Part 4: Head of the House
At the moment my mom steps onto a small fishing boat off the coast of Cambodia, headed for a refugee camp in Thailand under cover of night, she becomes the head of our family. It takes her less than a year to make it safely to her new home in New York, give birth to me, and learn how to be a single parent in the U.S. But it will end up taking her decades to process what she’s overcome, what she’s become, and what she’s left behind on the beaches of Cambodia.
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 — Promo for “A Better Life?”
JAMES VO: Hi, everyone! If you like Before Me, we want to recommend an award-winning podcast called “A Better Life?”
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You can subscribe to “A Better Life?” -- that’s with a question mark at the end — wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at abetterlifepodcast.com.
Content Warning
LISA VO: A quick warning before we start. This episode includes a couple brief mentions of rape and murder.
Cold Open
Lan: We didn't know where we were going. We just knew we were leaving Cambodia and we didn't know whether we were going to make it or not.
My mom, my dad Ky Song, and my sisters were reunited with my cousins, including Lynn. And now they were planning to all escape together.
LISA VO: The Vietnamese military had overthrown the Khmer Rouge and installed a new government in its place. But people in Cambodia still faced hardship, conflict, and uncertainty.
My parents just couldn’t see a future for their family. In Cambodia or in Vietnam. So Ky Song worked with another man, for about six months, to organize a boat escape.
There were a lot of details to figure out. He had to find a captain, a boat engineer, and other passengers to join them.
The whole thing cost them a lot of money, because there were endless people who had to be paid off to make it happen.
Days before the escape, my family returned to Cambodia. They were more familiar with Cambodia, so escaping from there made more sense than escaping from Vietnam.
Lan: During that period, too many people escape so every move that you make, people want to know what you’re doing there.
Wherever waterfront place that you say you’re going, they start to question you, “What you doing there?”
So we told them that we’re going to visit relatives.
So we did not escape right away, we have to stay, make believe that we stay with relatives for a few days. Make believe that we are really, really visiting.
They arranged for a family to stay with. And it wasn’t just organizing themselves.
They had to make sure the rest of the passengers — many from Saigon, who weren’t familiar with Cambodia — were taken care of as well.
Lan: And every single town, you have to buy favors, give favors, and you don't know who, you don’t know who to trust, who not to trust.
Because some people, you, the minute you say you hire them, you need their help, they’ll sell you, they’ll notify the government, then the whole crew get, gets to jail, you know.
LISA VO: This escape would be one of many that were taking place throughout Southeast Asia. According to a 2000 report by the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than three million people fled the area between 1975 and 1995
Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Laotians were leaving. All with the same goal, to reach a refugee camp in Thailand, Malaysia, or the Philippines — and then be sent to a third country. Like America, France, or Canada.
They had all come to the same conclusion as my mom — it was too dangerous to stay in their homeland, and there was nothing left for them.
So on a moonless night, on January 30, 1980, my mom went to White Horse Beach. The same place she would go swimming as a child.
She was with my two sisters, Cam Van and Cam Ly, and my cousins, including Lynn — and about 40 other passengers
And my mom — just a few weeks shy of her 25th birthday — was 6 weeks pregnant with me.
They all jumped onto a small boat, expecting Ky Song to get on another boat heading to the same refugee camp.
And then they left.
MUX: Theme begins
Show Open
LISA VO: I’m Lisa Phu, this is 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.
Lan: It was just the most difficult moment that I have to face. I was thinking that you know how about if we don't make it, I bring my children to kill. It’s just like a whole bunch of question come to mind.
My mom told me that as soon as they left shore, the Cambodian border patrol started firing at them. The boat captain managed to dodge the bullets and get away, overcoming what would be the first of several obstacles.
The boat ride to Thailand would take two or three days.
Lan: Don't forget, in developing countries, it’s not like we have Clif Bar or anything to bring.
We have to bring, actually, a bag of rice and we have to bring a container of water so we can drink and cook the rice, and bring some coal. Pack some dry shrimp, dry fish, this and that.
That’s how we prepared to sustain us.
MUX: Theme ends
Act 1: The Boat
My mom was in her first trimester of pregnancy, so she was always sick.
Lan: Threw up constantly because the waves, the morning sickness…
Oh my god, it was small boat and the waves were so huge.
And all I could have was water. I couldn’t keep anything down.
LISA VO: And she didn’t feel comfortable going to the bathroom in front of so many other people, so she’d hold it, until dark.
MUX Begins
On the second day, a storm hit.
The waves got even bigger. Filling the boat with saltwater.
My mom said they had to pour out buckets of clean drinking water — using whatever containers they could find, to bail out the boat.
Lan: But how much can you do, the water kept coming, all night long, all day long.
And then the captain said if we continue like this the boat going to sink, so now they start to throw some heavy rice, throw some stuff.
Some people have two to three luggages… the captain said, “I’m sorry, you can only keep one. “
LISA VO: More and more belongings went out as waves continued to come in.
Lan: Forget about cooking, you cannot cook, the waves like this, you cannot cook. Everybody starving and fighting with the water, and some people got so sick.
And I remember, I think, Minh… Minh or Quang.
Oh my god, they were green. They were green, they were sooo sick.
LISA VO: My mom says that as they were sinking deeper into the water, they saw another boat, in the distance. Everyone screamed for help. And the boat came.
It was a Thai fishing boat — much bigger than theirs, and towering over them.
To get the women and children from one boat to the other, a fisherman hung between the two, holding onto the fishing boat with one hand, and grabbing the passengers with the other.
The ocean was raging.
Lan: If they make a mistake, if they drop my kid, one drop, they dead.
Oh my god, my heart just sink, my heart… just horrified, I was so horrified, you know.
LISA VO: All the women and children made it safely onboard. The men stayed on the smaller boat — which was no longer sinking.
They tied it to the Thai fishing boat with some rope, and trailed behind.
Lan: First things before anything else, I advised everybody to touch the little piece of the black oil from the engine and we make ourselves look so ugly.
Because there’s a lot of rape cases. So all the women, they do it, all the teenage girls, they did it. So thank God, they didn’t do anything to us.
LISA VO: During this time of mass escaping, Thai pirates would target unarmed boats, rob the refugees on board, and sometimes kill them.
But that didn’t happen to my mom. She says each family paid the fishermen in gold. Then they were nice — though they weren’t the best cooks.
Lan: They cooked the crab that they caught, and they tried to stir fry the Thai flavor beef. Oh my, it was so hot and so spicy, that the children couldn't eat. The children couldn’t eat, nobody could eat. It was so hot, full of chili peppers. And the crab was raw. When you open it, it was all raw. And the rice was raw, too. So we just ate a little bit. We were so starving.
LISA VO: On the third day, the women and children went back onto their smaller boat by the same terrifying method — because it was illegal for Thai fishing boats to rescue refugees.
A few hours later, they arrived at the Laem Sing Camp.
I was so thrilled that we still alive. We made it. We made the journey.
But another thing is that, now what?
No husband, a whole bunch of children, and pregnant.
How are we going to live? I didn't know what in front of me.
All I knew that I made the boat journey, and I don't have to die sinking in the Pacific Ocean. That’s all I knew.
LISA VO: They went through registration, and slept under an open air tent for the first couple of nights.
Lan: It’s not like you go to a refugee camp, they give you housing. No, you have to find your own housing.
So, I got so lucky, right?
This gentleman — I was walking, walking — and then he said hello to me.
He said, “Yeah, you just came, right?” I said, “Yeah, I just came. I’m looking for a place to stay. I have children, I have no husband. I’m so desperate.”
He said, “Don’t you worry. I’m leaving, I’m leaving in two days, I’ll selling my place! I can sell my place to you, very cheap.”
LISA VO: My mom took some jewelry that she had transported in secret compartments sewn into her clothing, sold it for Thai currency, and used that to buy the house.
It was on the water and off the main road, which led to a grocery shop. The house was made of bamboo, and it would stay cool with the ocean breeze — even on the hottest days.
She invited another woman and her two children, who had also been on the boat, to join them. And they settled in together.
Food at the camp was scarce. They were given two-day rations only twice a week — with rice, old vegetables, and small fish. My mom’s gold stash was dwindling, and she had no idea how long she’d have to make it stretch.
When she arrived at the camp, my 5-foot-tall mom weighed under 80 pounds. But she had no appetite
So she went to see an herbalist.
Lan: And he said, “Oh my god, if you continue like this, you’re not able to keep your baby, because you’re so weak.”
Of course I’m weak, I’m so worried, and I, I didn't have enough to eat…
and worried about the months ahead, of how I was going to get food.
And he said, “First I need to give you acupuncture.”
LISA VO: After the treatment, she regained her appetite.
Then she had a maternity outfit made — the only one she’d have throughout her time at the camp. It was a thin polyester shirt that accommodated her growing belly. She washed it every night and wore it every day.
All along, my mom was still wondering where her husband was. A few times a week, boats would come into the camp and my mom checked every one, looking for my dad.
Lan: But every time I went there, your father wasn't there and all I saw was… tragic.
MUX fades out under Lan’s voice
Lan: I saw body without head, bodies without arms because — women get raped by the Thai pirates, and when the men try to stop them, they cut off their limbs, they kill them.
So dead bodies come, oh, so many tragedies.
Or people came in and just like us, made it, but half dead.
(sighs) It was hard.
LISA VO: She didn’t know if her husband was alive or dead, and there was no way to contact him… or find more information.
But the family had to keep moving forward, and find a new home.
After the break: My mom tries to create that home in the United States.
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Act 2: Cold
MUX Begins
Lisa VO: My mom originally wanted to go to Australia. It was closer to Cambodia than the U.S. or Canada, and the climate was more similar.
But when she was interviewed by the International Rescue Committee, it was with Americans.
So she knew she was headed to the U.S. — but she didn’t know much else. The only image she could think of was the Chinatown she’d seen in Bruce Lee movies.
Lan: I said, “Oh my god, looks so fast, lifestyle so fast. And without a husband, how am I going to earn a living? How am I going to make it?” Again, all kinds of questions.
I knew the U.S. was going to sponsor me to take us away from the Thailand refugee camp, according to all the information we get, but then what?
You get there, then what? How are you going to live? What kind of job am I going to have? All kinds of questions, you know?
My family had to fill out paperwork, go through procedures and medical tests, and bide their time. But my mom never just stayed in the house. She was always out, with her two daughters trailing behind.
Lan: Because I’m the head of the house, you cannot stuck in one place, you have to get out and listen to informations, obtain information, what’s the next step, next step.
MUX begins
LISA VO: Meanwhile, in Chappaqua, New York — not exactly Chinatown — the Quaker Friends Meeting House had committed to sponsoring a refugee family from Southeast Asia.
On February 12, less than two weeks after my family reached the refugee camp, a couple, Melissa and Walter Kaufmann-Buhler, sent a letter to the International Rescue Committee.
LISA RETRACK: In the letter, they wrote: “We would like a family of 4-6 persons, including children, preferably Cambodian.”
The Friends Meeting House had originally started what they called the Quaker Refugee Project in 1978. And they picked it up again in January 1980, around the same time my family escaped from Cambodia.
My family spent about five months in Thailand, before being notified they were going to leave.
They were lucky in that way. Others would live in the camp for years.
At the end of June, my family left the camp by truck. They boarded a 747 jet in Bangkok, headed for the United States. It was loaded with refugees.
They got off the plane in San Francisco on June 29, 1980.
Lan: California was cold. Imagine my blood was so thin. We lived in Southeast Asia all our lives.
And we didn't come prepared. It’s not like they give us clothes, no. We were so freezing. We were freezing!
Lisa: (laughs)
Lan: Yeah.
LISA VO: They stayed there for two days, filling out paperwork… and making sense of their new surroundings.
And also the kids, they were so horrified, at the airport, to see red hair, blue eyes…
They hold on me very tightly. They didn't know what’s going on and they could not understand a word of what they hear.
You know, like an alien nation.
Lan: I kept looking at Cam Van and Cam Ly, and kept looking at Quang and Lynn, they were horrified themselves because they didn’t know what the future bring either.
But we knew we have each other, we knew we had our family stick together, and that’s all I know.
LISA VO: In those first few days in California, everything was very structured. My mom says they just followed everyone else. Then, an interpreter told her she was going to be permanently resettled in New York.
Lan: Me: So you’re still wearing the same clothes that you’re wearing, like, at the refugee camp?
Uh, yeah, the same shirt. (laughs) I wore that same shirt, yup.
Act 3: Leave Everything Behind
LISA VO: They flew to JFK International Airport on July 1 and landed in the evening.
A young Cambodian man told my family they’d be staying with a church family and the husband would be picking them up.
That’s how they met Walter Kaufmann-Buhler, from their sponsor family in Chappaqua.
Lan: He came, oh my god, he didn't comb his hair and he wore a very sloppy shirt and half in and half out, and his shoes were so old…
MUX begins
Lan: …and Tuyet Lynn and I look at each other, said, “Uh oh, we got sponsored by a poor guy!” (Laughs).
LISA VO: For the whole car ride, My mom and Lynn worried about where they’d end up.
But when they stepped out in the town of Mount Kisco, New York, they breathed a sigh of relief.
When we got to the house, we say, “Wow! This is a nice house.”
They only live — you know, we call the East wing, the West wing.
We live in the East wing, they live in the West wing.
LISA VO: My family stayed there for six weeks, before the Quakers found a house in Chappaqua for them to rent. I was born a couple weeks later.
My cousins enrolled in school. And that first winter, my mom got a part-time job as a manicurist at the Michelle Danielle beauty salon, just a short walk from the house.
She would keep working there for seven years, and still works in cosmetology today.
My mom says the hardest obstacles about living in America were the language and getting around. If it was walkable, my mom walked. Otherwise, she relied on the public bus, and the kindness of others.
Lan: Thank God I’m a likable so I have many friends among Vietnamese/Cambodian populations. So they kind of took turns to take me to Chinatown, to Shop Rite…
MUX Ends
LISA VO: Food and grocery shopping definitely took some getting used to.
Lan: The first time I taste chicken, I almost throw up. Because we grew up, we used to have organic chicken. And the chicken there, we kill alive so it’s so fresh, but this chicken here had been in refrigerator for days and so it taste mushy and soft. And it’s not like whatever we want to buy is there, no.
Only if I go to Chinatown I get to buy what I want. American supermarket is so limited. And even the fruit, we’re so used to tropical fruit, but over here all we had is banana, apple…
I was very excited to see first time to see apple though. So many apple because apple is imported in Cambodia.
So I started to see, “Wow, apple! So many apple!” (Chuckles)
LISA VO: Life in America could also be very isolating.
My mom was used to walking just a few steps, to see a neighbor or a good friend... but in Chappaqua, there was more distance between people.
The Quakers set my mom up with a volunteer English tutor, a Chinese woman named Mary Ho. She and my mom met once a week to work on grammar and pronunciation.
Lan: But then after a few weeks we became such a great friends. In that hour, we maybe studied 20 minutes and the rest, we talking.
She shared her experiences. I shared my experiences just do a lot of talking.
We became friends for years.
My mom also watched PBS with her daughters, memorized 10 new English words every day, and taped notes on the refrigerator.
Lan: Because I’m the head of the house, I need to communicate with teachers, I need to go to the supermarket, I need to talk to the doctors…
So I was so eager to learn. I just wish I know overnight, you know.
So I work very hard on it.
LISA VO: She learned English in a year, and started tutoring others soon after. And the language wasn’t the only thing she picked up quickly.
When I was learning about this from my mom, I found a note written by Meredith Weddle, who coordinated the Quakers’ efforts to sponsor my family.
SOUND: A letter is unfolded
Here’s what she wrote:
“Had we not been blessed with Lan, who was so quick, intelligent, courageous and capable, it might not have proceeded so fruitfully. How she coped with learning about bank accounts and checks, supermarkets and schools, and delivered little Lisa during it all, is a marvel.”
But as my mom was settling in, things started to hit hard.
MUX Begins
Back when my parents decided to leave Cambodia, they’d thought they’d be together, raising the family. Instead, she finally heard that Ky Song had been arrested in Vietnam. For helping others escape.
He’d been in jail, ever since.
The Quakers began a concerted, complicated effort to reunite Ky Song with us. For years, there were letters and notarized forms going between the U.S., Vietnam, and Thailand — to all kinds of agencies. Like the State Department, various U.S. Embassies, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Justice, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Rescue Committee.
My father’s name was one of more than 20,000 others being submitted in just one year to the ODP, the Orderly Departure Program.
In the meantime, my mom focused on taking care of us. She did everything for the family. While still navigating the trauma of everything she’d experienced.
And she wasn’t over the fact that she lost most of her family during the war, including her firstborn.
MUX Fades out under Lan’s voice
Lan: Every single faces… show in my dreams all the time, especially when I cannot sleep, all my family members appear and, and all the nightmare that I saw them get took to kill, stuff like that, you know, come and go.
LISA VO: So she went to see a therapist.
Lan: Dr Ya-ee-ya.
Lisa: He was Chinese?
Lan: No, he was Indian.
Lisa: How did you find him
Lan: Quaker members found him for me.
Lisa: You told them that you needed…
Lan: They could tell, they could see how depressed I was. They can see my face, they can see I get to the point that they worrry about me, worry about my three kids here and no one taking care of.
They said, “Oh, you need to see therapy.”
LISA VO: That doctor assigned my mom to someone else in his practice — someone who didn’t understand at all what she had gone through.
Lan: I didn’t like her at all.
First, I had a language problem and she spoke so fast.
And she… She didn’t know my problem.
She just say, “Maybe you need medication, you have a chemical imbalance.”
I said, “No.”
To hell with her. So I… I fired her, I went to Larry.
So instead, my mom talked to the pastor at the Baptist Church near home — a kind man named Larry Bethune. They talked once a week for two years.
Lisa: And so… was it just talking about it that helped? Or —
Lan: Well, he talked about it and he also pray for me every time. And he understand, he could relate to my problem, you know?
He said, “Going through what you’re going through, I would be depressed, too., That’s what he said. “Anybody would be depressed.”
I find that I… I can tell him everything, and he understood eeeeeverything, what I’m going through
Sometimes these professionals — they, they haven’t lived through war, they haven’t lived through tragedy that war caused, and so they, they have no clue.
LISA VO: My mom eventually came out of that intense stretch of depression.
Lan: I mean, I had to survive for you girls.
LISA VO: But these struggles would return from time to time, throughout my mom’s life.
Especially during Christmas and New Year’s, when she has time and space to reflect.
She says holidays are tough, because she thinks about her family a lot.
Lisa: Did you ever want to tell, like, Cam Van or Cam Ly or I about stuff?
Lan: Tell you girls?
Lisa: Yeah.
Lan: Well… you know…
Just, you girls too came to America without language and so many to adapt. So a whole new world to us. That’s why I…
I just try to leave everything behind and let you absorb the new thing that you need to be, and… I planning that one day when you’re interested, then, then I’ll tell you.
MUX Begins
LISA VO: As a kid, I had everything I needed. Still, I remember always hearing that Ky Song would be coming to join us.
And in 1990, ten years after we’d arrived, it finally happened.
But after about a year and a half… he left.
It turned out that after a decade of only sporadic communication, he wasn’t a close part of our family anymore. And he found adapting to a new life, with us, too difficult.
Here we were, this adjusted American family. And there he was, alone and struggling, couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t drive a car, couldn’t fit in with this family that seemed so foreign.
We stayed with Ky Song in his home. And he drove us around during the day, showing us the movie theater my parents used to go to, the market where my mom worked.
After he left New York, he moved to California and lived there for about 20 years, before eventually returning to Cambodia. That’s where my husband and I visited him in 2012.
We stayed with Ky Song for a few days in his home, meeting his new family and other relatives who were still in the area. He still didn’t really speak English, so our conversations were very limited.
The entire experience was fun, and strange — all at the same time.
Ky Song fed us durian straight from the tree, every day. And he drove us around, showing us the movie theater my parents used to go to, the market where my mom worked.
And we visited White Horse Beach, the place where my family made their escape.
When I got there, what I saw was a really lovely place to watch the ocean and fishing boats. It was built up, developed — with nice, white fencing and ornate light poles.
It was a beautiful day.
I wish my mom could’ve been there with me.
~
Next time on BEFORE ME, I examine my relationship with my mom, we cry together…
And I realize, even though I hadn’t been born yet, I played an important role in her journey.
Lan: …Because of you too, give me so much strength, you give me strength to survive…
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.
This episode is dedicated to Melissa Buhler, Mary Ho, and the late Meredith Weddle, who once wrote, “If you reach for the humanity in people, they will respond.
And as always, special thanks to my mom.
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.
MUX Ends
