Going Home

Vietnam: the beginning

By Heather Horgen

return to the homeland

My husband was born in a small town outside of Saigon, 6 months before the Tet Offensive–one of the largest military campaigns during the war. He has vague memories of growing up in Vietnam, like eating fresh sugarcane and hearing bombs exploding in the jungle. His mom worked at an army base where she met an American soldier, and in 1973 when Van was 6 years old, they left Vietnam to join him in the US.

Since then, Van hasn't been back to Vietnam. His mom has visited a few times to see family, but hadn't been back in over 10 years. His American-born brother has never been. We always knew we wanted to go to Vietnam, and we wanted to make it a family trip. My parents even decided to come!

March 15, 2017

I've always wanted to fly on one of these big blue planes! And we found out, as Tom said "Korean Air; Best Air."

Pre-trip swagger! My parents (Carol and Dennis), Van's mom (Ninh), and Van's brother (Tom).

arrival

After 24 hours of travel, we're standing in front of hundreds of people waiting for their family and friends at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Saigon. Tired (and hot, since the arrivals area is outside), we were so happy to be welcomed by Ninh's sister and niece! Kim-Anh (Van's aunt) and Hoang-Anh (Van's cousin), traveled with us during the entire trip.

breakfast majestic

Good morning, Vietnam! What an amazing surprise - the breakfast buffet is on the rooftop patio overlooking the Saigon River, where black tie waiters serve cafe sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee) and you can eat like kings and queens. We buffeted our way through Vietnamese soups, made to order omelettes, platters of fresh fruit, pastries, french bread, fried rice, stir fry, steamed fish, and fresh juice. Each morning was different, and so fantastic.

I can see why the Hotel Majestic is Anthony Bourdain's favorite hotel in Saigon.

doing things

Saigon is motorbikes, women grilling rice crackers on the sidewalk, street vendors selling fresh fruit and coconuts, and people sitting on plastic stools drinking tea. We went to the War Remnants Museum, seeing the Vietnamese communist perspective of the American War of Aggression.

Ho Chi Minh City is modern skyscrapers, luxury cars, global hotel chains, McDonald's, mobile phone shops, and Uber. We ate at a fancy vegetarian restaurant with a koi pond in the courtyard, and bought a SIM card for my iPhone so that we had internet.

Old Vietnam / New Vietnam.

Saigon felt a lot like other big cities, but I sense that there are a lot of interesting parts of Saigon to discover, and I wish we had more time.

another morning, another soup

Our second day in Vietnam was our visit to Tay Ninh to see the family. We got up early to make sure we had time for breakfast before leaving at 8am.

tay ninh

A large passenger van picked us up, and for three hours we watched the city sprawl out to suburban landscapes with small roadside restaurants and markets, and large industrial parks and rice fields.

meet the family

We met a lot of people. After we saw the house we took everyone out for lunch and I think we had 26 people. The only bilingual person in our whole group was Ninh, so there wasn't a lot of talking, but there were a lot of smiles and taking photos. At lunch, my dad really bonded with the men sharing their personal stash of banana whiskey. Kim-Anh showed us the family altars, where incense is burned every day to honor Ninh's parents and grandparents.

Ninh's parents are buried not far from the house, so we also visited their graves. Van's biological dad was killed in the war when he was still a baby, and per tradition he was buried on the land of his family house. The house is no longer there, and Ninh's family wasn't able to find the location any longer.

the cao dai temple

Cao Dai is a religion founded in Tay Ninh in the 1920s and combines Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and Islam. Unlike buddhist temples we visited in Japan, Cao Dai is very colorful, even featuring neon signs.

nui ba den

After the Cao Dai temple, we drove to the nearby Black Virgin Mountain (Nui Ba Den), which has another temple at the peak. Thankfully there's now a cable car that brings people up and down the mountain, instead of hiking through the forest filled with monkeys and then taking the alpine slide down!

going home

We drove back to Saigon at dusk, getting to our hotel around 7pm. After a long day of meeting people and going places, we sat down together and ate pho.