Duc N. Ly

latoanvinh-sketch.blogspot.com

http://bidong.blogspot.com

Two days ago, La Toan Vinh made a comment on before-pulau-bidong. Mr. Vinh made over one hundred sketches and paintings from 1980-1981. In a series of email exchanges, we communicated about our mutual experiences of Bidong. The drawings are helping me remember some of the details. The artist now resides in Montreal.

Dear Ðức,

It’s OK, I Happy to meet some of BIDONG Man in 80-81

http://bidong.blogspot.com/

DEAR Mr Duc

I am living in Montreal now, I escaped from VN since 1980 by CAN-GIO Vung Tàu, then arrived to BIDONG 5 days after

I made some Sketches on BIDONG 1980-1981 and Still keep it on me…

It’s long long time… I hope back to visit that Again in the new year 2008

Đức,

I’m artist in VN, In Bi-Dong i Worked as designer for H.C.R(high commitee for Réfugees)at Éducation Division then I asked my collegues to give the Materials to make the Artworks as you see…

Thank for HCR helping me to do some thing nice.

LTV

Dear La Toan Vinh,
I’ve been thinking about Bidong. I am working on a story about it. Your art work and photos have help me so much. I imagine you sketching on the island…I imagine how you met Ann Cusak.
What became of her and you? Are you pursuing your art?
-Duc

tags: La Toan Vinh, Vietnam, Pulau Bidong, island, refugee, HCR

Before Pulau Bidong, I was a happy child. My childhood spent in church yards flying kite, traveling in packs on bikes, or walking to a book store and be mercerized as the book racks spin, a kaleidoscope of color-full comic covers blur together. Sometimes, we loose ourselves in a game of Chinese Chess. We gather around a small square of the board game thinking, scheming, and smelling the herbs of the ancient medicine of our forebears, sitting on the selves, soaking up the sun. Sometimes, my days would be filled with sand; sand bags, pits and caves. Fortified with buckets of water, the loose granules become fortresses. We launch anything, including ourselves, on the see-saw.

Then there was the bamboo season. When, I swear to you, everything and anything can be made out of bamboo: lanterns, chicken cage, toy guns. We fashion together a series of bamboo rifles using bamboo, empty tin can, bottle cap and most importantly, rubber band. You first fatten out the bottle can and put two nail holes onto the bottle cap. Then you string the strands of rubber band through the holes and fasten them to the holders onto the can. Basically, it’s just two small stick strapped with rubber band against the sides of the circular tin can drum. You twist the rubber bands with the bottle cap, restoring it’s potential energy with each revolution, increasing the rubber band’s torque in an algorithmic laws of the elastic limits. So when the trigger is tripped, the bottle caps rattled against the drum surface of the empty tin can. The noise of the vibration would send your enemies falling to their knees. This was before I saw the legendary bamboo traps of the jungles and the instruments of torture, in the movies.

Before take off. There are certain imagines that still linger on my mind. We left in the early morning light. Mother called for the Cyclo. She insists that the Cyclo be shrouded. When ask, we were to say that we are going to Soc Trang to visit relatives. Between us, my sister and I had one small bag. The bag must have contained some dry provisions, clothes, and sea faring drugs. We sit in semi darkness. I hear the bicycle bells ringing and the chain of the sprockets pulling the inertia that would change our lives.

We had a few days in Soc Trang to prepare the boat for launch. The details of which escapes me. All I can remember is walking the thin wooden planks to the boat. This was before I heard of Noah Ark. Looking back there maybe some similarities.

There was always the ever presence of the thin horizon in which the reality of my mind and the thing that’s outside of it seems to have shifted. Days of nothing but water and sky and waiting to see land or another boat. Days of drifting my addled mind drugged up to prevent sea sick, claustrophobia, and paranoia. There were days of infinite hope and unfathomable uncertainty.

I Lived onPulau Bidong

la-toan-vinhs-sketches-of-bidong

tags: Pulau Bidong, Vietnam

Saigon Bread

Originally uploaded by bettybl.
Vietnamese Sandwich. Because It’s lunch time and I am hungry. Aside from that, Betty has a mean collection of pens and paper. It seems she’s a bit of a paper fetishist.

I am drooling over this at the moment and had to satisfy myself with a subway daily special, Italian BMT. This morning I heard on the radio, driving into work, a program on NPR about Pho 24. ‘Because you don’t get fat on pho’. The owner has open up several chains of Pho in Saigon and charging twice as much. He plans for world domination.

Update: 3/16/07 rhodiadrive.com/2007/03/12/letter-writer/

Update: 2/5/07 Monday…A letter from France arrived. I suspect it was from Nath. He sent me a note apologizing for the tardiness and two exquisite tea stained calligraphy. I wish everyone apologize this nicely.

Update: 01/11/07

I started my new year with a precious Letter from Lunarmusings.

flickr.com/groups/Letter’s Lives

Update: 12/6/06

Writings inspired by Magic Paula’s question: “What is Time?” from the Letter’s Lives Group on Flickr.

A nomadic tribe wondering through a labyrinth carried by the wind
An ancestral grid dividing the chronology
the wind whispering it’s strange language for trees to decipher, transmute and deflect.
The days are a canonical mocking of our small existence.

Update: my letter to Lunarmusings arrived shortly after October 14. I wanted to mail it on time for October Friday the 13th cancellation date. I am glad that I can bring joy to others through my letter. I will work on a letter for my wife, and a few out of state friends. One I met at the Hungarian Residency, an other friend in Japan. I met Masao in college.

I’ve been writing more letters now. I sent a missive for my brother A’s 30th birthday.

On the island Pulau Bidong, I saw my neighbor writing letters all the time. I didn’t even know where the post office was on the island. I wished that I had writen. I was only ten years old at the time.

To Nath,

What’s the rule about posting photos of the letter i’m going to send to Lunarmusing? Should I not post the photo of my letter to her before she gets my actual Letter?

-Duc

ps notice my name is french derivative. I don’t know the history of my name.

A few words about my letter to Nath. Nath has started a Letter’s Lives group on Flickr.
Some related links:

my wordpress tag Vietnam

To Whom it may concern,
I would like to write to Binh Danh and correspond with him on his visit to Pula Bidong. I lived there in 1978.
-Duc Ly

Hi Ee Lin Wan,
My name is Duc. I lived on Pulau Bidong in 1978. Thanks for your story. I’m trying to remember much of my experience on the islan. Hope you write back and share some more stories.
-Duc

Some related links:

my wordpress tag Vietnam

Squidoo.com/letterslives

tags: Vietnam

tags: Letters

before-pulau-bidong

This morning some one told me that Malaysia isn’t an Island.

Then I did a Google search on Pula Bidong which turns up Binh Danh’s project. I didn’t even spell it correctly but Google was smart to suggest the correct spelling. I’m excited. It triggered some memories. I remember lying on the island during Christmas time. The PA system broadcast Christmas music. We got better treats from the Uni-chief organization. I can remember eating chicken in a can. Yeah, there were parts of chicken complete with bones stuffed into a can. I remember missing family, other normal Christmas where I got to play with my neighbor’s train track toys.

I remember the same god damn PA system announcing the names of people who would be selected to go and I would be jealous because my name wasn’t called. I can’t recall the elation of the moment when they called my name though. I drop everything whenever the PA spoke, and I listen attentively to every word echoing through the hills.

I learned to swim on the island. My mouth takes in liquid salt, the sea water. The pajama pants I swim in is thread bare.

The refugee’s boats beached and then the weather would eat it away until only a small hull is left where color fishes swim among feces. Once the Boat is beached, the inhabitants would tear away at the planks and salvage every bit of wood for fire or shelter.

To pass the time, the men usually gather around the bunks and deal out hands of cards. They wager in Crackers or biscuits, each shape with it’s own unique currency. In dire times, the residents of Pulau Bidong consult the oracles that are on the faces of the playing cards. They were sure there were ghosts to communicate with. They ask when they would leave the island. They ask the spirits to carry messages back to love ones at home in Vietnam.

The Wells-I remember waiting in long lines to fetch water from the wells. The people who came before me dug the wells for fresh water. The sandy soil is sometimes red like the color of cinder or lava. The refugees would build a square or round wall often three or four feet high. We used whatever vessels we could find to carry the water. Some of the water containers were made from empty tins biscuits.

The Falls - Sometimes we would fetch water from the water falls, but those were too far up the hill. People would wash their laundries and their bodies. The dirty run offs travel to the lower falls. If you want to bath, you would have to find the highest fall in order to avoid the dirty run offs. As a boy, I witnessed the strange rituals of a public bath. Beautiful women nonchalantly bath themselves in clothes. It was a strange sight. The cloths were second skins, wrinkled and shedding. When the threads are submerged in water, they become transparent to reveal the skin beneath. From the mixture of textile and skin a pattern emerged, a new creature emerging.

The Bakery - Early in the morning, my sister and I would go to the bakery. The man load our cardboard boxes with warm loaves of bread, covers the top with a cloth to keep the heat. The steam rises in the glow of the sand ovens. Men stoke the fire, others knead the dough. We take them to the street and squat down to sell the bread on Vendor row. Sometimes we would have left overs. So my sister and I would open up a can of sardine, put it over a low flame. She slices the bread in half and I stuff the fish to make a delicious sandwich.

The Swimmers would gather at the rocks to journey out on a make shift raft to the merchant boats beyond. They would float back tins of biscuits, green apples wrapped in tissues, Coca Cola bottles. My Uncle bought a few of these merchandise and made my sister and me to sell it on the streets.

The Diarist-Every time I walk past his bunk, he would be writing some thing in a book or a letter. I wonder where he got the paper and pen? I suppose that image has stuck with me ever since and my affinity to write in journals or diaries. I had no scholarly obligations. What I experience I try to keep it all in my head. I didn’t have the luxury of pen and paper. The Diarist must have the fore sight to bring some along. If I did have a journal would I remember the details more clearly? Because each day it seems to have faded away.

The Bed-Sometimes, we wake up with tree saps in our hairs. During sleep, the barks of trees secret their chemical juice, sticks to our clothes, pajamas, and skin. The men, usually, went into the forest with machetes to fall limbs and carry them to the place of sleep. They fasten the knotty limbs together into a platform, build posts and sink them into soft sandy grounds to support the bed.

The Skiff - In the evening, the metal skiffs mark the horizon. The twilight shimmering and reflected in the waves, marks the end of the day. The patrol boat crosses back and forth in the horizon.

The Cafe - At night, the scent of ground coffee beans brewing in the oceanic breeze. Lovers stroll hand in hand, their feet touching waves, sand creep between the toes. I will forever have an image of lovers siting down, facing the ocean, an arm around a shoulder. The lanterns hanging from rafters, light the shop.

Bean Sprout - We cultivate mung beans into beansprouts. We sow the mung beans into sandy soils, put up railings to protect the bed. Then cover the seeds to preserve the moisture. Slowly the beans sprout forth, like magic, like fables.

Some Related links:

2007/12/08/la-toan-vinhs-sketches-of-bidong

http://timecapsule.yahoo.com/capsule.php - I decided to post this particular post in the time capsule under the category of memories with tags Palau Bidong. Years from now I’ll look back at it.

Images of Pulau Bidong found on the web.

ducly.wordpress.com/tag/vietnam

Pulau Bidong Research

bustamann.blogspot.com/2005/08/islands-in-sun.html

Squidoo.com/Pulau_Bidong

http://www.experteer.org/HTML/pulaubidong/RefugeePeople.htm 

tags: Pulau Bidong, refugees, Vietnam, Island

johnfenzel.vox.com Vietnam-we-could-have-won

Last night Misiu asked me again to tell her stories and always I default to my false memories of Vietnam. I told her about the fish and fish fighting, cock fighting etc.
06.17.05fl2i

Beautiful roosters iridescence strut about in a bamboo cage.  The circular dome enclose the rooster.  The weave is large, some the size of an egg, so the rooster is visible.  There are chrome pronge attachments to rake the feathers of their blood.  In a profusion of anger and resentment the roosters battle, kicking up their legs and clawing with the chrome prongs.

Do you remember your first flight? Where did you go? Why?
Submitted by Laurel.

My first flight was from Kula Lumpur to Oregon.  On the way, we made a stop over at Hong Kong.  There, we had the best breakfast ever!  After a year of can foods on the island and butter and sliced breads on the rest stop of Kula Lumpur, any real food would have been heaven.  But Hong Kong is known for the best Chinese food.

In January
Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

Ted Kooser

xanga.com/Coccinella one-of-my-favorites

I did attend some of the classes or church service but I don’t recall this image. It’s possible that in 1978 it was not yet built.

I remember visiting some graves but I don’t remember this one. It’s possible that in 1978 it was not yet built.

This I did not see.

• Some Facts:
• The Island is almost a perfect circle of 1 mile in diameter

Thank you ‘Reader’ for this link: http://www.bidong.org

I lived on Pulau Bidong
ducly.wordpress.com/tag/vietnam

Pulau Bidong research

2007/12/08/la-toan-vinhs-sketches-of-bidong

tags: Pulau Bidong, refugees, Vietnam, Island