A Tết One Cannot Forget, A Poem About Vietnamese Refugees and Our Resilience on the Island of Pilau
Here are some photos I have kept for more than thirty years. Taken on the island of Pulau Bidong, Malaysia, the photos show Vietnamese refugees on the first day of the Lunar New Year (February 17, 1988). It was on this island that more than 300,000 people landed after escaping the nightmares of crossing the sea: On their journeys, they faced being detained, extorted, robbed, arrested, and shot at by the Viet Cong, and robbery and rape at the hands of Thai pirates. They suffe