Ca Dao

"When I returned [to Vietnam], I really did not feel comfortable. There was no feeling of comfort at all. Besides the joy of meeting my family, I have no other joy. Walking on the street and seeing children selling lottery tickets and elderly people begging, I felt extremely heartbroken, and felt extremely helpless. I could not do anything for them. I did not feel like a person who returned to travel on their homeland. I did not have that comfortable feeling. It was rather very heavy. When I walked on the street, I saw such poor people. I saw that the gap between the rich and the poor was very wide. And the feeling of helplessness that I could not do anything. To be honest, I did not feel excited about returning to Vietnam for travel or anything. So after each returns, I went a little further. Instead of community activities, I participated in [political] activism to speak up about human rights issues for Vietnam."

"At that time, I vomited. And someone shouted. Screaming ´She vomited on me!´ But at that time, I could not control it. When I climbed onto the deck, I still remember one more thing, I went up there to escape the horrible smell [inside the cabin], the sour smell, a smell... A smell that cannot be described! [On the dek] There was someone sitting in front of me with some parts their pants reeked with all those sour, ulcerous, and foul smells. It kept fluttering in front of my nose. But I did not have the strength to wipe it away. I just laid there, breathing both the fresh air of the sea and the smell that I just escaped. Luckily, a boat arrived. Someone had already died on our boat. Especially the children. The children had all fainted. When they got close, they threw down a net. Children and women, or people who could no longer move, sat in that net and were pulled up. As for the men who still had the strength, they lowered a rope ladder for them to climb up. When we went up [the rescue boat], they gave us water to drink, food and water. And they made a list. Only at that time did I, and everyone else, realize that there were 303 people on the boat. And a dog. Such a small boat, only ten meters long, loaded of 303 people. Perhaps if everyone knew beforehand, no one would dare to go."

"Every Friday afternoon, we had to say what we were thinking that week. What we thought about the regime, what we thought about the political ideology in general. And of course I had to lie. They forced me to lie. They taught me how to lie. Because people like us cannot tell the truth. If you were honest, you would be put under a lot of pressure. That meant that we had to say: "The communist regime is good. Then Ho Chi Minh is...a symbol, a person to whom we must be indebted to" and so on. Generally speaking, it's about political views. In a way they taught us to lie. We were forced to lie. I told the truth, once. And because of that, in my four years in college, I knew that I would not be able to do what I wanted after graduating. I do not have the right to graduate if I am not accepted in the Union. Especially for people with thoughts like mine, how can they be admitted to the Union? So, from then on, the thought that I had to escape from this regime gradually dawned on me. My mother, at one point said that, she hid some money but only enough for one person to go. And my mother asked all her children: "Whoever wants to go, I will give you money to go. But it is only enough for one person." At that time, I was the one who said, “I am going. I will go." At that time I thought,"Either I die in the East Sea, or I will have freedom." Because if I had to carry on living like this, I would not be able to."

"I still remember that one year I returned [home from university] to celebrate Tet. When I got home, I no longer recognized my house. Because it was empty. My family used to do business, the house was very long, up to a dozen meters. The house was full of commercial items. But when I returned, I thought that I was lost. I did not recognize my house anymore. It was completely empty. At that moment, my mother ran from behind to open the door and cried, said "Child, they took everything!" When I went in, my mother told me that there were soldiers. They had guns, and they went into the house, and they slept there. Three days, three nights. And they brought cart trucks to carry all the items inside our house. They took everything away. No one knew where they took it to. Later, people said they transported it to the North. When my mother carried the basket to the market. They turned each banana leaf over to see if she was hiding something. They even pried off the floor tiles in our house to see if we were hiding gold. And I still remember that I have an entire bookshelf, a collection of Tuoi Hoa books. I really love Tuoi Hoa books. Tuoi Hoa, Tuoi Ngoc, and even a diary. They took it all. Later a teacher who taught me in high school, he is now in America and about a year ago, he called me and said that: ´I saw that your books [and diary] was sold in the market.´"