Story by Tri Hoang. Translations by Nam Hoang.
Audio transcript [English]:
[Image 1] Here’s a picture of me at the refugee camp. I had a friend here that was sent to the re-education camps with me, he had arrived almost a year before me and had a relative in the US supporting him. Actually, he helped me take these photos as souvenirs! Here’s the house that I lived in with a couple of other young people. Even a house as ragged house as this, most people would have to pay at least two gold bars to live in it. But my friend left me the house, so I didn’t have to pay a penny.
[Image 2] Here’s a boat, not my boat mind you, mine did not look nearly as good as that! But you get the idea. Behind us, there’s a bridge that leads into the camp, the most famous one in Pilau Bidong. Everyone who was at the camp remembers this bridge; it was where you would wait to reunite with people coming off the boats, or say goodbye to whoever was lucky enough to make it out of the camps to start a new life in another country.*
*Author's note: Whenever this happened, they always played a song called "Bien Nho."