Refugee family finds welcoming
home in 1980s Masterton


In 1980, aged three years old, Nhu Bich (Nikki) Chung arrived in New Zealand as a refugee with her mother and father after a perilous journey from Vietnam.

Restauranteur Nikki Chung discusses what it was like for her family to flee Vietrnam and settle in Masterton

The boat on which the family escaped Vietnam was attacked by pirates in the gulf of Thailand and their few possessions taken; others on the boat were killed. They then spent nine months in a Malaysian refugee camp before being accepted to New Zealand where they were settled in the rural Wairarapa town of Masterton.

Nikki’s family was among tens of thousands of refugees who escaped in boats in the years following the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam and the collapse of the South Vietnamese Government. It was a time of great uncertainty Nikki says.

“The North had won the war and they started to move into the South…and not knowing what the future held, my parents decided to seek a new future for us.”

During the mid-70s and 80s, hundreds of thousands of people were also fleeing Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, and in Laos ethnic groups who had supported the United States against the North Vietnamese feared retribution once the Americans left and sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The period became known as the Indochina refugee crisis and saw some three million people leave the region as refugees over the next 15 years.

It was refugees, like the Chungs, from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos that composed the first significant flows of migrants to New Zealand from Southeast Asian countries.

Nikki’s story and the story of refugees to New Zealand from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are documented in the Foundation’s research report Relations and Relationships: 40 years of people movements from ASEAN countries to New Zealand, by Victoria University lecturer Dr Kate McMillan.

As cited in the report, in total almost 11,000 refugees from these three countries were resettled in New Zealand between 1975 and 1993: 5,200 Cambodians, 4,500 Vietnamese and 1,200 Lao people, establishing New Zealand’s first Southeast Asian communities.

The Chungs were settled in Masterton along with five other Vietnamese families, a seventh family from Vietnam had arrived in Masterton a couple of years earlier; this family acted as translators for the newcomers when they first arrived, Nikki says.

The families would get together on weekends and special occasions. Nikki says having this little community who understood what they had been through and where they had come from made a world of difference to the Chung family.

Being Asian in 1980s Masterton meant being different; however, Nikki says the community welcomed the new arrivals.

“I clearly remember that every school I went to, I was the only Asian there, but the Kiwis in Masterton were very welcoming and warming; we [kids] didn’t really have many difficulties settling in.

"I think it was harder for my parents because of the language barrier, but because I was so young I could pick it [English] up quite quickly.”

She was too young to have many memories of arriving in New Zealand, but Nikki remembers the sense of fear she felt starting kindergarten and hearing a foreign language being spoken around her.

Despite the difficulties of arriving in a new country and not speaking the language, Nikki's parents worked hard to make a new life for themselves and their young family (her mother was pregnant with Nikki’s sister when they arrived in New Zealand).

“What really makes me very proud of my parents settling in to New Zealand was that they really embraced Kiwi culture and embraced participating in the community.”

Although the family looked to adopt the culture of their new home, Nikki’s parents also wanted to retain and pass on to their children as much of their Vietnamese culture as they could. Food was one way they did this.

“Back then in the 1980s, New Zealand was so limited on Asian products, so really my mum just had to make do with whatever she could find to create these Vietnamese dishes so we could remember home,” Nikki says.

When she opened her own Vietnamese eatery, Nam D, in Wellington in 2012, Nikki turned to her mother’s recipes for many of the dishes she created. New Zealand had changed enough over the ensuing 40 years that, unlike her mother, she did not have to make do with alternative ingredients to create the dishes.

“I learnt all of my cooking skills and [got] my passion for Vietnamese food from my mother.

"When I opened the restaurant six years ago, there weren't really any Vietnamese restaurants in Wellington… so that’s why I felt passionate about introducing Vietnamese street food."

Nikki regularly returns to Vietnam to visit family still living there and to gain inspiration for new dishes.

She has now opened two Nam D eateries and this month will be taking part in Wellington on a Plate with a pop-up street stall.