Jean-Marie Birsens in Seattle ~ TRẠI TỊ NẠN ĐƯỜNG BỘ VIỆT NAM TẠI BIÊN GIỚI

Welcome

Somewhere along the Thailand border, we arrived, lived and anguished in one of those refugees camps...We existed among many thousands other Cambodian refugees, in a Vietnamese refugee camp among other huge refugee camps, like a tiny island in the vast archipelago, a floating debris in a sea of inhumanity. There we lived, prayed, and survived probably one of the harshest time in our lives.

These are only the pictures in our possession, and our stories. If you stumble across this blog site, please post any pictures, stories for our children to understand how their parents escaped, have lived, and are building a life as they have today....

Send stories and pictures to hungfng2.vnlr@blogger.com and they will be posted here for all to see.

Transit Camps

The refugees at the border camps eventually got interviewed, accepted, and settled in a third country: Australia, Denmark, Malaysia, French, Sweden, and many others. Many got accepted by the US. All the refugees who were accepted for resettlement were transported to Panatnikhom transit camp for a month or so to complete the paper work, and to be screened for health before flying to the final destinations.

For those who went to the US, they had to go to either Bataan or Galang to study English and to learn about the life in America

Below are the links to the stories and pictures of the camps that had become part of our journey to freedom. Gaylord Barr captured those moments at Pulau Galang and Bataan when he worked at the camps as an English teacher. Trinh Huy Chuong, a refugee from border camp, had the luxury of a camera to capture the pictures at Panatnikhom during the short time he was there.

Thank you Gaylord and Chuong for sharing these priceless memory.

- Pulau Galang Refugee Camp - Indonesia
- Bataan - Philippines Refugees Processing Center (PRPC)

- Panatnikhom

February 13, 2011