“If you know, you know.”
This is the best response to the question posed on internet message boards as to why the baggage claim after flights originating from Vietnam fill with so many boxes among the suitcases. Anyone who has stood beside a luggage carousel with Vietnamese passengers has seen the cardboard and styrofoam boxes with large names (always Nguyễn, as Reddit has observed) and addresses, often somewhere in California or Texas, written on numerous sides. You may have even helped pack or receive one yourself.
The explanation for the boxes is straightforward: they are cheaper and lighter than a full suitcase, which makes them ideal for bringing gifts to family and friends abroad. Dried fruit, fish, noodles, nuts, rice paper, clothes, sauce, spices, and, no doubt, a few oddities determined by the particular preferences of each recipient are the most common, albeit rarely declared items. And if the boxes are being re-used to bring items in the opposite direction, chances are there would be a few giant bottles of Costco medicine inside.
It’s easy to understand why the boxes are so much more common in Vietnam than in other countries: large and somewhat recently established diaspora community consisting of close families with population centers in a few cities; economic growth and income disparities; and limited availability of niche items on the global market.
But just because the airport box phenomenon can be easily explained to outsiders and feels commonplace to the point of cliche to insiders, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pause to voice our appreciation. Ultimately, the boxes are visual proof of Vietnamese generosity and the importance of family as well as the preferred method of expressing emotions. One might not hear “I’ve missed you so much” when picking up a relative arriving from Vietnam, but you’ll feel it in the heft of the box placed in your trunk.
Few airports in the world have specialized devices and staff dedicated to wrapping cardboard boxes with secure plastic, so their presence at numerous departure entry doors at TSN underscores the sanctity of the habit. Passing them last week filled me with a tinge of shame. I proceeded to my flight’s check-in line surrounded by people ferrying stacks of boxes while I pushed a single duffel. I know I’m not Vietnamese, but I should have learned a thing or two by now about expressing my affection for a family that is too far away and whom I visit too infrequently. So as I prepare for my return to Saigon, I’m already thinking about what people there will be happy to receive, and what shrink-wrapped, dehydrated, bottled or locally produced goods will best reveal how happy I am to return to them.
