Minh Nguyen Halo Lights

During the night, fog appeared and blanketed both the boat and the surface of the ocean as far as we could see. Despite its damaged condition the ailing boat endured and continued onwards minute by minute. The boat’s propeller labored on, continued to spin and move the boat forward, despite feeling fatigued due to its unwavering loyalty and love for the boat. The icy water did not care about the boat but the waves still persistently tried to keep it from moving forward.

At eight o’clock the second day of the New Year the sky was completely dark. Looking through a pair of binoculars the pilot saw a flicker of something unknown just beyond his sight. Everyone cheered in joy at seeing a blurry image of a distant horizontal black line made up of halo lights.

Has our hope come true?

All of our past fears immediately disappeared and was replaced by joy in our hearts. This joy infused our entire beings and caused our fear of dying to be wiped away. Only a small group in the cockpit was aware of this new information. Therefore, we were extremely excited and asked the pilot:

- Do you know where that place is?

- Is that Malaysia or were we turned back to Vietnam?

After consulting his compass, the pilot confirmed the distant blurry line was definitely Malaysia. The boat surged through the water splitting all waves in its path. Our target destination was our hope personified and what we had been dreaming of. It took us several hours with such a small boat to reach that blurry line. We verbally expressed our exhilaration with each other:

- I want to go to the United States of America.

- I want to go to Canada.

- I want to go to Australia.

- Many more countries were mentioned.

Around one o’clock in the morning, ever more powerful high tidal waves slammed into and around the boat. The pilot steered the boat in the direction of the shore. However, because of the change in direction a powerful wave smashed directly into the damaged wooden boat’s bullet riddled side and broke the boat in half. I imagined that the boat shuddered and flipped flopped like a fish out of water while icy water rushed in to flood the boat causing it to sink and everyone still within to drown. The waves steadily continued to smash upon the broken halves of the boat, with one half still above water while the other half sunk.

The ray of hope that we had been exulting in evaporated in a flash as our situation suddenly reversed itself for the worse.

The panicking survivors in the icy water clung to boat debris to try and stay afloat. With land a short distance away the survivors swam towards the beach and safety. We had no choice but to try and make for the beach because to stay in the icy cold water was to invite certain death.

The younger survivors were the first to attempt to swim to safety. They knew how to swim while the older survivors had to care for their children and were as a result much more cautious. When the younger survivors reached the beach and dry land they looked back and saw the others still out in the water. Several of them returned to help the older survivors and their children by carrying them to safety as well. The beach’s peaceful and silent atmosphere was broken when the survivors loudly talked to each other and screamed for help. Sleeping local residents immediately awoke and alerted the local Malaysian authorities and emergency services. The officials arrived straight away and leapt into action caring for all the shivering, cold, and wet survivors while they also kept watch on us as well.

Once everyone realized that we were out of danger and still alive we calmed down and reveled in the fact that we had made it through all of the various hardships we had encountered.

Nov 20, 2015

Page 179 - 182 in the book

Pulau Bidong State Of Mind

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