“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
— Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
Hà Nội
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Remote sensing class
The two-plus years I spent in Hà Nội were probably the hardest stretch of my life so far. I didn’t know if I had chosen right. I didn’t know if I was capable enough to actually pursue the thing I loved. There were days when I felt like I was about to crumble under the weight of everything at once: grades, the abstract shape of a future career, family, friends. I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to keep depending on my parents (a privilege in itself) but I also didn’t know when I would stop needing to.
I couldn’t picture where I would be in a few years, or whether the effort I was putting into finding opportunities would ever be recognized, or what I would do if I failed. Bachelor’s, then master’s, then hunting for a PhD, then a postdoc, or scattering applications into industry… it sounded both very far away and very tiring.
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Classic question in Hà Nội: fog or smog?
Sunset
First attempt at braiding my own hair at the age of 20
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Hotpot at a friend’s
But in those same two years, I also slowly learned how to enjoy a bit of freedom when I was on my own. How to reward myself with a milk tea or a bạc xỉu after a stressful exam week. How to wander around Hà Nội alone, or with friends. I made friends from all 3 regions of the country. We cooked hotpot and grilled meat at each other’s apartments. We pulled all-nighters together to finish group project presentations, and then rode back to school from Long Biên the next morning in heavy fog (terrifying, given my motorcycle skills and the zero visibility).
I got hurt a lot during those two years. But I also learned how to heal myself. How to enjoy the present a bit more, instead of constantly worrying about things that hadn’t happened yet.
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Train from Hà Nội to Huế (an excursion for the National Student Olympiad in Mathematics)
Huế train station
Taipei
The real turning point for my academic path was the 2 months in Taipei.
It started with a summer research program I applied to with a group of friends. I got invited to interview, and then I cancelled myself out by forgetting that Taipei was 1 hour ahead of Hà Nội.
I made the interviewer wait for an entire hour!
I felt terrible about wasting their time, and I hated myself for making such a stupid mistake and losing a rare opportunity. I thought: that’s it. My friends are going abroad this summer and I’ll be stuck at home, moping, with nothing interesting to put on my CV.
Then, somehow, I got lucky. A second chance came not long after: another summer program in Taiwan, newer, more focused on theoretical research. Honestly, after the first failure I wasn’t letting myself hope. But if you don’t try, there’s no chance of succeeding at all. So I went through the 11,103 steps of applying, asking for recommendation letters, interviewing (with an extra layer of paranoia about time zones this time), and eventually I got the yes from the supervisor I’d picked. I landed in Taipei.
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View from a hill
School campus
Somewhere… in Taipei, or near Taipei
Those 2 months are still the happiest period I’ve had since starting university. My roommate was from Myanmar and was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. She shared snacks with me and suggested places to go. My Taiwanese friends and my supervisor were gentle and warm, they took me and other interns from Taipei all the way down to Kenting, at the southern tip of the island.
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Dumplings
Stinky tofu! (not that stinky tbh)
A meal at our favorite restaurant close to the campus
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Teppanyaki, another go-to!
And most importantly, I met two people who are now among my closest friends: one from India, one from Mexico. The three of us were constantly together: wandering night markets, drinking milk tea, or sitting in our shared office complaining to each other about our projects. Three people from three completely different parts of the world, with an astonishing amount in common, from our interests to our insecurities. We still keep in touch. Whenever I complain about myself, they write me whole essays of encouragement. I’m not as good with words, but I try to listen and comfort them back.
That internship was also where I discovered that I’m completely obsessed with theoretical research (well… right now I’m not doing anything as theoretical as this yet, but life is long and unexpected!). Looking at the stack of scratch paper on my desk filled me with a ridiculous amount of pride. It was a kind of oh, so this is what research actually is moment. My supervisor said, you’re both unlucky and lucky, unlucky because your project is harder than I expected, lucky because that’s what makes it interesting. We never found a clean answer. But “no clean answer” was itself a result. At least I knew now that this path would never be smooth, and I had enough determination to keep going anyway.
Marseille
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Ratatouille!
The most peaceful place so far has been Marseille… well, there were protests, and there was a bloody (literally) fight in the building I was living in, but I wasn’t directly involved in any of it. I think the laid-back French attitude rubbed off on me, because I got a little lazy too. I started worrying I wasn’t being as productive as I’d been in Taipei. My friends from Taipei wrote me another long essay to tell me I was overthinking, as usual.
I was taken care of, kind of embarrassingly well, by an older master’s student who came with me and a postdoc from the same lab. Three proper meals a day. Better nutrition than I’d had during my half-functional Hà Nội days. We even took each other to Paris, and then to Rome for 4 days and 3 nights, where we ate pizza until we couldn’t look at another slice.
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A hike to Calanque de Morgiou
That was also the period when I was waiting for results from 3 graduate applications. I got rejected from 2. The last one to reply was the only one that took me. That meant asking my Marseille supervisor for September off to start school, finishing my internship online in August while I was back in Vietnam doing visa paperwork. My planned six months in Marseille shrank to four. And just like that, I was saying goodbye to another place full of memories.
People keep saying the French are difficult, but honestly, if you make the effort to say a few words in French first, most people are warm back (OK in retrospect, this was just a Southern France experience LMAO). You just have to show that you’re trying to meet them halfway. It took me a while to get used to the culture of cheerfully saying bonjour to every stranger you pass (again, Southern France), but I came around.
What I remember most clearly is the weekend afternoons at Vieux-Port, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, eating chocolate, listening to bands playing music (my favorite was Just the Two of Us) and people chatting loudly around me. The internship also helped me keep building connections with people working in planetary science, which is the direction I want to go, and I learned a lot, heavy on chemistry and thermodynamics, which wasn’t necessarily what I’d signed up for, but turned out to be kind of fun.
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Sunset in Marseille
Another sunset
I found this some months ago, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot these days:
“When you grow up, all you ever do is leave. You leave people, situations, and places. You often wonder where home is because you always feel like a fish out of water wherever you go. […] As you mature, you learn that departing isn’t merely about leaving; instead, it’s about carrying a piece of others with you and leaving a part of yourself behind. It transforms you into a magnificent collage, a gem woven from the threads of all those you’ve loved, of all those you are ever going to love.
And someday, that feeling will be home enough.” — Rae Pathak, friday reminders
I don’t know yet if that feeling will be home enough for me. But I’m collecting pieces. That has to count for something.