Between Here and Home

When I first touched down in Việt Nam, I thought I knew what to expect.

I grew up hearing the stories of dusty roads, rowdy street markets, the smell of rain after a storm. All of these painted vivid, but strangely frozen, images of a country my parents left behind decades ago. I didn’t realize I was arriving somewhere both achingly familiar and brand new, and that in the process, I would meet a version of myself I hadn’t known existed.

Growing up in the U.S., it was easy to measure my life against others’ expectations. Be American enough to survive school and dance trends on Instagram reels. Be Vietnamese enough to make the elders proud. Yet every mispronounced Vietnamese word or cultural faux pas felt like a tiny betrayal that cracked the facade.

But in Việt Nam? There was this quiet, astonishing relief: no one cared.

I wasn’t Vietnamese enough to pass as local - not by language, not by mannerisms. And for the first time, that wasn’t a bad thing. It was freeing.

I could be exactly what I was: a foreigner with Vietnamese roots, exploring the country without a heavy expectation of getting it “right.” Suddenly, I was allowed to stumble through crosswalks with cars and motorbikes flying by, be curious in the Việt Nam Museum of Ethnology, and enjoy the awkwardness of piecing together Vietnamese conversations instead of apologizing for it.

That shift opened something inside me, especially when speaking Vietnamese.

My Vietnamese has always been described as “spectacular” by American standards. Enough to chào (greet) my family members at parties, and enough to survive the competition of “that’s great that your child can speak some việt while in nước Mỹ (America), my child doesn’t know anything at all.” But full fluency? That was my hungry ghost.

It always haunted me: the gaps in vocabulary, the way words stuck in my throat.

Yet there, among the mountains of Sapa, crammed on a tour bus with 13 family members, I found myself playing an silly Vietnamese team word game. The game was something like “Cô cả __ chị chín” (Aunt one vs Sister nine) or “Bà ba __ bác bảy” (Grandmother three vs Uncle seven), where we had to come up with alliterative Vietnamese verbs on the spot. I thought I’d crash and burn. But instead, to everyone's shock (including my own), I pulled words out of nowhere — verbs I'd never consciously studied or used in years.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t polished. It was pure fun.

For the first time, Vietnamese wasn’t something I was supposed to "prove." Language became a playground, not a performance. Playing the game taught me that finding a connection isn’t about mastery; it's about willingness to show up, fumble, laugh, and still try again. In playing, I connected with parts of my Vietnamese-ness I'd forgotten.

What surprised me even more about coming to my parent’s homeland was realizing how much Việt Nam itself had changed, and how much my own idea of it had stayed stuck in time.

The Việt Nam my mom left over forty years ago wasn’t the Việt Nam I walked through. The homeland she carried, with all its pain, sorrow, sweetness, and longing, was locked in a past she hadn't had a chance to revisit.

Meanwhile, the modern day Việt Nam buzzed with change: a whirlwind of motorbikes, handfuls of amusement attractions dominated by Sun World, and trendy slang I couldn’t keep pace with. (Just learned “ăn và không để lại vụn” or “ate and left no crumbs”!)

Even when my family and I visited my relatives out in the countryside, the town had grown so much since I visited 12 years ago. The bumpy dirt road turned into a smooth paved street. The surrounding area near the coast developed into a resort and casino. And sadly, the red, iron-rich soil that provided nutrients for my relatives’ peppercorn farms was now struggling to keep up with the production of the past.

My Vietnamese, picked up from Sunday Việt Ngử (Vietnamese language school) and my parents’ memories, suddenly felt antique and frozen in the same era my parents carried with them across the Pacific Ocean.

It was humbling. And it was heartbreaking.

It made me realize that diaspora doesn't just mean distance. It means inheriting the space of what's remembered and what’s real.

And if we never look back, even for a glimpse, we risk mistaking the memory for the whole story.

I was carrying a version of Việt Nam that no longer exists, a place shaped more by my own longing than the life it currently lives. And somewhere in that space, I witnessed how the homeland doesn’t stand still just because I’m not there.

It kept becoming. And in watching it change, I found the permission to do the same.

Being in Việt Nam didn’t just teach me about the country, it taught me about myself. That it’s okay to not belong anywhere fully.

That being "in between" isn’t a failure, it’s a freedom.

That my Vietnamese and my identity, don’t have to be perfect to be meaningful.

If you’ve ever thought about visiting the places your family came from, maybe it’s worth exploring.

Yes, it might be awkward.

Yes, you might feel a little lost.

But somewhere in all that fumbling, you might just find a little more of yourself.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself laughing on a bus in Việt Nam, realizing the space between here and home isn’t empty — it’s just been waiting for you to see what’s already there.

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Benjamin Hoàng Nguyễn is the Social Media Manager of Vietnamese Boat People. He has a podcast with his 3 older sisters called Growing Up Nguyen, a collection of stories about growing up Vietnamese American in the Bay Area. Beyond podcasting, Ben has discovered a passion for theatrical and commercial acting as well as modeling.

Connect with Ben on Instagram or LinkedIn.