joke: the real Viet Keu would react “OUCH!” when got slapped, while the fake ones “UI DA!”.

But it depends on where you go and spend your money. If a place rates you on how thick your wallet is, then it will throw you out the next time when you are a bit short .

Back to my jogging across the round-about. Quite challenging. In the rain, and in the thick of Saigon rush-hour traffic, I had to tap dance, jog in place or run in opposite direction like a running back at the starting line of another down in football).

I do miss my time at Penn State. Just like when I was at Penn State, I missed my time in Saigon. You can take the boy out of Saigon, but you can’t take Saigon out of the boy. At Penn State, I simply wished for a meal surrounded by my extended family, or to hang out with friends, some smoke, some play the guitar. Now, I am back, repatriated. With some new friends who smoke, some play the guitar. Then all of a sudden, I wish for that 8-shaped trail which wraps around the University Park golf field. There, I wouldn’t get run over by two-wheel bikes, but then, I wouldn’t hear “co len” by complete strangers either.

More than once, I have let the outside affect what’s inside. Now, after taking so many punches, I counter-punch by let the inside affect the outside. Like telling a joke in English to an audience of mostly Vietnamese . The experience was diametrically opposite to the time at Penn State when I was trying to blend in without  “getting” the punch line (since I was unprepared for a completely different conceptual frame of reference ). Exile to expatriaton.

At the end of all travel, one returns to the starting point and know the place for the first time. It has happened to me. Like a newborn again, taking in and embracing everything. So familiar yet so foreign.