First time I went to Vietnam, I took tour with this Vietnamese-American guy.

He had this wild accent — Texas cowboy meets Saigon street vendor — and he was funny as hell.

We were somewhere outside Hanoi, sitting on plastic stools, sweating through our shirts, slurping phở under a corrugated tin roof.

Mid-sip, he said:

“We don’t call it the Vietnam War here. We call it the American War.”

It hit me like a slap.

Because back home, the west name wars after where they go — not what they do.

They make it about themselves. Their trauma. Their dead.

But over here, it’s not a memory — it’s a scar. A reminder.

Same war. Different story.

And that’s the thing about travel — if you’re paying attention, it doesn’t just show you the world.

It shows you everything you were never taught to question back home.