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trains per week to Phnom Penh. Each trip takes two or three days. Finally, he sent us on

a bus ride. There are three daily passenger buses from Battambang to the capital.

The latest train departs at 6 a.m. My child and I were placed in the last passenger seat

of one last ride. For more than 10 hours, they sat in a car packed with people, crossing a

300-kilometer stretch without asphalt and stone. Irrespective of what a field is and what
a road is, Seeing the front car pass, the rear car followed in the thick haze. In the car, the

passengers were thrown up and down to the beat of the bump against the side of the car,

the hood. Car seats, car floors, bruises all over. All passengers are like balls in bingo
lottery spinning cages. No one retains his position. Everyone carries injuries and

memories of the trip. In the car, there were some Vietnamese soldiers on leave. They
talked about battlefields, units, wives, and children, noisy with discontent. Others fled

back to Phnom Penh, so when they arrived at the checkpoint, they ran down the car,

hiding in bushes and shops. When the car was about to drive, they hurried up again.
Some were arrested, had escape numbers, and never returned to the unit again. They

deserted from the peripheral battlefield. They retired from international duty. We arrived

in Phnom Penh at 5 pm, almost exhausted from lack of food, insomnia, anxiety, and fear.
Frustrated, I prepared to return to Vietnam. Arrived in Saigon on the afternoon of 15

January 1985, i.e., 25 December, bordering the New Year of the Ox. My whole family was
stunned. Happy for me to escape danger. My mother looked at me and couldn't speak.

Mom's tears were gone. She flew from Hanoi to visit me when I was two weeks out of

prison. She stayed with me for a few months, knowing that the police were abusing me
daily, so she agreed to let me go, knowing that it would be challenging to fold later. She

still wanted me to return to my father's homeland to live with her. I was the only eldest

son of the family, having been away from home since early 1954. It's been more than
thirty years! When the war ended, she hoped for peace soon to see her children. When

the war ended, she again wept for her exiled son. Wait until ten years later to get your

child out of prison. The joy was not complete, and she swallowed tears for her only child
to leave. Every day, every night, she prayed to Heaven to sustain me. The trip failed, but

it didn't hurt. Later, when I left for the second time when I was in Nam Vang, she
returned to Hanoi. In the atmosphere of spring, I returned from Cambodia to a large

prison in Vietnam, settled with my anguish, and suffered the pain of the country's loss

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