"Now that I have been here immersed in Vietnamese culture I think there is definitely a side of me that is very Vietnamese. I am probably 60 per cent American 40 Vietnamese, maybe 70-30. Give me a few years and that percentage will change," he said.
Landon Carnie was one of more than 2,000 babies and children evacuated from Saigon in what became known as "Operation Babylift," in the tumultuous weeks preceding the fall of the city to north Vietnamese on April 30, 1975.
His adoptive parents were in Vietnam trying to assist in the mass evacuations by private and government planes.
At the age of one, Landon and his twin sister were on one of the planes that eventually ferried the babies, small children and volunteers out from Saigon.
On the morning of April 4th the plane carrying Landon and his sister crashed shortly after take-off and 158 orphans and 28 adults were killed. Landon and his sister were found unharmed in a paddy field amid the smouldering wreckage of the C5A aircraft.
Raised in rural Washington State by his adoptive parents, Landon had little Vietnamese influence growing up. Every lunar new year, his parents would take him to the home of a family of Vietnamese refugees who lived nearby.
"Around every February we would have this Tet [lunar new year] party, and I didn't have a clue what it was, except we came over and had lots of food, good food. That was really my own exposure to Vietnamese pretty much my whole life growing up," he said recently.
He has been back in Vietnam permanently for the last three years working as an English teacher, on the campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University and still enjoys the sense of anonymity that looking Vietnamese affords.
"I felt that when I was on <xe om [motorbike taxi] and even though I was a foreigner, no one even noticed me. And when I was with my mum, everything changed. I still like it today living here because when I am on my motorbike and if I don't speak English, I am just another Vietnamese," he said.
He still struggles with the language and considers himself American but is finding out more every day about himself and his adopted home city.
"Right now I have no desire to leave. This is a very up and growing city. I would love to be here to see these changes. I think it will be really interesting to see how Saigon changes in the next 15 years," he said.
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