The Reasons I'm Moving to Vietnam And Why It's Changed

There were a lot of reasons for why I wanted to move to Vietnam, but one of the most glaring reasons was due to loneliness. The San Francisco that I knew before my decision to leave was one that was pretty isolating and competitive. Even the art scene in San Francisco felt less of a collaboration and more individualistic. The word "community" was thrown around like a buzzword and year after year I hear attempts at "community-building" with very little cohesiveness or identity other than a connection to the word "art" — but "art" is a gigantic umbrella and all the actors underneath "art" don't necessarily mesh. I didn't have friends who I regularly saw except for my roommates. I am very thankful for my roommates who kept me afloat by letting me attach to their hobbies, which I now adopt as my own, but I hungered for friends who complemented the other sides of me.

I visited Vietnam for 30 days, sometime in April. It was so culturally warm. I made friends with locals everywhere, as if I already knew how to communicate with them. I kind of just "got it" whereas in San Francisco I felt like I had to work a bit to adjust to other's communication styles. I wonder if it's because I grew up insulated in Vietnamese culture that made me already in tune. I am Vietnamese-American but going on the trip made me feel that I am actually more Vietnamese than I am American. I loved the food and café's, I loved Hanoi and Saigon's rich history and architecture, and I got very acclimated to the heat. I grew up in a little bubble of Vietnamese culture, and suddenly I was in a country where the bubble extended indefinitely. I visited a few art galleries around Saigon which inspired me, and I made even more friends in those galleries. Vietnam was a lot less work for me, compared to San Francisco. So in my head, why wouldn’t I move somewhere that felt like less work?

On top of this, there's a business reason to move to Vietnam as well. Back when I worked at Notion, I dug through all the old chat logs that the founders sent to one another their first few years, and felt second-hand excitement. The founders moved to Japan for a year to save money on building their product, which inspired me. Maybe I can move to Vietnam to save money while I work on my next video game?

But things changed.

I worked on a small video game, titled "And You'll Miss It" that contained themes of death, nostalgia, and the passage of time. While working on the video game I read a book called "Adult Children of Immature Parents." It talked about the feeling of having an insatiable parent-shaped hole that never goes away. This hole is a feeling of deep loneliness and longing that follows certain people throughout their lives forever, and most people try to fill that hole with things that don't fit. I felt extremely seen when reading the book, and I came to accept that this feeling of loneliness didn't stem from anything external. It will always be with me, and I have to accept it. I implemented many of the ideas I learned from that book into my game. A few months later, I dramatically healed my relationship with my parents.

I focused a lot of my time on the move; applying for a new passport, applying for a visa, practicing riding a motorcycle, researching insurance, etc. Then once I got a majority of that done, I hung out with friends. The last three months in San Francisco have been my best three months in San Francisco ever. I wish that I could live the rest of my life like this – as if I had a deadline. I want to be able to bring this energy with me to Vietnam. Actually, I want to bring it everywhere I go.

I think that if people were told they only had a month to live, then they would probably live that month to their fullest. I am not dying, but this phase of my life is dying, and it may be a long time until I see some of my friends again. Because of this, I have felt more driven to hang out with friends, and to value every interaction that I have with them. I stopped being shy and told people things I was always afraid to tell them. I invited friends to random things I was going to and they would show up to these random things, and we'd have fun. I developed a group of friends that I regularly saw every week, either going to movies or to shows or to try new foods. I went from crazy isolation and loneliness to feeling full of warmth and joy almost every week. The sense of community became more and more apparent to me. I was being inspired every day by people and things and events. Finally, I threw my big going away party where I saw almost all of my friends in one place. I channeled a lot of the DIY/Punk/Indie vibes that I grew up with in the Bay Area. This really broke down what "scenes" meant to me. There's no techno scene, there's no live coding scene, there's no DIY/Punk/Indie scene. The only scene that matters is you and your friends, and some excuse to get them all together. It took the act of me moving to find all of this appreciation. Sure, there's still problems with San Francisco, but I've learned how to deal with it. That hole that I felt inside me, full of loneliness, still exists, but it feels further away.

I still want to move to Vietnam. Of course I do. I have always wanted to reconnect with my heritage, to learn my language – especially my family's Saigon's dialect, and to learn how to cook food in Vietnam. I see Vietnam as an opportunity to open up my mind to what kind of art is being made on a global arena. Whatever people and culture I collide with is for sure going to change me and influence my art. I also want to work on more video games, written stories, and art – and I love going to coffee shops every day to do all that, something that is absolutely expensive in the Bay Area.

But especially, I want to come back to the Bay Area. I want to come back to my family and be able to speak fluent Vietnamese with them. I want to connect deeper with my aunts and uncles at the next nhau. I want to hear all the stories that they lacked the words to tell. I want to come back to my friends and share stories and new dishes. It could be a year, or longer, but I'll come back.