I fell in love with the people as I perceived them to be. I still don’t have any interest in that whatsoever aside from harboring a sense of outrage and of shame at my country’s involvement. I didn’t fall in love with Vietnam at the time because I had even the slightest interest in what Americans refer to as the Vietnam War. I was only there for nine days on that first trip, but those nine days completely reshaped my life. While I understood Vietnam to be a country, I half expected to see smoldering craters as we flew over the Mekong Delta on a flight from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City. I wasn’t much different than most Americans. Vietnam was the destination that least interested me. On that trip in 2006, I visited China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. To them, you cannot just get on a plane and go there because that would require time travel. To this person and to countless Americans, Vietnam isn’t a country, it’s a war. He thought it was some kind of joke, though I fail to see what would be funny about that if it were. One of the people in the conversation burst into laughter. It was mentioned in conversation recently that I had lived in Vietnam for some years. The notion that I’m expected to only want to explore a tiny fraction of the planet is insulting. People live in every country and to every country belongs a culture. The experiences that stuck with me don’t involve seeing Big Ben, they involve interactions with the local people and scrumptious meals I ate. I realized at some point that all the landmarks and tourist attractions are just busywork, something to do between experiences. Prague was the city that finally managed to pull my nose out of my book and command my full attention on that very first trip to Europe. They’re both great destinations, but my awakening didn’t come until we set foot in Prague before the Czech Republic had really become the extremely popular tourist destination it is today. Switzerland and Italy were two of my first European countries. All the greatest adventures I had were experienced off the beaten path. I don’t give a flying fuck about the Eiffel Tower. Mind you, I paid my dues in places like Italy, France, and the UK among others, but I came to realize pretty early on that the places I enjoyed visiting the most were the ones not dripping with other tourists. They put France on a pedestal and they now clog the canals of Venice. To them, traveling to Europe means Italy or the UK.
I was once asked why I would choose to go to places like Romania or Hungary for vacation.
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