{"id":15307,"date":"2015-05-29T22:13:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T14:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.english.hku.hk\/alumni\/?p=15307"},"modified":"2016-05-31T11:36:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T03:36:57","slug":"nostalgia-vi%e1%bb%87t-nam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/15307\/nostalgia-vi%e1%bb%87t-nam\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia, Vi\u1ec7t Nam"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Aaron Anfinson<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I get nostalgic about Vietnam. This could certainly be because it was the first move abroad for both my spouse and I. In contrast to a current scheduled existence of looming deadlines and responsibility, we dropped everything and spent our meagre life savings on two one-way tickets to as-far-away-as-we-could-imagine. Though, admittedly, I\u2019ve always been intrigued by the region. I grew up listening to stories from veterans that just hadn\u2019t gotten over the war. For them it became a daily reference, a temporal self-positioning just a little bit further away from hell. For me, having had just finished a contract in America\u2019s volunteer army, I felt disenfranchised by the more current, on-going \u2018fog of war\u2019. Apparently, though, the wires were crossed and I, like many I\u2019ve known before me, was on a plane to Saigon\u2014but this was a different Vietnam.<\/p>\n

In this Vietnam, not only could you mention the war and get away with it, but people had somehow managed the unthinkable: they had forgiven and nearly forgotten the most extreme bombing campaign in human history. Moving to a different rhythm set to the music of beeping scooters and excited chatter from school kids piled two-to-three on a bicycle, \u2018my\u2019 Vietnam was a forward-looking celebration brought on by the majority of the population matching the age demographic of an average university campus. \u2018What war? The war in Iraq and Afghanistan? That is just American history repeating itself,\u2019 my students would say.<\/p>\n

Recently, I revisited Vietnam. Seven years after I first landed, I tried to find our old flat and couldn\u2019t. It was lost where familiar murals of socialist propaganda met strange boulevards and whole new city blocks. For the first time, my nostalgia stayed with me while I was in Vietnam. \u2019My\u2019 Vietnam seemed lost forever. The following two sets of images represent this change.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the first set, an oversaturated and admittedly romanticised temple along My Khe beach has been rebuilt and landscaped (\u2018paradise\u2019 neatly paved). In 2008, I remember mornings punctuated by the whole community helping haul in fishing nets. Today, the nets separate swimming areas. The boats and fishermen are gone; their houses demolished and replaced by beach hotels, health spas and restaurants catering to tourists both foreign and domestic. Yet, outside the city, things are just as I remember them\u2014for better and for worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Away from all of the drastic change, the second set depicts an identical scene.
\nThe fisherman, now with more grey hair hidden under a baseball cap, is sitting in nearly the exact same spot. Watching them work and considering the mass volume of netting that they had surely produced in my absence, I couldn\u2019t help but think about arthritis and another seven years spent on this porch. It was an etirely different world to that of the sunburnt bellies and red-faced tourists swimming along My Khe beach. What a difference seven years makes; what a difference it doesn\u2019t make.<\/p>\n

Later on, at dinner with a former student, it really hit me that \u2018my\u2019 Vietnam was always fleeting and tied inextricably to the people I had met. The streets had changed and, most of all, so had the woman sitting across from me. She is now a logistics expert with international clients and multiple mobile phones\u2014part of a brave \u2018new\u2019 generation putting family on hold, ignoring worried mothers and discovering something out there for themselves.<\/p>\n

I have no reason to be nostalgic, I thought. It\u2019s not for them; it\u2019s for me\u2014a longing for a time when I was a bit younger and a lot more carefree. It\u2019s a selfish thing, but I still do and still will get nostalgic about\u00a0Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/h4>\n

Published on:\u00a0May 29, 2015 < Back<\/a> ><\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Aaron Anfinson I get nostalgic about Vietnam. This could certainly be because it was the first move abroad for both my spouse and I. In contrast to a current scheduled existence of looming deadlines and responsibility, we dropped everything and spent our meagre life savings on two one-way tickets to as-far-away-as-we-could-imagine. Though, admittedly, I\u2019veContinue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15307"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17650,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15307\/revisions\/17650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}