Just finished reading this middle grade novel NOODLE PIE about a young Vietnamese boy, Andy, from Australia who visits Viet Nam with his father, a former refugee, who fled in a boat after the fall of Saigon. Andy's observations about Vietnamese life and customs make for an interesting read. How he handles his feelings about the poverty and injustice he encounters builds to a satisfying conclusion. This book is currently being read in the Battle of the Books program at Lincoln School in Evanston, IL.

In January of 2004 my friend, Judy, invited my husband and me to travel to Viet Nam with her to visit her daughter, Sally, who was teaching English at the University of Dalat for a year. The following is a brief essay that I wrote after that trip.
Chuc Mung nam moi! Happy New Year. This is about the full extent of myVietnamese after spending a week in Dalat with Sally. Fortunately Sally has picked up enough Vietnamese to order in restaurants, give taxi drivers the correct directions, and shop in the local markets. 

Sally, always the organized teacher, had a printed itinerary ready for us (flexibile, of course) with a hand-drawn map of the city. "I walk everywhere" she called back to us as we trailed after her up and down hill to the local sites..
Dalat is a beautiful city located in the mountains of central Viet Nam. In the short time Sally has been there, she has embraced her new home and the people who live there. She is very enthusiastic about introducing her students to America (they loved the hamburgers she cooked for them.) She was equally eager to introduce us, her " Elderhostel", to Vietnamese life. Chicken noodle dumpling soup served at a food stall where she warned us not to drink from the pop bottles since they were reused, turned out to be our favorite meal. Judy and I sat down here on little red stools and brushed the flies away as Sally, the youngest, performed the duty of wiping off the chopsticks and spoons for us before we ate.
Another favorite of hers, and now ours, too, is choui noung, a delicious treat made of tapioca and coconut milk, roasted bananas and sticky rice. She took us to an outdoor stand one evening where we sat once again on little red plastic stools and enjoyed this delicious treat.

One of the highlights of the trip was the day Sally invited her students over to meet us. Shy, but curious, they came in several groups to sit on the floor and introduce themselves to us. After some giggles and small talk, several of them sang for us. And then we had to sing for them. Since they had just finished exams and were excited about going home for Tet (Vietnames New Year) we sang Auld Lang Syne for them, our New Year's song.

We will never forget the sights and sounds of Dalat, the constant toots of the horns, the great white Buddha on the hill, the young women on motorcycles with face masks and long gloves, live eels swimming in tubs in the market, the street lined with peach trees for Tet, and the beautiful gardens with mimosa trees, calla lillies, bougainvillea, and apricot trees.

After resetttling Southeast Asian refugees in 1979, it had been my desire to work in a refugee camp. With three little children, this dream seemed impossible. However, in the year 2000 when the kids were out of the nest and my husband had decided to retire the opportunity arose to travel to the Osire refugee camp outside of Windhoek, Namibia with a group from my church. Andrew Cole, the son of a missionary who had spent his early years in Angola was anxious to find friends he had grown up with who had fled the civil war in Angola. Nineteen of us traveled to Windhoek in May of 2000 to confront what became a lifechanging experience for all of us.

I took my friend, Huong, the subject of my book,to see Julius Caesar at the Shakespeare theater at Navy Pier yesterday. I have been taking her to the plays there for awhile. After the play, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant which she thinks is very authentic. If you haven't eaten Vietnamese food, or even if you have, I recommend Hoanh Long, located at 6144 Lincoln in Chicago. I always go for the fried egg rolls which my Huong pointed out are more Chinese than Vietnamese. She is Chinese but from Viet Nam. The papaya salad with shrimp and pork is excellent. Then a plate of bean sprouts, mint, and basil arrived topped by strips of beef. A bowl of water with a plate of thin round rice papers. You dip the rice paper into the water to soften it, then fill it with bean sprouts,a leaf of mint and basil, some strips of beef, and wrap it like an eggroll. My eggrolling abilities are nonexistent so Huong wrapped a couple for me. We also ordered a stir fried chicken with cashews and a vegetable stir fry with rice noodles. Yum.

A friend and her husband were also with us. He had been a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam so Huong and he enjoyed reminiscing about the country. One of his memories was of small boys selling pop bottles full of fuel by the roadside for motorcyclists who would pull up, buy a bottle, pour it in their fuel tank, and take off. Oh, yes, Huong said. She had forgotten about that. 

Out of the Dragon's Mouth is a middle grade coming of age novel about Mai, a young Vietnamese girl, who must leave her home and family to flee the communist regime in South Viet Nam for a better life in the United States. Surviving a perilous journey across the South China Sea in an overcrowded fishing boat, she and her uncle land on an island off Malaysia and spend the next year in a refugee camp. Eventually Mai arrives in the United States, but not before she has grown from a naive child into a young woman who has experienced the pain of first love and learned to survive in very difficult circumstances. 

This is my first novel that was nine years in the making. I based it on the true life experiences of a teacher friend of mine who was a Vietnamese boat person who fled Viet Nam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. The book is currently with an agent who is trying to get it published. 

 I first became interested in the plight of refugees when my husband and I sponsored a Chinese Cambodian refugee family in 1979. This family had survived the killing fields of Cambodia and had fled to Thailand where they languished in a refugee camp with thousands of others. When Thailand decided they had too many refugees, they bused many of them back to the mined border area between Thailand and Cambodia and left the people to die. The Red Cross came in with journalists to the forests where people were literally eating the bark off trees to survive and told the world about them. Our refugee family, along with others in their situation, were rescued, taken to Bangkok, and put at the top of the list for emigration to the U.S. That is how we met the Lims 34 years ago. Resettling them and becoming their friend, was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. To see them now married, with children of their own is a joy.