We arrived safely in Thailand at Camp Laemsing. Boat # 1575, 120 people including my dad, my sister, and myself. Now that we were safe, my dad worried about reuniting our family. He pleaded with the organizers of the escape to bring my mom over as well. They went back to Vietnam, and organized another trip. In June my mom, already six months pregnant, and Niki arrived in Thailand safely and our family was finally re-united.

For other refugees, the escape was far from safe and many did not survive. Those that did survive suffered many traumatic experiences such as rape and murder by pirates. This was the registration card my Dad filled out to the United Nation High Commissioner on Refugees. Looking closely I notice that the original 5 persons was cross off and replaced with six. That was when my youngest sister Tudo, Freedom, was born.

Because my father was a former military officer, our family was processed more quickly because there was legitimate reason for his escape due to the persecution of political dissidents back in Vietnam. in June 1975, my father was forced to go to a re-education camp where he spent nearly three years doing what he described "hard labor and clearing the jungle...not really any reeducation. The conditions were terrible and they treated us like animals. There was never enough to eat. We had to eat grasshoppers and other insects." My mother, on the other hand, had to help support eight younger brothers and sisters in addition to me and my older sister by selling meat at the market. Once my father was released in 1978, he was determined to escape. "Many people were released from reeducation camp and were arrested again for no apparent reason.

There were no laws or civil rights. The communists could do whatever they want. I did not want to live in an environment of suspicion and was afraid they would put me in jail again...so we had to escape." Escape to where my parents did not know. My father had finished two years of college and was a geography and history teacher so he was aware of the United States and its democratic system. He also knew that it had the "highest standard of living, but it would not be easy being a refugee only hoping for a better life" in America. But after his imprisonment in the reeducation camp, freedom above all else was his main wish, so "any country with freedom and democracy would be better than Vietnam." My mom, still considering freedom as important, emphasized more about a new life and opportunity for me and my sisters: "We knew living under communism was bad and that if we stayed you would have no future so we left." It was with this determination that my family decided to escape Vietnam in the spring of 1980.