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- Our People
- Carl Robinson
- Kim-Dung Robinson
- Walter Pearson
We have three expert tour leaders who personally take you to Vietnam.
All speak Vietnamese and combine a unique mix of knowledge, experience and perspective.
Each has a long-term continuing connection with Vietnam giving them a deep and completely up-to date knowledge of the country, its people, culture and history.
Between them they have more than 120 years of Vietnam experience.
A travel author and journalist, Carl arrived in Vietnam in 1964 to be a village-based aid worker in the Mekong Delta. He turned to journalism and stayed until the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. He emigrated to Australia with his wife Kim-Dung and was mine host at their renowned Old Saigon Restaurant in Sydney. Carl is an expert on the Vietnam's history, culture and cuisine.
Born in the Mekong Delta, Kim-Dung is a chef and the driving force who made the Old Saigon Australia's most authentic Vietnamese Restaurant. Her family connections in Saigon and in the Delta keep her abreast of all the best places to eat and shop in what’s become Asia’s hottest travel destination. Kim-Dung is a genuinely Vietnamese women thoroughly at home in Australia and as such can share a unique perspective on Vietnam.
A journalist and documentary maker, Walter's connection to Vietnam started with two tours there in the Australian Army, one as an interpreter. He went on to study Chinese language and Asian history and philosophy at the ANU, before taking up a career in radio and television. He speaks excellent Vietnamese, knows Vietnam's modern and ancient history and through his war experiences and his knowledge of Asian History and philosophy has a unique understanding of Vietnam.
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| Carl Robinson lived and worked in South Vietnam during the war between 1964 to 1975, first as an aid worker with the US-government (USAID) in the Mekong Delta and then as a correspondent with The Associated Press (AP) also covering Laos and Cambodia. He left Saigon on the infamous helicopter evacuation of April 1975 as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops occupied the city.
American-born Carl spent his childhood years in the Belgian Congo speaking fluent French and Swahili. Returning to the US in his mid-teens, Carl quickly became restless for more overseas adventures and in 1963 headed off to Hong Kong for a year of university. Taking the advice of an Old China Hand to “see South Vietnam before it fell,” Carl caught a French freighter down to Saigon during the Chinese New Year, or the Vietnamese Tet, in early 1964. With the war still in its early days, he was immediately entranced and his relationship with Vietnam became a love affair –- and a marriage -- that’s gone through the intensity of war and joys of peace.
Always keen to show off authentic Vietnamese cuisine, Carl and Kim-Dung opened the Old Saigon Restaurant in Sydney’s Newtown which quickly established a devoted following and reputation. They returned to Vietnam for the first time in 1995. In 2001, they worked as consultants on Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American based on Graham Greene’s famous novel of the French Indo-China War starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser and Do Thi Hai-Yen. After five years on the NSW South Coast, they moved to Brisbane in 2003. Carl is the author of Odyssey Publication’s guide to Australia, now going into its 6th edition, and is working on a similar guide for Vietnam. |
From a strongly traditional family in the Mekong Delta, Kim-Dung (pronounced Kim-Yung) was born and raised in the small northern Mekong Delta province of Go Cong, today’s Tien Giang province. She developed an early passion for cooking from her mother and tailoring from her father. After falling in love with an American aid worker named Carl Robinson, they married and moved to Saigon where he became a war correspondent until the war’s end in 1975. After two years in New York, they settled in Australia with their three children. Kim-Dung qualified as an interpreter in Australia worked on legal, social and education cases involving the Vietnamese community before offered a full-time position with a Commonwealth Government department, a position she held until 1998. Taking leave in 1989, she worked for several months in Hong Kong with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) dealing with a massive influx of Vietnamese.
Always disappointed with the poor quality of Vietnamese restaurants, she and Carl opened the now-famous Old Saigon restaurant in Sydney in 1990. Introducing a no-compromise and genuine cuisine for the first time, the restaurant was an immediate success and changed the public perception of Vietnamese food. After selling the restaurant and leaving behind her full-time job, she settled with Carl on the NSW South Coast. In 2003, they moved to Brisbane.
Kim-Dung’s extended family still live in Vietnam and she visits regularly. Always a frugal shopper, she knows all the newest and best places for bargains in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in what’s become one of Asia’s premier shopping spots. |
Walter is a journalist and documentary maker. His connection with Vietnam goes back to the time he was a soldier in the Australian Army when he spent two tours in Vietnam, one as an interpreter. He still speaks excellent Vietnamese.
After leaving the Army, Walter studied Chinese language and history at the Australian National University. As a result, he has extensive knowledge Asian Philosophy and the history of China and Vietnam.
Walter worked as a broadcaster and current affairs journalist for the ABC and in commercial television news covering general news, politics and economics. After the war, he first returned to Vietnam in 1989 to cover the dedication of the Long Tan Cross. At that time he was working for the Ten Network.
Walter is now focusing on making documentaries and his role in MBT’s tours to Vietnam. His last documentary was the acclaimed Vietnam Minefield that told of a major blunder by Australian commanders during the Vietnam War. This added to his knowledge and experience of Australia's military involvement in Vietnam.
Recently, Walter was involved with Operation Aussies Home in the discovery and repatriation of three Australian Servicemen, Peter Gilson Richard Parker and John Gillespie, who had been listed as Missing in Action since the war in Vietnam.
In his six year Army stint, Walter served with 1 Fd Regiment attached to 5 RAR in Vietnam in 1969. He was wounded and evacuated to Australia. He did a course in Vietnamese language for a year with the Defence Force Language School and in 1972, he returned to Vietnam as an interpreter and was among the last Australian soldiers out.
Walter made regular return journeys throughout the 1990s and has been leading various types of tours there since 2000. |
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