by nhoa | Oct 31, 2020 | Uncategorized
When I was 10 months old, my parents bought tickets to escape Vietnam on an overcrowded fishing vessel with 363 people onboard. It was really scary for them because they had heard many stories of boats capsizing, and of pirates. They had got married just before the...
by nhoa | Sep 5, 2020 | Uncategorized
It took us 3 near death attempts to escape communist Vietnam. The first time, I was six years old. Of the three boats, one made it to resettlement, one completely sank, and ours started sinking, until luckily 5 hours later a fisherman’s boat came by and rescued us. My...
by nhoa | Feb 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
(2/2) At first, Mum joined Dad selling stuff outside the temple, but finally after six years, they decided to immigrate to Australia for a better life. Just before they left, Dad had this crazy idea of approaching a Japanese rice cooker company and saying “I’m going...
by nhoa | Feb 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
(1/2) My mum always says that she and my dad were fated to be together. His family weren’t rich. They sold noodle soup from a trolley cart at a train station. But Dad was the brightest of the kids, so when he got into university in Japan, his family invested all their...
by nhoa | Jan 25, 2020 | Uncategorized
My parents were part of the wave of boat people who left Vietnam towards the late 1970s, and they both ended up in Australia, where they met in a migrant hostel in East Hills. In the beginning, they mostly relied on charities whilst they learnt English and then later...
