Hello, my name is Nam and I was born in 1968.

When I was five years old, I lived in Saigon, Vietnam.

As a kid, I liked many things.

I liked to read

I liked to play games with my friends, like hide and seek and marbles.

But most of all, I liked food.

My favorite food was Bánh mì. 

I loved the soft bread, the slices of meat, and the Pâté.

I did not like the vegetables though.

Life was good. I had a loving family and a big house. We had a lot of relatives who lived nearby.

Mom and dad said something about a war but I did not understand it at the time.

One day, mom and dad said we needed to get out of the city.

We packed our bags and left without telling anyone a week after.

Our parents told my sister and I that we were going on hiking trip.

We walked silently through the rice fields the whole night. 

We then made it to the swamp where canoes were waiting for us and many other families were there.

We went on canoes to a bigger fishing boat in the middle of the water.

There were 82 people on the boat once everyone got on.

We set sail to the ocean, drifting and drifting away, farther and farther from home.

We spent a week out on sea till we saw a huge horizon of land.

There we spent a few months in camps with over 1,000 other people.

Mom told me this was place was Malaysia and the the first stop of our hiking trip.

The camps were fun but I started to miss home and friends and relatives.

Most of all, I missed the taste of Bánh mì.

However, I made new friends and played with them on the beach everyday.

After six months on the island, Dad told us we were going to America.

We got into a huge plane and took the longest ride ever.

I got sick on the plane and thought this was a long hiking trip.