Eleven o’clock on a Monday night, and Hoang Bui is still going. His fingers pluck the keys on his calculator as he sits at a table, adding up receipts. He’s been going like this since 7 a.m., when he wakes up to go to work at the electric company, until now, when he works the night shift at the bar he and his wife own – a popular student hangout called the Froggy Bottom Pub.
It is quiet where he sits, on the second-floor restaurant that has just closed. Downstairs, the bar is starting to fill up, the drone of conversation, billiards and classic rock growing louder. Hoang will keep going like this until the bar closes in the early morning, all the while seemingly ignoring the fact that he has the flu.
Tired?
“Used to it,” he says.
Brown-skinned and shorter than most of his customers, Hoang lacks the bags under his eyes that would indicate someone in need of rest. Rather, he has the wrinkles of someone who has known nothing but work.
Hoang, 55, manages the Pennsylvania Avenue pub with his wife, Hien, 47, who runs the upstairs restaurant from morning till close. The couple bought the bar in 1999 in hopes of putting their two sons – now University of Virginia students Paul and Peter – through college.
It was a risk. But without taking chances, the Buis would still be back in Vietnam.
That would have been fine with them, of course, under different circumstances. Hoang fought for his home for five years, serving as an artillery officer in the South Vietnamese army alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War. He stayed there after the United States pulled out, forced into a labor camp in 1975. But after his family bribed an official at the labor camp to free him in 1980, he knew he had no choice but to escape.
“I love Vietnam, so much,” he said. “But I couldn’t live with the government, the Communists. You couldn’t have a job. You couldn’t have anything. I had no future there.”
Hien, an outspoken, gregarious woman with black hair and lighter skin than her husband (she will greet student regulars from across the room, “Hi baabyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”), also had little choice but to leave her home country.
“Why did I leave? You think my big mouth can survive under Communist Party?” she said. “Uh uh.”
Hien was a young high school teacher with a seemingly bright career ahead of her teaching literature and history. But she was no freer to teach than Hoang was to work.
“What I learned from my school, my teacher and my father was different than what the Communists wanted me to teach,” she said. “You think I can lie to the children? No. So, I have to leave.”
In 1980, before he had met Hien, Hoang left his family behind and boarded a small boat (“this wide,” he said, stretching out his arms) and crouched beneath bags of salt to avoid being detected by police. Once out to sea, the emigrants ditched the salt and waited – with no food and just a cup of water per day – to see the coast of Thailand on the horizon.
There were many small boats making the same voyage, Hoang said, but only two out of every 10 people survived it. Hoang’s boat got lucky. Four days out, they ran into a Thai fishing boat. The crew gave them food and water and towed their boat to shore.
“We were so lucky. My boat, very bad, but we were lucky to survive,” he said.
Hien, too, was lucky. She had been forced into a labor camp after being caught trying to escape Vietnam earlier, but on her second attempt, her boat was also rescued by a Thai fishing boat.
“I carry a big debt to them the rest of my life,” Hien said. “That was a horrible time at sea. The pirates, the rapes, people killed … But those gentlemen were gentlemen. In my life I wish I could see them again.”
The couple arrived separately at a refugee camp in Thailand. Hoang knew he would not have to stay long, as the United States would sponsor him as an immigrant because of his service in the war. But in the four months he was there, he met Hien, with whom he celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary last month.
The couple got engaged while at the refugee camp but had to separate as abruptly as they met. Hoang left for the United States, but Hien, lacking American sponsorship, couldn’t go.
Instead, Hien emigrated to France, sponsored by a cousin who lived there. She waited 18 months for Hoang to get his green card, at which point Hoang crossed the Atlantic Ocean again to marry Hien in France. Finally, the two began their life together in the United States.
It took a long time for the couple to be able to afford to buy their one-story rambler in Arlington, Va., let alone a bar. Hoang worked in a factory that made motorized beds for hospitals, while Hien took care of Paul and Peter. Both stressed one thing above all to their children: education.
“There is very good opportunity here,” Hoang said. “If you don’t do it, you screwed up. That’s the only thing … If you don’t make it here, you couldn’t make it anywhere else.”
But to Hoang and Hien, their sons’ education is about much more than the opportunities of American immigration. To them, it is a way of preserving their culture, the same way they speak Vietnamese at home and tell stories from their native land.
“That’s our culture,” Hoang said. “For a thousand years, education has always been the first priority in our country.”
That is why Hoang must work from day to night, putting not only his children through school but also his nephews back in Vietnam. No labor camp, no uncertain boat ride and certainly no strain of the flu will stop him from passing on that part of his culture to his family.
To make that wish a reality, the couple risked everything to buy “The Frog” in 1999. They had less than $10,000 in savings, but by borrowing money from friends and taking out the equity on their home, they were just able to afford the pub, an iconic American dive with old wooden chairs and tables surrounded by an eclectic mix of neon signs and hand-painted wall designs.
If it failed they could lose their home, to say nothing of their savings and children’s college future. But the bar became a popular student hangout, in part because of its low beer prices and also because of Hien and Hoang, who talk to many students like they’re their own children.
“I think about my son,” Hoang said, sitting not far from a wall of pictures featuring him with regular student customers. “He’s down there. He has no friends, no place like a home. So we always look at people here like they’re away from home too. If we just talk to them or make joke or be friends, it must be good for them. They feel like home.”
Hien adds, “Of course, what kind of parent would supply booze? But at least you come here and get out of here safe and I know that.”
With a profitable, albeit exhausting business, the two are already an inspiring success to their relatives back home. But Paul, 22, must complete his master’s degree at the University of Virginia, while Peter, 18, is just a freshman. Hoang and Hien must keep going.
Eleven o’clock on a Friday night, Hoang zips up his jacket as he prepares to drive Hien home then come back. On this night, it is Hien who has the flu. But the next morning, she will return, sit at the same table as Hoang does at night and wrap silverware in napkins before the restaurant opens.
“She cannot stop,” Hoang says. “She has to keep going.”
