A Tech in Asia story united Uber’s CTO with his refugee boat captain after nearly four decades

The Uber CTO credits the captain for saving his life on the tempestuous ocean. Both had tears while recounting the journey that nearly killed them and their families.

VUNG TAU , VIETNAM – APRIL,1975: Refugees from north of Saigon, pour ashore from navy barges at Vung Tau, south of Saigon. Photo credit: Jack Cahill/Toronto Star via Getty Images.

There are seldom some stories that have a profound impact on people or their tumultuous past. This story – From fleeing Vietnam in a refugee boat to becoming Uber’s CTO: the journey of Thuan Pham – on Tech in Asia last Saturday, has ended up uniting the refugee boat’s captain and his passenger – about 37 years after they left the war ravaged shores of Vietnam on April 17, 1979.

The boat’s captain reached out to Tech in Asia after reading the story. The Uber CTO credits the captain for saving his life on the tempestuous ocean. Both had tears while recounting the journey that nearly killed them and their families. It also left a passenger dead, who had to be buried at sea. Thuan, who is now driving Uber’s technology worldwide, was about 11 years old, and the captain was all of 29 years back then.

Both recount what happened during those turbulent nights on the refugee boat which was rejected by two countries and towed back to the seas.

David NienDuy Nguyen, former captain of MT-2377 and a Vietnam war veteran:

“I was MT-2377 boat captain, navigator, and representative at that time. My son, who was a four-year-old back then, emailed me the link to this story on Tech in Asia which evokes all my memories as if it were yesterday. So, let me provide you with more details.

The MT-2377 left Cua Tieu, My Tho on April 17, 1979 with two other boats which sank right after they left Vung Tau. MT2377 was overloaded because the Cong An [Vietnamese Communist Police] dumped a lot more people on that boat as they had received additional bribe.

A refugee boat from Vietnam post the fall of Saigon. Photo credit: WUTC.org.

At that time, I thought that MT2377 was going to sink.

To my surprise at that time of the year – ‘thang ba ba gia di bien’ literally means in lunar March an old woman can sail to sea too – our boat was caught in a strong storm.

At that time, I thought that MT2377 was going to sink. One of the owners of the boat – Mr. Xap Dzach [Mr. Eleven] told me ‘we’d better go back’ … but looking down, the water color looked like café au lait, brownish, which indicated the boat was close to the river estuary. It was raining hard and almost impossible to see the estuary and the boat could get grounded and capsized.

So I decided not to come back but instead sailed the boat straight to high sea on bearing 120. It was a right decision. The boat is supposed to bobble up and down in water, but not get grounded. After about one hour, the water turned to dark blue which means we were in deep water and safer.

Thuan Pham, chief technology officer at Uber: