I wish I’d spent more time in Vietnam when I was living in Thailand. I’d visit twice a year, a couple of weeks at a time. Usually Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, with the occasional day trip or overnight escape. It never felt like enough.

Part of the attraction is the street. I could sit for hours watching motorbikes pour into an intersection that some idiot has already blocked, wondering how any of this is going to work. Somehow, it does. Somebody inches forward. Somebody gives way. Lunch gets delivered.

Then comes the rain. Not a shower. The kind that makes you reconsider your plans and your shoes’ structural integrity. In Thailand, people pull under an overpass and wait. In Vietnam, they pull out plastic ponchos, and everyone keeps going. There’s work to do. People to see. No reason to let a small atmospheric catastrophe hold up the day.

Vietnam has been through a hell of a lot. The Vietnam War—or the American War, depending on which side of the ocean you grew up on is part of that history. But there’s something presumptuous about sitting over a bowl of noodles and deciding you understand a country because you know a little about its suffering. I don’t. I just keep coming back, watching, listening, and finding more reasons to stay.

For a country that has been tossed around and abused, the Vietnamese don’t have a chip on their shoulders. And they rightfully should. Families were torn apart. Babies, children murdered, and for what?

After everything the war took from them, the Vietnamese rebuilt and kept going. Not because the past stopped hurting, but because there was a future worth building. And they would never want my pity.

That’s a lesson I’ve brought home from Vietnam.