For those who've come across the seas

We first spied him at Starbucks in Singapore Airport, we could hear him silently chuckling at us as we sorted our new currency (140,000 dong = $7AUD?! My mental currency converter will be put to the test... Thank you thank you iPhone app)

Then we spied him in the terminal, sitting with his well dressed wife, smiling at us across the way.

Then lo and behold, they sit across the aisle in row 7. It's time to say hello.

They are Vietnamese Australians. They live in Perth now and have for years. His wife tells me proudly that they have 4 adult children 'they all finished university, my youngest daughter just finished Uni, I am very happy, I am very lucky'. She also has 5 grandchildren, and we laughed about how grandchildren are more fun then children. 'When you are young you work so hard you are stressed. When you are old, you have more patience'

She was a midwife in Vietnam. In Australia she just worked as an 'assistant' in the hospital. She is retired and helps with the grandchildren, her husband is a welder. They are off to visit family in Saigon.

When I ask her how long she has been in Australia she sighs. 'Aah, long time' Then she leans forward across the aisle ever slightly and lowers her voice as if to let me in on a conspiracy.

'I am boat people'

I express my amazement. Having worked with all sorts of refugees in the past few years, I don't often meet many who have come by boat. She tells me that they took three young children with them across the sea for 5 days and ended up in Thailand. Then three months in a refugee camp and they were picked to come to Australia.
'Three months is pretty quick' I say.
'I know, we were lucky.'
'It must have been awful on the boat'
Then she tells me it was her only choice for a future and opportunity for her kids. That she escaped her city before the communists took over. She knew there would be no chance for them there and needed to find a better life.

Now four children later all finished university and happily married and I just can't help but get emotional when I think how brave, how hard, how dreadful, how inspiring. They did it.