3. TIL David Trang, the creator of "Sriracha" named his company "Huy Fong Foods" in...

TIL David Trang, the creator of "Sriracha" named his company "Huy Fong Foods" in honor of the ship that helped him escape Vietnam in 1978.

here's a popular Vietnamese host telling his escape story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJA9PogpvoY

It's really long (5 mins) so I'll just translate it briefly:

I think a lot of you might have gone through this or maybe you've only heard stories about it. This story was 27 years ago at the end of 1978. We were on a boat after 6 days and 6 nights in the pacific ocean. They (the smugglers) divided the women and children onto the deck and the men were told to stay inside the boat. We were cramped inside the boat like canned fish because we were posing as merchants and they didn't want people to see us. We were in there for 6 days and 6 nights with little to eat and very hungry. I had just returned from re-education camp so I was very skinny at that time.

One morning at about 5 am when everyone was still sleeping, my wife stuck her head down and whispered my name. Usually if the men went onto the deck, we were hit and told to go back downstairs. They didn't want a lot of people out and about because they were scared it was going to capsize the boat. I risked it and climbed upstairs and saw it was a huge storm. I had a son, who was 4 years old at the time, and the winds had blown away his shirt leaving only his pants and he shivered through the night. When I looked out at the storm, I knew I was going to die because all the crew had already abandoned the ship long ago. In the distance (on the shore?), I could see Malaysians shining a light onto us. I told my wife and son to hold onto empty soda bottles because if they were flung overboard, maybe it would help them float. Being Catholic, the only thing I could do was pray.

At the time, a strong wave knocked the boat and half the people on the boat flew into the ocean. A 2nd wave knocked the rest off the boat. When I was in the water, I could see the corpses of women and children hitting me. Their luggage also hit me. All told, there was probably 300 fellow Vietnamese on that boat. Of course, as I tell this story it sounds long but it was over in a few seconds. As I drank water, I started to drift out of consciousness. I remember being angry because I was in a re-education camp for years and at one point I was so weak that I could not move without my friends' help but now I was on a journey for only 6 days and so close to Malaysia and I was about to die. I was 33 at that time.

At that point, a strong wave hit me and my body was hurled forward where a Malaysian man grabbed me and threw me onto a pile of corpses which caused me to vomit out the water I had swallowed and drift back into consciousness. At that point, I thought I was dreaming when a boy next to me told me that my wife and son had died. When I regained my senses, I searched the corpses around me and found my son. My wife's body was taken by the ocean. My wife was 26 and my son was 4 years old, I buried them both in the Malay sea. I was so depressed that I didn't wait for an opportunity to settle in America and settled in Canada instead. Life is weird like that, this event changed me forever. It was my grief and love for them that I turned into a writer and wrote my first poem/essay entitled "The Women who Remained."

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - articles.latimes.com
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