By Andrew Lam
New America Media, Interview
Editor’s Note: Human trafficking has become a scourge in Vietnam. It is estimated that each year several thousands of women and children are trafficked from Vietnam to other countries, mainly through Cambodia and China, for commercial sexual exploitation. Some 50 percent of them come from An Giang province in the Mekong Delta. Bong Nguyen managed to escape the brothel where she was captive and return to Vietnam. She is now under the care of Pacific Links, which provides shelter and education to at risks young women in Vietnam. She told her story to NAM editor Andrew Lam.
AN GIANG PROVINCE, Vietnam - My name is Bong Nguyen. I am 21 years old. My parents work in the rice fields. We have enough to eat and enough to wear. I have two brothers, one older, one younger.
In 2008, I went to Cambodia and ended being stuck there for over one year.
I was in school, and after I finished exams, I was browsing on the Internet, and this guy kept trying to chat with me. I didn’t know him, but he kept asking to chat, and so we talked. There’s a coffee shop in Cambodia, he said. I could make money over there.
At that time, I kept fighting with my mother, and she kicked me out of the house. I was very sad. In the neighborhood, there’s a person who wanted to marry me, but I didn’t want to get married. My mother said, “You better marry him,” and I was so sad. So another girl and I, we decided to go to Ha Tien province just for a few days but we planned to come back. But the guy that I met on the Internet called again and said that we should go to Cambodia to work and make money. There was another friend I knew from school, and he just failed his school exams so the three of us we said, “Why don’t we go?”
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