January 2nd
I am really really connecting with my roots here. It feels like I’m grounding the little nuances of my identity that used to just float in space. The land that shaped my parents. The moments that betrayed them + the warmth that opened them up to the world.
I’ll stay until at least february, it feels too right. It feels like here is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
It feels like my soul is connecting with something in the air. I don’t remember the last time I felt so at ease and ready to grow. Vietnam is building a home in my heart.
Life is fading back into color.
January 7th
I’m going to stay here and lock in in saigon until
january 9th
life is so amazing
I’m starting to love my heritage and vietnam so much. I went to the best DJ I’ve ever seen and he was some small viet dj in nha trang
Vietnam is up dude
vpop and vrap and honestly viet fashion and culture and girls and food. Like vietnam is number 1. I wanna bring vietnam to the world.
Vietnam is the best country in the world and I’m feeling so patriotic.
This is home
I had to live outside it to know how right home feels
its not patriotism like the military sense, I feel like its a sense of proudness of our people and our culture
We’re so up!!
celebrating vietnam winning the cup
Patriotism to david means spreading our culture
I feel at home here I don’t even wanna leave and I feel like my life would be so awesome
Like even the richness of life, village to every adventure sport to motorbiking in the mountains to eating fish on floating restaurants and international beach towns to the cultural hub of saigon
We are all coming up. Culture wise korean and japan has their own, I think vietnam can go mainstream where japan is too weird
I wanna bring more of vietnam to the US
I want to bring vietnam to the world.
honestly I think this is what love feels like, in the many ways it tries to walk into my life. In a partner, in a poem, in a daughter, in a world that was made for you. Vietnam has showed me a love that I’ll look for in every romance, every meal, and every shared moment with a stranger. There is a strange love about this place, and for now, there is a place about this love.
Vietnam I have never known you, and through you, I feel like I can get to know the world.
January 16
Every time I leave NYC, literally the minute I land somewhere else, I miss New York. I have not felt that once since being here. I feel at home. There are many parts that still feel strange like the horde of motorbikes crawling around the city and the sense that I still am not a part of the country, yet. But in all, they speak my language, they know my story by the way I talk, they appreciate my willingness to try and learn more about my roots. They are a warm people. They are more me than I am myself.
In Korea now, and boy do I miss Vietnam. It’s hard to come to a place like Korea and want to be somewhere else as everything is so beautiful and refined. But I just can’t help it. There is no personality of this place, it is rigid and the people are cold. This is not a country or a people that welcome you. Here you have to earn a place in its heart. Vietnam has a heart for everyone.
In many ways, I’m glad Vietnam isn’t a fully “developed” country. I’m glad the rest of the world hasn’t hammered into it a way of living and being. I’m glad it was allowed to exist and has been unencumbered by anothers ideals. It’s growing through it’s teenage years and developing a personality just as fresh, hearty, bright, and welcoming as its food. Boy am I lucky.
P.S. the girls and fashion here in Vietnam are way better…
January 20
Annie asked me in 1 word, how I’d describe Vietnam… Grounding:
An Vu: Grounding !!!
An Vu: Every piece of me my family my identity that used to just float now feels like it has a strong basis in the culture the people the story that’s unfolding here
An Vu: It all makes sense
An Vu: Things are no longer floating
Annie Zhou: AW
An Vu: I see how everything came to me, how myself my parents my people came to be
Annie Zhou: ur putting the pieces together :000
Annie Zhou: Wait thats so rewarding
An Vu: and the war and the attitudes of the people and the unity and the playfulness and hospitality !!
An Vu: it all makes sense what made me
January 22
I’m so pro vietnam. This place is the next greatest place, and I am so proud of its people, it’s socialist climate, it’s carefully designed rise. God I love this place. The economy will be a top super power soon. Godddd I love this place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzsCQ152FRg
January 24
Is it wrong to enjoy life so much ?? I think life is pretty close to perfect here. Lots of spaces to do my work, lots of people to fill my heart, lots of amazing food to fill my belly. But does this place make me unabitious? Or is that just novelty melting away
I should think about what I want to bring back, plan from done:
I can speak the language fluently
January 27 - scatter brained
My heart has not felt this full in a while, and in a selfish attempt to cherish the magic, I’m gonna write.
Annie told me to write is to live twice.
A friend I met on instagram was sharing a meal with me, refusing to let me pay, and showing me some of the new hats he produced. Everyone makes clothes her it seems. Or whatever they can think of, there’s a strange socio-industrial symbiosis where the means and the hearts tie into one here. The kids all create and the windows of the quiet streets offer glimpses into factories of any type. Furniture, clothing, products and media, the distance from creating a figure of your love and bringing it to the world
To live Saigon once is enough, if only a life could last forever.
Here you are family first, and stranger second.
I was buying flowers for my friends family, and I didn’t have enough money to pay. That was no problem for we were anh em
I was buying a t shirt and she told me a price, that was special to anh em.
Magic moments
- thang showing me around
- Thang inviting me to tet with his family
- Van inviting me to her hometown to celebrate with her family
- david inviting us and all the family over and we all got to hang out with the family
- I want to make a home here. I think they have made a home for me.
- Finding Vietnam, as I must, but I want to bring vietnam to the world. A cultural richness and a societal character that pushes me and anyone who is lucky enough to flirt with her to a higher living, loving, and caring ideal. IN saigon you love your neighbor, in saigon you push on the door of expression and create a world of your down, in saigon you treat your friends not as friends but as lovers. Saigon is for lovers.
- a creative dna to this place, that makes expression a duty. That pushes a culture to create.
- the warmth of my new friends
- the joy and laughter of family made family, of brother layering new meanings. Anh to anh, and thit to thuong, ban to
- saigon is for lovers
- learning more about my culture
- connecting vietnam to the us
- creation mixed into culture
- language creating culture
Saigon I will never forget you. I’ll love you until summer comes, and every time after.
They tell me that I could never forget a Saigon summer. But I don’t think its the forgetting that worries me. I’m worried that I’ve found a city so full I may never fully know her. A world so changing that next summer will be different. A city with so much love, but a heart that can only grow so fast. A city with so much love, but a heart only so big. A city so alive, that it may force me to truly live.
To be in a place where memories have become air, I fear that one day Saigon may end up forgetting me. But if a place can leave a mark like this, it may be only right that I return the favor. I hope to one day leave a piece of me here, so that the next person has a bigger Saigon to fall for.
And they too, can wait for summer.
The Heart of Vietnam
The Vietnamese people have taught me how to love
This place has shown me a truer form of affection. There are no friends here. There are no strangers. Here, there is just the family that you love and the family that you’ve yet to meet.
I’m taking a piece of Her heart with me. I feel the love and longing for my home friends growing each day. My parents are across the world and yet we have never been closer. In a way, I feel closer to every person I have ever known. Each day here that I’m loved gives me a day to pour into every new person I meet. I hope to never run out of these days.
To love is to be loved, to see is to be seen. If we have never felt this, how could we know how?
If the world is cold, maybe it should see a glimpse of Vietnam.
Warm, kind, and alive. My favorite kind of person.
There is a love for this place and a place for this love.
A home can be built, and a home can be found. I am blessed to have searched the right place, with the right people.
When a star meets a star, there is only love left to feel. A flower in a field of flowers loses a bit of itself, but in turn gets a meadow. A world so big,
…
I have a feeling that when I speak my eyes may be in another place, that I may not really be there. As love moves on and time continues its march, my heart will be here, in Saigon
If I could give Saigon a kiss, I’d run out of words
If I could give Saigon a kiss, I may never need words again
If I could give Saigon a kiss, I’d never speak again
January 29
“In america, they only care about themselves. They don’t care about others”
In america, we might need more sameness. We might need more homogeneity. We might need more national pride and identity etc.
February 1
What do I want to bring back home to america? Obviously the Heart of Vietnam… but how do I want it to live in my life? I want to make something each day, something beautiful. People here make
What Results I want to see
- Make a thing or two every week
- Write daily
- Love people, hard
- Meet new people and treat people with too much hospitality
- Create in all mediums: clothing, furniture, art, music?, web
- Make a vietnamese home here in NYC
February 3
The days have been so good recently. From great food, to really connecting with my crew here, to discovering so much more of life here in Vietnam but also in NYC. I’m excited to be back, to live out the new version of myself that Vietnam has created for me.
I’m having a hard time putting into words just how grateful I am for this country, its people, and the space its opening in my life. I will never be the same. The world will never be the same. I have MY heritage to thank. I have Ryan to thank, for Nhi, and Thang. I have David for lighting the fire for me here and showing me the love of this place. Every single person that has said hello, that has welcomed me in as a child of their own. To the kid at the fair for letting me pretend to be her older brother for just a moment !!
Every moment here is fleeting. You don’t meet the same
February 6
“I’ve never been about nationalism or like proud to be American or anything, but oh man it makes a huge difference when you’re in a place where everyone is proud of their country + community and want so much for the country to do better and succeed. The sense of a national identity in Vietnam is so strong.”
There is something truly magical about being in a place that actually cares about where they came from, about the person next to them.
In America and western countries, it’s been in vogue to honestly hate the place you came from. I think we’re in the awkward teenager phase of the US where it’s just cool to hate on all the bad things about the place you grew up. But this only leads to isolation and bitterness. I’m not a big fan of trump or honestly the power dynamics of the US right now, but one thing everyone in power is bringing back is being proud of the place you, your family, your community grew up in and contribute to daily. I believe a big cause of our shared societal psychosis is that we have no identity or community to latch on to. We’ve been taught to hate everyyyything we came from. Focus on the bad. Spend your days telling everyone about how shitty your country is and how everything is hopeless. If you start saying these things, you start to believe them.
In Vietnam, though, everyone is fully aware of everything that sucks. But they are a hopeful bunch. They are proud. They believe in their people. Sure there is inequality, pollution, and the struggles of a rapidly industrializing economy. But in it all is a shared hope. A shared tomorrow that everyone is rooting for, a shared tomorrow that every single person is pushing towards.
I heard from a few of the uncles at Thang’s house that in the US no one cares about each other, they only care about themselves. Here, everyone cares about the Viet brothers and sisters around us. The shared sense of self really allows everyone to trust and strive and dream in unison, and it’s a beautiful thing to experience.
I even notice it in how Americans talk about life. Everyone feels so disconnected. Everyone is taught to hate where they are from, that your neighbor is not your friend, and that tomorrow is not worth fighting for.
February 7
Going home monday, tons of bittersweet feelings
Hard goodbyes, beautiful hellos
Some heart felt see you laters :)
The heart of vietnam is heavy in more ways than one
But a heavy heart means that it was once full, and I’ve almost forgotten the times it was empty
I think Vietnam is still finding its aesthetic. It hasn’t truly decided if its its own thing or if its the younger child
I think Vietnam has the choice to really just double down on who it is, the life the energy the industriousness found in its bones. But theres also a world where it ties beautifully all the influences that have peppered its past.
February 20
the creative energy