I am very happy and feel blessed for having connected with Mr. Vincent Leduc after 34 years. Seeing his wonderful photographs of our passage from the refugee camp in Buton to Singapore in May 1979 has been a dream-like experience.

Since connecting on Facebook in September of 2013, Vincent and I have not communicated any other way. We haven’t spoken on the phone, or via video chat. My intuition is telling me that I must meet with Vincent in person. A spoken conversation any other way does not feel right to me. Recognizing myself in Vincent’s photographs opened my world in a completely unexpected way. It is because of those photos that I started this website to tell my story. And, telling my story has been a very therapeutic experience for me. I want to shake his hand and express to him the importance of his images. Previously buried feelings and memories surfaced within me. His photographic work captured the experience of the Vietnamese boat people in a profound way. I want to tell him personally how much his photographs of me on this boat mean to me and my family.

As we have become deeply involved through collaboration on this website project over the past several months, I have had the chance to learn more details about Vincent’s experience with the Vietnamese boat people, his personal experience with Gary Ferguson at the Buton Refugee Camp, and the boat trip to Singapore. I discovered that we both tell a very similar story, but from different perspectives.

Vincent was about ten years older than me. Being a professional photojournalist from a developed country (France), he was much more informed and aware of the events leading to the refugee crisis unfolding in front of his eyes and captured in film through his camera lenses. Vincent’s telling of the story in pieces through Facebook comments were informative, rich in details, and added a global flare.

In contrast, I was a young teenage boy from a very poor and war-torn country. The only information readily available to me was what I saw and heard from the people I was surrounded by at any given time. There was no electronic communication. There was no news media of any form. At that time, everything I knew about the world was limited to what I was taught in Vietnam’s communist school system and through their anti-democratic propaganda. Therefore, my story is from my own perspective and captures the feelings of an innocent young boy.

I believe everything happens for a reason. During the past three decades, I have shared my story about escaping from Vietnam on a boat many times through newspapers in Nebraska and California. But details about my second boat misadventure from Buton Camp to Singapore was a personal experience that I kept largely to myself.

As for Vincent, his collection of photographs documenting the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees, including our boat trip to Singapore 37 years ago, were mostly stored in dust-covered boxes in his home in Paris. Many of these priceless photographs reveal untold stories.

As our lives have evolved and have come full circle, I realized that Vincent and I have quite a few things in common. I learned recently that he is taking pottery lessons and planning on opening a ceramic workshop of his own in the near future. Vincent’s transition from photographic art to pottery has resonated strongly with me. I am an artist and I love pottery too. I took many ceramic classes in high school and college in Nebraska in the 80s, and I really enjoyed the experience. In fact, I even got carried away with my own collection of oddly shaped vases.

Now I am even more excited about meeting Vincent. We will have many questions to ask each other about our Singapore journey long ago. I also want to see more of his photographic work documenting the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees during the late 70s to 80s era. Maybe I can help him create a special website to showcase his photographs, thus, possibly connecting with other former refugees like me.

This will be the final chapter of My Singapore Misadventure 1979 Project. The story will definitely come with phone selfies and video clips. I envision the color photographs will show the two of us looking old and happy. Maybe they will have the real Eiffel Tower in the background. I think meeting with Vincent will be a wonderful experience, filled with smiles.

I believe in pursuing my dreams, and I dream of meeting Vincent in Paris.

– Nam Nguyen, April 2016