What Pain Is

[Sóc Trăng, 5/16/25]

It may seem contradictory or even hypocritical for a wanderer like me to stress being grounded. I was confined to Philadelphia for three decades. It’s not the length of your stay in any place, but how attentive you are while in it. Though Norman Lewis was in Vietnam for mere weeks, he captured it better than most native writers. Travelers also arrive with fresh eyes. You can spend a century in NYC and barely see it.

Most don’t try. Lewis on whites in Saigon in 1950, “Twenty thousand Europeans keep as much as possible to themselves in a few tamarind-shaded central streets and they are surrounded by about a million Vietnamese and Chinese.” In 2025 Saigon, the appearance of English schools in all neighborhoods has forced whites to spread across that megalopolis. Most are still confined to a quarter mile from Bùi Viện Street. In Vung Tau, they self-sequester on Phan Chu Trinh.

Leaving Sóc Trăng, I decided to walk to the bus station, 2.3 miles away. Since I got lost along the way, I easily doubled that distance. In 2019, I had seen the hideous Socialist Realist monument at its main roundabout. Only now did I realize it depicts three ethnic women, a Cambodian, Vietnamese and Chinese, to represent the city’s racial harmony.