Carl Robinson
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.
Carl was a fading JFK Idealist and working in the US aid mission’s “pacification program” in the Mekong Delta province of Go Cong, in today’s Tien Giang Province, when he met his future wife Kim-Dung (pronounced “kim yung”). He quit his job and became a correspondent with The Associated Press (AP). Obtaining her parents’ permission took much convincing and they were finally married in a traditional Vietnamese ceremony in 1969. Two years after the Fall of Saigon, they settled with their three children in Australia where Carl worked as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek Magazine until 1990.
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.
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.
Carl was a fading JFK Idealist and working in the US aid mission’s “pacification program” in the Mekong Delta province of Go Cong, in today’s Tien Giang Province, when he met his future wife Kim-Dung (pronounced “kim yung”). He quit his job and became a correspondent with The Associated Press (AP). Obtaining her parents’ permission took much convincing and they were finally married in a traditional Vietnamese ceremony in 1969. Two years after the Fall of Saigon, they settled with their three children in Australia where Carl worked as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek Magazine until 1990.
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.
