{"id":1961,"date":"2009-02-07T00:43:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T05:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/?p=1961"},"modified":"2014-02-10T11:29:52","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T16:29:52","slug":"photos-las-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.b-vong.com\/journal\/photos-las-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: LAS Ball 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It was another busy night at this year’s\u00a0LAS Ball, but it was a pleasure meeting former US Ambassador to the UN,\u00a0Mr. Sichan Siv.<\/span><\/p>\n

You’re probably wondering, what’s a party going to do to solve most of the problems in the world?\u00a0 Probably not much of anything, but the ability to congregate as one community is pretty amazing when you think about the various stories coming out of Southeast Asia in the past 30-plus years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ambassador Siv’s story is a remarkable one.\u00a0 He grew up and was educated in Cambodia, was forced to work in the labor camps during the Khmer Rouge takeover, survived two death sentences, escaped the Killing Fields, but in turn lost his family,\u00a0braved the jungles, only to face strife\u00a0and poverty in Thailand, came to America with only\u00a0two dollars in his pocket, picked apples, drove a taxi, flipped burgers,\u00a0educated himself here as well, and 13 years after his escape from Cambodia, Mr. Siv was appointed deputy assistant to then US president George Bush, and eventually became a US ambassador to the UN–yup, an amazing story from\u00a0such a down to earth gentleman.\u00a0His book “Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America” explains everything much better than I ever could.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the\u00a0people in the crowd had similar histories, no matter if they were from Burma, Cambodia, or Laos–they were refugees and survivors in some way.\u00a0 A few days before the Ball, I went to get my haircut and I invited my “stylist” :), who is Cambodian as well.\u00a0 I mentioned briefly tidbits of Ambassador’s Siv’s story, and she re accounts her own story to me, of losing her father, and escaping and barely surviving in Thailand, of her mother not eating so that her daughters could have food first, of constantly having to fight off the advances of villainous farmers.\u00a0 Usually in the salon we talk about who’s dating who and whatnot, but that day was different.\u00a0 Like the comics, everyone’s got an origin story.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It was another busy night at this year’s\u00a0LAS Ball, but it was a pleasure meeting former US Ambassador to the UN,\u00a0Mr. Sichan Siv. You’re probably wondering, what’s a party going to do to solve most of the problems in the world?\u00a0 Probably not much of anything, but the ability to congregate as one community is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[202,109,39,41,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-1961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-lao-culture","8":"category-photos","9":"tag-event-photography","10":"tag-khmer","11":"tag-laotian-american-society","12":"tag-laotian-culture","13":"tag-las","15":"post-with-thumbnail","16":"post-with-thumbnail-large"},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t