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Listen   Thanh Hue talks about revisiting Vietnam

Revisiting
- Thanh Hue -

"Everything was so different. When I look back, I really lost everything because the country I knew before was quite different. Even Hue, where people find it very hard to get anything changed, now it's changed a lot."

"After sixteen years I came back to see my mother, but then after that I came here three times, until my mother passed away and I just came back for New Year [Tet] because my younger brother passed away. He was in the army and he was caught at war in 1974 and was taken to the north. My parents were worried at that time. I lost two brothers, the younger one was a pilot and his plane blew up in the air. Until now my mother thought that he was still alive somewhere, still hiding somewhere, after fifty years."

"Sometimes I go on a tour [in Vietnam], to see some sights. I really longed to see them before our country was divided two parts [1954], but now it's united. Now I can go there to see these beautiful places like Ha Long Bay, some mountainous parts and Ha Noi. This time [2006] maybe I will stay two months... Even my sister promised - "this time when you come home I'll try to manage time to go with you." She has a son, he's ten years of age now. She's 12 years younger than me. I have two elder sisters, one 10 years my elder and the other one 6 years. I love her very much; she's like another mother to me."

"The weather on Sunday made me feel nostalgic. Because in Hue, it rains sometimes without stopping for one to two months, three months. As school kids, we ran to school, with the raincoat covering up to here and we get wet from underneath down. As girls we were so shy to show our legs. Then we stayed in the class until we get dry, went back home for lunch, get wet again, then get dry, back to school, get dry then back to home again. Sometimes my mother gave me money to buy lunch at school, to stay at lunchtime, and we had a very good time, friends together. Oh, school time was the best time of my life, because any time anything's bad at home, like I make any mistakes or I'm reprimanded by my mother or my bigger sister, I forgot straight away when I went to school, played and talk."