I love living in Vietnam. I have chosen to live here, and it’s a choice I’m quite happy to have made. Last year, after only a year and half in Vietnam, I returned home to the United States, unsure of what my next step would be. But I chose to return. This is where I belong. At least for now.

That being said, there are some things I miss while living here, which can make it hard to be so far from home. I have lived abroad before, but Ho Chi Minh City is the only other place I have ever really adopted as a new home. And my original home is very far away, in Oregon, USA, not at all an easy place to return to for a visit.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s not that I’ve been searching for a new place to call home, somewhere I would feel more comfortable, able to live the life I want, free from all the constraints of my roots. I just love the experience of it, the challenge and excitement of living in a foreign environment, the opportunities to learn from and about another culture, experiencing life from a different perspective.

However, ceaseless traveling doesn’t do it for me; that’s why I’ve settled here for the time being. Spending a week or a month in a new place can be fun and exciting, but it isn’t fulfilling for me. I would rather live in place and become a part of it, participating in society and daily life. And so I’ve chosen Vietnam as where I want to do that. Partially that’s because of the challenge of it -- this is a vastly different culture and environment than where I grew up, with its fair share of regular frustrations, to be sure.

So why have I chosen to live here? Well, on the one hand it is quite easy. This is a very welcoming country, full of friendly people, opportunities and access to niceties I couldn’t necessarily afford back home. And I generally have access to almost anything I would ever need or want just like back home. Yet recently I had an experience that reminded me of just how easy it isn’t to live here, so far from my home and family.

My great-grandmother recently became very ill without warning. She was old, of course, and these things happen. But the last time I’d seen her she seemed quite healthy, and confident to boot, even talking about sticking around till a hundred, just a few short years away. Then at the beginning of June I got the news that she wasn’t doing well, and that this was likely to be the end of things for her.

I’ve always been quite close to my Grandma “Bum” (the name I’d called her since I was too young to pronounce the word “grandma”, and the moniker had stuck). She used to take care of me when I was young and and she was always more like a mother to than a grandmother to my own mother, and always joined us for family gatherings no matter how small. Additionally, she was the loving matriarch of my mom’s family, the top of a pyramid that spanned five generations and included nearly sixty-five descendants, all held together by Grandma’s sense of love and family. So, realizing how serious her condition was, and quite frankly in a state of shock, I booked a ticket and flew back to the states as quickly as I could.

I was lucky enough to get there when she was still lucid and spent a few days visiting with her, but her condition quickly worsened and she passed away less than two weeks later. Everything happened as easily as possible considering the situation. She eventually passed away in her sleep, peacefully and ready to go. It was a sad time, but I was very glad to be there with my family, and to have all the relatives come together for the first time in years to celebrate her life and legacy.

But it wasn’t an easy thing for me to do. I just can’t afford to make the trip home and back more than once a year, if that. And while there I was reminded that I have many other family members who are getting old and in poor health. Living in Vietnam and absorbing the cultural values of this country has reinforced for me just how important family is, yet ironically it’s harder than ever for me to show them that appreciation they so deserve. I have some wonderful friends in Vietnam, but the loss of my grandmother was painful, and put in sharp contrast for me how difficult it can be to live so far from family.

In this era of globalization people often talk about how distances have been collapsed, how they don’t mean the same thing as they used to. While that’s true to a point, they’re really collapsed by perspective only. In the real world distances still matter. I live a tremendous distance from my family and many of those I love. And that, for me, is the hardest part about living here.

On a very different note, being back in the US also reminded me of some of the other, albeit much less important, things from home that I miss and can’t have here. And one of the biggest, for me, is beer.

Obviously, there’s no shortage of beer in Vietnam or of people to drink it with. But the beer I miss can’t be replaced by Saigon Đỏ, Tiger, or even Heineken. I miss the variety of beer that exists back home, and to be sure, I am biased. I come from a place that is particularly well-known for the quality and variety of its beer. Oregon is famous for its many craft breweries -- small beer manufacturers that approach the making of the malt beverage as an art form. They experiment with different styles, colors, strengths and bitterness levels of beer, add new flavors to the beer, and come up with equally fantastic names, descriptions and logos for their creations. Sipping on a cold draught IPA is one of my favorite things to do in the Summer (or Winter, Spring or Fall, for that matter). And outside of paying an exorbitant price for a European bottled import, that’s just not something I can do here.

My grandmother’s last words? “Enjoy life!” and “I want a beer.”