The Dreams

It was during this time of staying in Thailand that I had these two
dreams. I never remembered any of my dreams until these occurred
to me in such a vivid way that I shall never forget. And I would like to
tell them here.

The first dream: I dreamed that my very own mother rejected

me. I will leave it at that. I felt hurt, but not emotionally damaged.

The second dream: A voice from heaven spoke to me asking

me a question, "Do you want to go?" I answered, 'Yes.' Then the

voice told me, "You must die." I died in my dream as though it

was real and the voice said to me, "Now you can go."

I recognized the voice, it was the voice of Seoung Veoung, but

she spoke from heaven above. I will tell of the possible interpret-

ation of this dream later on once I got to America and settled in

Iowa. Oh, the voice that spoke never specified where I was to go,

and I never asked the question, 'Where am I going?' I was just wanting

to go. Maybe that was the nature of my adventurous personality

back then.

Just how long we were temporarily camped in Thailand as refugees

was likely around 3-6 months at the most. Just who was

responsible to relocate us to other countries? One organization

that comes to mind is World Vision. If such an organization doesn't exist,
it must have been some other. We and many others in the same predic-

ament were accepted to come to the United States of America. We

were transported to near Bangkok, to a military base I believe,

near the sea to await our flight out.

We were bused in by charter buses. It was a whole day's trip from the

camp to our holding camp near the military base. And it was during

rainy season, and in some places water flooded the road surface, and
drivers had to take it easy. The route took us by steep mountains
which fascinated me. Mountains just held my admiration.

Back in Cambodia I could see some mountains from a distance and

there is this alluring pull from my heart to want to scale the heights

of those majestic friends. At one particular place that my father

had his rice fields was the closest mountain in sight. I often wish

I could have reached the mountain. It was just standing there all by

itself like it needed a friend like me. It had a nice peak point.

I felt sorry for those who were left behind. I hope that they did get

to go at a later date after we left Asia. Since the base camp for

departure was limited to how many they could handle, it couldn't

possibly fit everyone in there. There were at least five buses or

more that shuttled us over to the base. And there were other

refugees from other camps that were there already besides our

groups that came in. I swam every day in the sea salt water.

And sometimes the fresh water would run out to rinse off the salt.