Spelling Correction In the last paragraph,
"Deer" should have been: "Dear", d'ohh!! ... What, I was thinking of deer meat?? D'ohh!! No No, ok ok it's delicious, d'ohh!! but no no it was an honest overlooked spelling mistake, d'ohh!! Pheng On Oct 9, 1:33 pm, Pheng Kim Ving <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Meeng Thavary, > > I don't live in the US, I live in Canada, but in Canada this weekend > starting Saturday Oct 9 is also a long weekend, but it's not because > Monday is Columbus Day, d'ohh!! it's because in Canada it's > Thanksgiving Day. > > Dear Meeng, yeah yeah it requires a book to describe the escape of the > Cambodians to Vietnam during 1975-1979 and their lives in Vietnam. > However I can tell you here a few things about their escape and their > lives in Vietnam: > > - officially only people who could speak Vietnamese were allowed to > enter Vietnam, no matter what their skin color was and no matter how > they looked (Vietnamese, Khmer, Chinese, or whatever), as long as they > could speak Vietnamese > > - for my family, consisting of more than a dozen members, only my > mother could speak Vietnamese fluently; so my mother had a strategy; > we were in a group of about 20 families, arriving at the border; my > mother`s strategy was that we would be the last family > to be interviewed by the Vietnamese border guards (it was around mid- > August 1975, there was no war yet between Vietnam and the Khmer > Rouge); then after all the other families had entered into Vietnam, it > was our turn for the interview; my mother talked to the border guard > in Vietnamese, implored him to let us in, she wept, cried, wept, > cried, ..., for about 15 minutes, begging him to let us in; then he > asked to talk to other members of our family; when it was my turn, he > asked me something in Vietnamese; I uttered eeh ooh eeh ooh ,,,, > d'ohh, I didn't understand what he said and couldn't say anything in > Vietnamese; so he asked me some questions in Khmer and I responded in > Khmer, including that I was a university student in Phnom Penh; ..., > then afterwards my mother talked to him again (in Vietnamese), > imploring him to let us in; she wept, cried, wept, cried, ..; luckily, > about 1 hour after the interview started, he let us in; note: every > other family in the group took only about 3 minutes to be let in; my > mother's strategy was this: being the last to be interviewed would > give her all the time she would need to implore and beg him and make > him have compassion for us and thus to make him let us in; fortunately > it worked > > - in Saigon, I met lots of other Cambodian refugees, including dark- > skinned ones, who could hardly speak Vietnamese at all; I didn't know > how they got in; I didn't ask them how, for fear they were upset; I > could only guess that they entered through un-guarded areas; among us > Cambodians we spoke only Khmer; some of the Cambodian guys I met in > Saigon are now in Canada also, since more than 25 years ago, just like > me > > - we Cambodian refugees could live wherever we wanted to; the > Vietnamese government didn`t harass us at all, it even gave us the > right to maintain being Cambodian and the right to emigrate abroad; it > issued us Cambodian ID cards, which were very valuable, because they > gave us the right to move abroad, and virtually all the Vietnamese > people in urban areas wanted to move abroard > > - after the war between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge broke out, some > Cambodian families were rounded up into refugees camps by the > Vietnamese government; my family and lots of others that we knew > weren't, I didn't know why some were and some weren't; however the > folks in the camps still had the right to be sponsored to emigrate > > - the Vietnamese people in Saigon didn't hate the Cambodian people, or > at least the Cambodian refugees back then, d'ohh!! they even liked > us!! yeah yeah I had a couple Vietnamese girlfriends back then > > - some Vietnamese who used to live in Cambodia up to 1970 even said > they didn't like Vietnam or even the Vietnamese people in Vietnam, > that they liked to live in Cambodia, that they would return to > Cambodia once they could > > - my own father, just a few months after we arrived in Vietnam, > claimed he suspected Vietnam was behind the massacres of the Cambodian > people by the Khmer Rouge; I opposed his view; yeah yeah back then, 35 > years ago, I already opposed this view; I opposed his view, not him, > he`s my father > > - lots of Sin Si Samouth songs were brought to Vietnam by the > Cambodian refugees, including my family; the songs have found their > way back to Cambodia > > All Right. Deer Meeng, this is only a brief summary of the story of > the Cambodian refugees in Vietnam during 1975-1979. (There were also > Cambodians who escaped to Vietnam after Vietnam destroyed the Khmer > Rouge regime in January 1979). If you have questions, please feel free > to ask. > > Pheng -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group. This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language. Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc Learn more - http://www.cambodia.org
