AN 82-year-old man and his 41-year-old son have been found living in a forest in central Vietnam after they went missing during the country's war with the US, an official says.
The older man could communicate a little in the Cor ethnic minority language, but his son only knew a few words, an official at Tay Tra commune in Quang Ngai province said on Thursday on condition of anonymity.
Ho Van Thanh was last seen running into the woods with his then-infant son Ho Van Lang after a bomb exploded in his home, killing his wife and two other children in 1973, newspaper Dan Tri reported.
They were discovered when two people from a nearby village ventured 40 kilometres into the forest looking for firewood and spotted the two men's tree house. The villagers reported the find to local authorities who recovered the pair on Wednesday.
The two men survived by cultivating forest vegetables and hunting animals. They had no contact with the outside world, the report said.
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More pictures @ Quang Ngai
All right, I've been thinking about this. Now, there's a lot I don't know about Vietnam, but I can only think of two reasons why somebody would go 40 kilometers to get firewood.
ReplyDelete1) they were in a boat and it was the closest landing where wood was available.
2) They were out there for some other reason that they don't want to talk about.
Its been bothering me.
I don't know, but it is possible in the translation that they weren't looking for firewood, but mahogany or some other wood that they could sell for furniture making. As you said, they could have been, say poaching and changed their story.
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