Part 3: Beautiful Country
After five years of living on the run — first on the southwestern edge of Cambodia, then in the coastal town of Ha Tien, Vietnam — my parents were finally reunited with their nieces and nephews, who had just escaped the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge.
With eight mouths to feed, my mom took on a new job for the family, dealing gold. In that part of the world in 1979, dealing gold meant trudging every morning across the border, navigating swamps and bogs that were peppered with landmines.
At this point, adapting to a constant risk of death wasn’t new for my mom. But it was during this year that she realized Vietnam couldn’t become the family’s new home. And at the same time, the Cambodia she knew was gone. So it was time to stop living on the run and make an even bigger leap — to leave Cambodia and Vietnam altogether.
In this episode, my mom shares the joyful memories from her charmed childhood in Cambodia, which kept her holding onto hope that she could offer a similar life to her own daughters. From beach trips to fruit feasts to her first teenage crush, she looks back on the Cambodia that she still loves, and might someday try to set foot on again.
EPISODE CREDITS
Created, written, and produced by Lisa Phu
Edited by Julia Shu
Fact checking by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui
Sound design by James Boo
Original score by Avery Stewart
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Audio engineering by Dave Waldron and Timothy Lou Ly
Cover art and show name created by Christine Carpenter
Audience engagement by Rekha Radhakrishnan
Thanks to the Alderworks Alaska Writers & Artists Retreat for the residency they provided for this project.
This project is supported in part by the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council and the City and Borough of Juneau
Huge thanks and gratitude to Lan Phu
~
“Before Me” is a Self Evident Media production.
The show’s Executive Producers are James Boo, Lisa Phu, and Ken Ikeda.
TRANSCRIPT
Pre-Roll
CATHY VO: Hi! This is Cathy, from Self Evident.
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Cold Open
Lan: Why would I want to come to America? My country was so good. Cambodia was a neutral country. It was a westerner’s vacation place.
Lisa: Right, so you just thought you’d live there.
Lan: Of course, before the war, it was such a beautiful country. The French took vacation, the whole world took vacation in Cambodia.
Nope, no, never wanted to come here. I knew it was cold… you know…
No.
MUX begins
LISA VO: Every once in a while, my mom sprinkles a childhood memory into our conversation.
The succulent pig her grandfather would roast for weddings.
How she and her friends would stop at Chinese factories and ask the workers for pins of Chairman Mao — they thought it was so cool to cover their shirts with all these pins.
But she never talks about her childhood for too long… or about Cambodia, really. If I press her for more details… she’ll say she misses the food.
Lan: Their lobster is just like a big shrimp, very tender and sweet.
We brown the garlic and then we just bring it to boil, let it cook with the garlic, in its own broth, and we add a little tiny bit of cane sugar to it.
Ugh, it’s out of this world. So good. And it’s so tender, so delicious, mmm.
I do miss the food a lot.
Lan: Once a country goes through war and your family gets killed, your feelings very mixed. That’s why I say right now…
I don’t know what I miss besides the food.
You know, because, if the people can turn things upside down and kill people like that?
I don’t know, feelings very mixed.
Lisa: Well, do you want to go back?
Lan: Ahh, maybe one day. One day I’ll be brave enough to go back.
Mentally, emotionally is what I mean, when I say “brave.”
It will bring back a lot of sadness, though. I don’t want to go back now.
I’m not ready for the pain. No. Mm-mm.
The recurring pain, no. No. I’m definitely not ready for that.
Because my life moved on, you know.
MUX ends
Lisa: But you think you will be ready one day?
Lan: Hopefully.
Lisa: So, when do you think you’ll be ready?
Lan: I don’t know. I have no idea.
MUX Theme music begins
Show Open
LISA VO: I’m Lisa Phu, and you’re listening to Before Me. The five-part story that follows my mom’s journey from Cambodia to America. And the long overdue conversation that helped us connect over our family’s history.
At the end of the last episode, I learned how my cousin Lynn and her siblings had reunited with my parents and my two older sisters, in Vietnam.
And all of a sudden, there were eight mouths to feed.
They were still living outside Ha Tien, in Vietnam. My dad wasn’t making any money by fixing watches. So my mom decided to get into the gold business.
The Vietnamese had pushed the Khmer Rouge back into the jungle, which meant the border was relatively safe again. Cambodians would go to the border to sell their gold, diamonds, and jewelry.
Act 1: The Back Way
Lan: During that time, Cambodia didn’t have no currency.
They depended on their gold, they sell their gold to people from Vietnam, and exchange for Vietnam currency, so they can buy some good to bring home.
LISA VO: My mom would buy the gold for cheap, at the border. And sell it in Vietnam for higher prices.
Lan: When you buy gold, right, one ounce, you buy for let’s say $50, you come back, sometimes you can sell for $80 or sometimes even for $100.
MUX Theme music ends
LISA VO: She sold her gold in Ha Tien, and her customers in Ha Tien sold it to people in Saigon.
For the past several years, she’d been using gold here and there — to get out of tight situations, and to bring family members together. But this was a new level of risk and danger.
She’d set out around four in the morning, and walk for at least three hours, to meet sellers from Cambodia.
Lan: The Cambodians, they come out very early — if you don’t there early enough, people would buy all the gold.
LISA VO: In the morning, she took the main road to the border. But to return to Ha Tien, she would go off road, to avoid getting checked by guards.
Lan: When women go over to the border to do business, the soldiers know you buy gold. If you go the main road where the soldiers are, they will search you.
LISA VO: Taking the back way meant walking through swamps and lakes, and sinking through deep mud.
Lan: One time I kept sinking and another man pull me up. Because those swamp if you sink, you can’t swim, you just wait and die.
One man in the back, his side, he got the grassland. So he hold on those thick grass, and he pulled me out.
MUX begins
LISA VO: Taking the back way also meant she could step on a land mine. Because by this time, Cambodia had become one of the most heavily mined places in the world.
On some days, my mom would see water buffalo dead from a landmine in places she had just walked through the day prior.
But she never stepped on one.
Lan: People always follow me, they think I always bring them good luck. I’ll be the first one dead if there’s a bomb, right? Wherever I go, they’re like duck, they follow my route because I don't step in anything. They just follow me, follow me.
Lisa: How did you know where to go? To not step on them?
Lan: You just don’t know. You just take your chance.
You have to assume, you have to pray that there’s no landmines, just go.
You know, landmines everywhere.
LISA VO: She made this nerve-wracking journey back and forth to the border every day, with the gold filling up secret compartments in her clothing.
Lan: We sew little pockets like inside the underwear. Many many little pockets.
LISA VO: This is how my mom supported her family. Was she scared? Oh yeah.
Lan: But during the time I did that because I know how many mouths were waiting for me to come back and eat. They’d be starving if I didn’t do that business.
LISA VO: My mom credits luck as the reason she never stepped on a landmine, and for all those other close calls.
And she had a huge advantage. In the more than five years she and Ky Song lived in Vietnam, she had learned how to fit in.
Lan: Because I spoke Vietnamese, that is a big plus because I fit right in. They considered me just one of them.
Ky Song was difficult because he couldn’t speak Vietnamese, so, uh, they always outcast him a little bit.
But when I speak with them, they just considered I’m a Vietnamese.
LISA VO: But my mom and dad weren’t citizens of Vietnam. They were refugees.
Lan: Vietnam never became our home, just a temporary home.
We always hoping we can go back to Cambodia, because Cambodia, theres — we own a house. The family’s house.
We always want to go back there.
LISA VO: My mom had been through so much. Losing her first daughter, and so many loved ones… and fleeing murder.
Still, I understand why she wanted to go back.
She had a beautiful childhood.
The kind of charmed life, that gave her the boldness — to walk through fields of mines.
Act 2: Charmed
MUX Begins
LISA VO: My mom was born in 1955. When her grandmother first laid eyes on her, she didn’t want to let her go.
Lan: My grandmother got five sons, only two daughters, and of course after my aunt, she had all boys.
So all of a sudden there’s a girl baby in the house… so she decided to keep it. (laughs)
Lisa: Wow.
Lan: Keep, keep me, yeah.
LISA VO: That’s how my mom ended up being raised by her grandparents. She says her own mom was still very much in her life — but she had married a second time and was raising other kids.
Lan: My grandfather, oh my god, he spoiled me to death. I remember every morning, he took me to the coffee shop.
Sit next to him and he let me taste the coffee. He drink the coffee with condensed milk, and he always pour a little cup, and he gave it to me and I drink it, but ohh. (laughs)
LISA VO: The coffee always made her sick.
Lan: And then they have the white dumpling, and they have the special, fried, that you dip in the coffee…
Lisa: Fried bread, right?
Lan: Fried bread, yeah. Oh, they have so many dim sum stuff, oh he ordered the whole table and he had me eat — I was so little, I remember. He just fed me…
In the meantime, we had so much meat at home.
LISA VO: Her grandfather was a meat merchant, so my mom was never hungry.
MUX ends
LISA VO: And her grandmother was used to cooking for a family of nine. So she would make huge portions of food, even though her own kids had long grown up and left the house.
Lan: (Laughs) They always force me to eat, you know?
Lisa: But you ate a lot.
Lan: I ate a lot, yeah.
My grandma she’s skinny, but she ate a lot too. She was a very good eater.
MUX begins
LISA VO: Food plays a big role in my mom’s life — you can hear it when she talks about food — and she passed that onto me.
Some of my happiest moments in childhood surround food. Like when my mom would bring home a big brown bag of crabs from Chinatown.
After the rest of the family had gotten full or bored, the two of us would still be left at the dinner table shucking away.
When she was a kid, my mom was constantly being spoiled by her uncles. Especially her fourth uncle.
Lan: He’d perm my hair, he’d put dress on me. You should see all the picture he took of me.
I got a perm! A little kid!
So I remember before the New Year, you know how big the Chinese celebrate New Year’s Eve. They go out to eat, they have a big feast, and they flowers this and that, right?
So the Chinese New Year’s Eve, my fourth uncle took me to the shop, pick out shoes, pick out dress, pick out, ohhh!
He just loved to dress me up. I was the youngest one in the family, he loved me so much, yeah, he’s just…
My uncle loved, my grandparents loved me… I grew up with a lot of love.
LISA VO: My mom told me how she lived just outside of town, with her grandparents. On a piece of land big enough to build four houses and raise pigs for the meat business.
Lan: We even have pigeons, we have 15 dogs, because those dogs guarded the pigs. we have monkeys, besides the goose, the chickens — we always had a lot of animals.
(Lan’s voice ducks under Lisa narration)
LISA VO: There were banana trees, coconut trees, tons of flowers and these special greens that her grandfather picked and turned into a remedy for acne.
Lan: And he chop chop chop and he’ll put it on for them. Yeah, and he’s very good. He give poor people meat…
(Lans’ voice ducks under Lisa narration)
LISA VO: My mom says he was a good, respected man.
SOUND: A long, drawn-out drumroll
LISA VO: For Lunar New Year, different Chinese groups would perform the dragon dance.
One of the groups would practice at my mom’s grandparents’ place for two months leading up to the holiday. And whenever the dance group was there, her grandfather made a giant pot of pigeon porridge.
Lan: Many many men involved in that. Some play drums, some do the monkey… and so when they practiced, at least 25 men came to practice.
He make biiiiig pot of porridge to serve those men for weeks.
LISA VO: She often watched the practice, full of excitement. And if she was still awake when it was over, she might join the men and eat some porridge.
Other times, she fell asleep to the beating rhythm of the dragon dance.
Lan: My grandfather bicycled to the city at night for coffee, for socializing, and bicycled home, and on the way home, all of a sudden five or six men tried to beat him, right?
But because my grandfather know kung fu, he beat them all. (Laughs)
He beat them all! Some broke their teeth. (Laughs)
He know kung fu, and beat them all.
So after that nobody dared to bother him ever again.
Lisa: Oh my gosh.
Lan: (Laughs and keeps telling the story, her voice fading out)
MUX begins
LISA VO: My mom’s life was pretty much a child’s dream — animals, dragon dances, kung fu fighting. And it didn’t stop there. Every weekend, she and her friends would bike to a place they called White Horse Beach.
Lan: We swim, we hang out and stayed there because it was so hot. We did not leave the beach until our skin crack open and bleed.
LISA VO: The coast was lined with coconut trees and villas. My mom would see French tourists sunbathing in the nude, and Cambodian merchants selling barbecue chicken.
Sometimes she and her friends would pay a little money and take a boat to a nearby island.
Lan: We can find wonderful clam, so sweet. Oh. You boil it and then you dip in the nuoc nam, oh my god, we always bring a bucket with us.
We caught a lot of those clams and a special clam too. They grow in the rocks. Look like a rock, right, but you break it — clam inside.
White clam, like oyster texture.
And then you go home and you fry it with egg and it’s delicious.
So our family, I bring home all the clams, they’re very happy. (Laughs)
LISA VO: My mom and her friends might go to the stream, to swim. Or she might canoe across the river, to her aunt’s orchard.
She always invited a few friends to come along.
Lan: They loved to come with me.
Once we would go there, mmmm, any fruit you eat, grow all the way down, near the ground.
Lisa: What kinds?
Lan: All kind, when it’s in season.
So every month we go there, always something in season.
Ooh, we had fun.
LISA VO: Twelve months a year of fruit.
Durian, bananas, papayas, coconuts, pineapples, mangos with thin seeds and hairless meat... so many other fruits that my mom doesn’t know the English names for. Even during the monsoon season, they’d pick unripe mangos to pickle.
MUX ends
LISA VO: This was the happiest time of my mom’s life — growing up in Cambodia, with a loving family.
Endless possibilities.
And the kind of young love that still makes her laugh and smile today.
After the break — my mom tells me about her first giant crush.
MIDROLL PROMO — Self Evident Oral History Toolkit
MUX: Self Evident theme begins
ROCHELLE VO: Hi! I’m Rochelle. I’m the resident DJ here at Self Evident… but I also manage our oral history program, where we help Asian diaspora folks document the history of their loved ones and communities.
If hearing these stories from Lisa, Lan, and Lynn gets you thinking about your own family, then you can use our digital toolkit to learn how to do an oral history interview.
It’s free, and you can go completely at your own pace.
So give it a try at selfevidentshow.com/history.
Also, you don’t have to learn all by yourself! If you want to chat with other Before Me listeners and oral history learners, you can join us on Discord — by going to selfevidentshow.com/participate.
Thanks!
Act 3: Crush
Lisa: A crush?!
Lan: A crush, yeah. (laughs)
Lan: In Cambodia, you never allowed to fall in love with anybody, no.
We liked each other. But we’re not allowed to do anything. I miss those years. (laughs)
Lisa: What was his name?
Lan: Qing Xun. Yeah, Qing Xun. He’s so sweet. I still miss him. (Laughs)
That’s my first love! (Laughs)
MUX begins
LISA VO: It was the mid 1960s. My mom was a middle school student. And the boy she’s talking about, Qing Xun, was in high school.
She attended a private school in Kampot as a day student. It was high-end; people in the capital city of Phnom Penh sent their kids there to board.
Lan: I teach them everything.
LISA VO: She was a class tutor, which earned her a partial scholarship to the school, and she helped students who struggled.
Lan: I tutor them math, tutor them language.
I even have to help them with the Chinese calligraphy, too.
Because those Phnom Penh students were oh, so bad. They don’t even know how to do calligraphy.
So I have to teach them that, and by the time I finished tutor everybody, he sometimes waiting for me outside.
To talk to me. (Laughs)
(Lisa’s and Lan’s voices duck under Lisa’s narration)
LISA VO: He was a high school class leader and was responsible for making sure the younger kids, the middle schoolers, were doing OK.
Lisa: So nobody dated.
Lan: Nobody dated.
Especially those times. When I was in middle school, during that period, Mao, the red ideas all over Cambodia.
LISA VO: The Cultural Revolution was just starting in China. Mao Ze Dong’s little Red Book was being read in Cambodia.
Lan: And they’re very, very, very pure.
They believe, “Ooh, you cannot fall in love,” this and that.
LISA VO: My mom told me that she wasn’t allowed to express anything. That she was expected to focus on studying — not romance.
Lisa: What about him did you like?
Lan: Number one, he’s a very good student.
Number two, he had a lot of depth.
And he got very, very good temperament.
He was good looking, stuff like that.
LISA VO: My mom and Qing Xun would talk after school, still wearing their uniforms — white button down shirts and black skirts for girls, black shorts for boys.
They’d meet on an upper level that overlooked the basketball courts... and pretend to watch the games, as they talked about school and tutoring.
Lan: After I tell him something, he still didn’t want to leave. Sometimes he just pretend he ask me questions until the sun set.
And I say, “Aren’t you hungry? I’m starving.”
MUX ends
I said, “I already tell you, I tell you about ten times.”
I said, “Time to go home, I’m hungry.”
I didn’t know at first. But then other students, all my friends said, “Oh my god, don’t you know? He’s crazy about you.” (Laughs)
He’s so sweet.
(Lan’s voice ducks under Lisa’s narration)
LISA VO: They would keep talking. Long after most of the other students had left.
Lan: We both bicycled home. But he lived across the river.
He lived on the other side of the river, and I lived near the city.
So I said, “I don’t know, You still have to cross the river, cross the bridge… you better leave now…”
I miss him. I miss him. I do miss him.
Lisa: You can still see him?
Lan: Oh I can still see him, yeah!
Lisa: What did he look like?
Lan: Let me see. Well, you don’t watch Chinese movie. He look like one of them Chinese actor.
Very cute. Cute… cute little fellow.
Lisa: (Laughs)
Lisa: So how long did you guys hang out? How many years?
Lan: That class helped our class about three years.
Lisa: So you guys hung out for three years?
Lan: Yeah.
Lisa: Once a week?
Lan: Everyday. He always want to talk to me every day.
Lisa: (Laughs)
MUX begins
Act 4: Dead Dream
LISA VO: When my mom talks about those days, she remembers her hopes for the future.
The mid 50s and 60s gave Cambodia a chance to recover from the French colonial period and the fight for independence that ended it.
Kampot, where my mom grew up, was prosperous. Schools and education were rapidly expanding.
My mom was an excellent student and had hopes of becoming a psychologist.
Lan: Starting from eight or nine years old, even elderly people, when they had problem, they always tell me about it, they always tell me about it, so I always wanted to be a psychologist.
Lisa: In Cambodia.
Lan: Yeah. So I was planning that after I finish high school, I will pursue psychology, after that, but then the war came.
LISA VO: The Civil War in Cambodia, which started in 1967, would intensify into the 70s, when my mom was in her late teens.
So instead of finishing high school and going to college, she married young.
Not to her teenage crush — but my dad, Ky Song. Who was a family connection.
She became a parent soon after. And with that, her dream — and a lot of her happiness — went away.
Lan: In Cambodia, once you become a mom, your dream dies, unless you came from a very rich family, then your parents can support you.
Because husbands, the last thing they want you to be is somebody.
They just want you to be the mother of their children.
MUSIC
LISA VO: So in 1979, at 24 years old, smuggling gold across the border to make a living, my mom was focused on caring for my sisters and cousins in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the Cambodia of her childhood was gone.
She realized there was no one to go home to. And at the same time, my family couldn’t stay in Vietnam forever.
The Vietnamese government took more and more control.
There was no opportunity. It was harder and harder to make a living.
And my mom, who had once tutored other kids in math and calligraphy, who had once dreamed of studying psychology after high school — saw nothing like that for her kids.
Lan: It was so disorganized. They have the night classes for grown ups. They have so-called, oh, classes, for study, but they just brainwash you.
So we knew we couldn't attend those communists propagandas.
And there was no school for children. Nothing. No nothing.
LISA VO: So people were leaving. My mom heard stories about people escaping.
Lan: Some made it, some we heard they make it to refugee and they contact relatives in France and overseas. So we heard they made it, they ended up in another country.
But some of them we never heard again, so we knew they couldn't make it.
Boat sink, you know…
And some got rape, got killed. Many, many refugee could not make it.
And the land escape? Land escape was less risky from the ocean, but it more risky to step on the land mine.
LISA VO: Every route was hazardous.
MUX ends
LISA VO: But it was more than five years since they’d left home. And they couldn’t see a life for themselves in Cambodia, or in Vietnam.
The past was gone. And staying would only mean more danger.
So my parents decided escaping was the only option.
Even if they might die in the process.
Lan: We’d rather take that risk, and to have a better future for the children and ourself, then just stay there and, and… live the communist life and… no future.
LISA VO: In that decision, she saw that the home her children needed was not in the place of her own childhood. It was going to be in some unknown land.
But first, she had to face one of the scariest things she’d ever experience — the boat journey escaping Cambodia, for good.
~
On the next episode of Before Me, my mom makes it all the way across the Pacific Ocean, and meets her sponsor in Westchester, New York.
Lan: Oh my God, he didn't comb his hair and he wore a very sloppy shirt, half in and half out, and his shoes were so old, and Tuyet Lynn and I look at each other, said:
“Uh-Oh, we got sponsored by a poor guy!” (Laughs)
Credits
LISA VO: This episode was written and produced by me.
Our editor is Julia Shu. Fact check by Harsha Nahata and Tiffany Bui.
Production management and sound design by James Boo. Original theme music by Avery Stewart. Audio engineering by Dave Waldron and Timothy Lou Ly.
As always… thanks to my mom, for sharing these stories.
And if you want to record an oral history interview with someone you love — even if you’ve never tried before — check out self evident show dot com slash history, where you’ll find a free toolkit to help you take the next step.
Before Me is a Self Evident Media production. Our executive producers are James Boo, Ken Ikeda, and me.
The show also received support from the Alderworks Alaska Writers and Artists Retreat and the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.
I’m Lisa Phu. See you next time.
