“Hello! My name is Thai. I’m not from Thailand. I’m not Thai, but Vietnamese.”
That has become my signature self-introduction over the years. Back in Vietnam, my name never caused any confusion. But in Estonia, it somehow manages to start a conversation almost every single time.
It all started with three months in Tartu.
At the time, Estonia was simply an unexpected opportunity, a country I had never even heard of before. It sounded so unfamiliar that people around me kept asking:
“Estonia? Is that in Africa?”
“Do you mean Ethiopia?”
To be fair, I did not know much about Estonia either. I only knew one thing: I was going to see snow for the first time in my life.
It didn’t bother me.
And when the time came to leave, I realized something strange: unintentionally on purpose, I wanted to come back.
So I did.
This time, not as a visitor, but as a doctoral student at the University of Tartu. That autumn, more than 14,000 students filled the university halls, among them nearly 1,000 international students from over 70 countries. Everyone has their own reason for leaving home. Mine was simple: curiosity.
As a dragon, I can’t be killed by curiosity.
I had always wondered what life looked like outside my homeland.
“What’s the shape of the sky?” asked the young frog.
“It’s round. Don’t you see it?” answered the old frog.
“Yes, I see. But if I jump out of the well, what shape will the sky be?” the young frog wondered.
Sometimes, you need to leave the well to discover how big the sky really is.
Before Estonia, I had imagined myself moving to America, Germany, or Australia, countries people talked about often, countries that sounded familiar and predictable. Estonia was never part of the plan. Yet somehow, life quietly led me here instead.
I have always felt that Estonia was my destiny.
In the series “1 Estonia. 98 nationalities“, Delfi asked me what I like most about Estonia. It is the peaceful way of life and the closeness of nature. Estonia gave me something I did not even know I needed: tranquility—a word I probably could not even spell properly back then.
But perhaps I spoke too soon about the peaceful part.
Just two months later, I was suddenly woken up by an unusual noise early in the morning. Half asleep and completely confused, I thought something terrible had happened.
It was simply my first experience of Student Days in Tartu.
Tartu eventually became my second home, where I spent four years completing my doctoral thesis under the guidance of Professor Triin Jagomägi and Associate Professor Toai Nguyen. My research, titled “The first study of the treatment outcomes of patients with cleft lip and palate in Central Vietnam,” became the first study of its kind in the region.
To my surprise, that doctoral research found its way into several Estonian media outlets, including Tartu Postimees (2016), Novaator (2019), Med24 (2019), Tervis Postimees (2019), Meditsiiniuudised (2019), and Research in Estonia (2019).
Toward the end of my doctoral program, I had the wonderful opportunity to pursue a 1-year junior research fellowship at the Institute of Dentistry, University of Tartu, Estonia. Together with my team, we conducted a study on sleep apnea entitled “Upper Airway and Palatal Dimensions in Children with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.” That research later helped me win the prestigious NOF Hatton award.
After completing my doctoral degree, I resumed my professional career as a dentist. That was when I started to tell my life story in Estonia(n).
I later appeared in the Kanal 2 series “Rikas Eesti,” where I shared more about my experiences of building a life in Estonia as a foreigner. By then, Estonia no longer felt like a place I had moved to. It had become part of who I was.
From a curious young man wondering what existed outside the well, to someone building a new life thousands of kilometers away from home.