The Rotten Apples’ related information

Nguyen Cao Ky with his wife Dang Tuyet Mai and their daughter Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen in their apartment at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base – Photo by Marilyn Silverstone.

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Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and his third wife, in a visit to Vietnam in 2004, was welcomed by the high-ranking Communist official Phạm Thế Duyệt. A statue of Hồ Chí Minh was in the background.

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ in South Vietnam before the fall of Saigon.

The Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, signed in Manila, Philippines, on Sept. 8, 1954, created a regional defense arrangement called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Its purpose was to foster a system of mutual support to protect Southeast Asia against Communist expansion. The signatory nations were Australia, France, New Zealand, Great Britain, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ stood far left in the picture and President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu is third from the right.

South Vietnamese General Nguyen Cao Ky, Prime Minister of Republic of Vietnam (1965-7) and Commander in Chief of South Vietnamese Air Force pictured in October 1971. Three decades after the war Nguyen Cao Ky has been given permission to return home to celebrate the Lunar New Year festival of Tet. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read AFP/Getty Images)

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, once the powerful premier of South Vietnam, now runs a liquor-delicatessen-grocery store in the blue collar suburban community of Norwalk, California. Here Ky works the cash register as his wife, Đặng Tuyết Mai (back to camera) after escaping Vietnam in 1975.

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIET NAM: Former South Vietnamese vice-president Nguyen Cao Ky (L) and his former war-time body guard Ly Huynh hug each other as Ky is greeted upon his arrival at the Sheraton Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, 14 January 2004. Ky, who was a staunch anti-communist, returned home with Hanoi’s blessing, nearly 30-years after the Vietnam War. AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam (Photo credit should read HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ hugged his old bodyguard in Vietnam in 2004.

===>>> Video of Kỳ talking to the press on his trip back to Vietnam in 2004, calling all Vietnamese to unite to build Vietnam to become a dragon of Asia.

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ’s coffin was covered with the flags of the US, Malaysia and South Vietnam. Funeral in Malaysia on 29/7/2011.

Nguyễn Cao Kỳ’s picture on a worship altar for the deceased at Vĩnh Nghiêm temple, Saigon. It is believed Kỳ wore Malaysian costume as he was awarded a Tunship by the Malaysian Government in 1965. Tun title was also rewarded to all retired Malaysian Prime Ministers.

American First Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndy B. Johnson, South Vietnam Second Lady Đặng Tuyết Mai. Phillipines First Lady Imelda Marcos and South Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ in Manila.

Đặng Tuyết Mai and Nguyễn Cao Kỳ 1969.

Kỳ Duyên and Đặng Tuyết Mai in the US before Ms Mai fell ill.

Kỳ Duyên and Đặng Tuyết Mai, Duyên’s third partner and Duyên’s two daughters.

Kỳ Duyên and her mother on a cruise.

Restaurant Phở Ta of Đặng Tuyết Mai built in 2009 in an affluent area in Saigon.

The search for an interpreter’s related information

George Miller – US Democrats Congressman – in Malaysia greeting children at a Vietnamese refugee camp.

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Monsoon fury – image credit Thejas Panarkandy

Monsoon – image credit 5particle.

22 Jun 1979, Kuantan Beach, Malaysia: Refugees aboard beached boat from Vietnam. – Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Pulau Bidong island.

Refugees transported to Pulau Bidong island walking on the jetty.

Refugees having picture taken for ID.

Dark Red shadows

I came to Australia to escape the communist hell, but many knew that some of those demons made the journey too.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – How I came here.

After the Fall of Saigon, my father was ill-treated in communist hard-labour camps, where many of his colleagues died, because he was a Signal Corps Lieutenant Colonel. Many former military officers’ houses were forfeited, and their families were forced to relocate to the new economic zones.

The local government told Mum they wanted to take two storeys of our four-storey house and turn it into an administration office. Mum realised that their next step would be stripping us of our house completely and forcing us to move. At the time Mum had approximately 7kg of gold – earned from years working as children’s wear producer/wholesaler – stockpiled and hidden, so she took some and bribed the local officials to leave our house alone. Then, together with her sister, Mum opened a ‘co-operative clothing factory’ at our house. Regardless, the fear of losing the house never left our minds.

The sinister side of Papa

A lecherous old man who pretends to be good Santa,
The sexual abuse of young girls is on his agenda.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – What I was wearing.

On the day I left Sungei Besi transit camp for Australia, I wore a yellow T-shirt bought from the camp’s only grocery and sundry shop, which was run by a Chinese Malaysian couple. My shoes, jeans and travel bag all were bought with my money by ‘Papa’.

Papa was a Cantonese-speaking, Chinese-Malaysian man in his 60s who was thin, bald, agile, vivacious and quick-tongued, and insisted that the Vietnamese people called him ‘Papa’. He looked after the camp’s general store that contained goods for the refugees’ daily use: small food and drink buckets, sheets, blankets,…

I happened to know Papa when one day, on his regular walk around the camp, he visited our ‘shipping-container’ residence. All the girls and women crowded around the ‘Asian Santa Claus’. He gave each of us a packet of Nasi Lemak (Malaysian rice dish) wrapped in banana leaf. I could never forget the fragrant and rich coconut rice as well as the crispy fried anchovies, the sweet-and-sour garlic chilli sauce and the big sunny-side-up egg. Decades later, after many trips to Malaysia I could never find any Nasi Lemak that tasted so nice as the one Papa gave me that day. Maybe the pale Malaysian milk tea, the instant noodles, half-cooked soggy fried chicken, insipid and tainted steamed salted fish and other lacklustre meals that I invariably received day after day in the camp had accentuated the flavour of that dish?

The sinister side of Papa poem

(Epigram-style poem)

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A lecherous old man who pretends to be good Santa,
The sexual abuse of young girls is on his agenda.

Image credit
by Andy Batt.

The deserted neighbourhood’s related information

The Huey Fong which carried over 3,300 passengers of ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong harbour December 1978. (Picture taken from http://thewangpost.com/interview-don-lao-author-i-became-the-boat-people/)

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In 1978, the Vietnamese Communists wanted to get rid of ethnic Chinese who could become a Trojan horse inside Vietnam as the war with China loomed large.

A dream

Till today I feel a sense of failure, guilt and grief that I had lost a friendship and that I was insensitive enough to ask my friend about her dream. (Picture of Thai pirate’s boats – after being radioed by the others – attacked a Vietnamese refugee boat)

<<Facts, pictures and video clips related to the story – the tragedies that struck the Vietnamese refugees.>>

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Failure.

Arriving from Terengganu, I spent three months on Pulau Bidong Island before moving to Sungei Besi Transit Camp, Kuala Lumpur.

On the island, survivors of traumatic sea journeys were pointed out to me on two occasions.

A dream poem

(Villanelle-style poem)

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Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Failure.

My friends were lost at sea,
While in their lively years,
On their fateful journey.

The search for an interpreter

Being an interpreter in a refugee camp, I did my job and never intended to hurt anyone.

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Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – On the job.

The Communists relax patrolling during monsoon as the sea’s rough, but there’s a two-week window in November when the sea’s calm so we set sail then. It was 1983.

On day two, we’re adrift for half a day due to mechanical failure.

The search for an interpreter poem

(Enjambment-style poem)

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Storm please stop ravaging wherein
Slim huts the vulnerable live in.