Note: This profile is in the top 30 stories of all time.  Many of our restaurant stories made the top 100.

Wok VillageWok Village is a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant located on the southernmost border of Lansing.  Located in "The Small Mall" behind the Triphammer Mall the restaurant has been serving area residents since 1990.  With a popular luncheon buffet and full dinner menu Wok Village has been a mainstay in the local restaurant scene for over 15 years.

Owners Trung Dai and Le My Trieu Lam lend a personal touch with Trung in the back and My Le (pronounced 'May Lei,' middle name first) in front.  Of Chinese heritage, but originally from Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, the Lams have lived in Ithaca for over 25 years.  They have four children, two grown and two in Ithaca High School.  The story of how they got from Saigon to their own restaurant in Ithaca is not simple, not a straight line.
Trung was from a wealthy Saigon family and became an officer in a tactical combat unit in the South Vietnamese army, where he served for eight years.  His father was a successful businessman in Vietnam with hotels, a textile factory, ship repair for the US Navy.  "So my wife was very surprised that when we came here I worked so hard" Trung says.  "But in Vietnam I didn't need to work.  My family was rich.  I didn't need my family money anyway because I was in the service.  I was single."

When the Vietnamese war ended people from the South lost everything, property, their savings and their freedom.  Trung was placed in a level three "reeducation camp," the North Vietnamese government's name for the brutal prisons and forced labor camps in which inmates were indoctrinated in communism.

In 1979 Trung was finally released at age 39.  "After I came out from the reeducation camp I was thinking about escape because I didn't see any future there," he says.  "They still control you.  They do not allow you to go to the big city.  They wanted you to go what they called a "new economy zone.  Every day or every week you had to go to the office to present yourself."


"They said that, but I didn't do that.  There were too many people there.  So I just mixed in the crowd of people, you know, thinking about escape."  Trung made his way back to Saigon to be with his family, but had to remain in hiding.

That's when he met My Le, a friend of his half sister.  "It wasn't until I came home after the reeducation camp that I saw her," he says.  "I was thinking about escape and thinking about marrying her and escaping with her."

They married in an unofficial ceremony, because Trung was there illegally.  "We didn't have any friends at all.  We just had our parents from both sides at home, and that was it."  His mother conducted the ceremony.  "There was no big party or ceremony, going to the church or the pagoda.  We just had the two sides of the family to approve. 'You're happy to marry her and she's happy to marry you' and the two sides had a party and that was it.

They married in Saigon.  There was no official ceremony, because Trung was there illegally.  "We didn't have any friends at all.  We just had our parents from both sides at home, and that was it."  His mother conducted the ceremony.  "There was no big party or ceremony, going to the church or the pagoda.  We just had the two sides of the family to approve. 'You're happy to marry her and she's happy to marry you' and the two sides had a party and that was it.

They lived in Saigon for a year before they could escape.  With Trung in hiding they could not set up house together.  "I didn't stay in one spot, because I was on the run."  South Vietnamese couldn't find work.  "They discriminated," he says.  "How were you going to work?"   So My Le stayed with family while Trung moved around.

Trung recalls a 120 acre ocean front property of his father's that included a warehouse near a highway.  In 1975 his father helped about 10,000 people, allowing them to live there temporarily until they could escape the country.  "Now," says Trung, "if I am not mistaken, they are using that building as the oil headquarters for Vietnam."

After almost a year Trung's Father arranged passage for his whole family on a boat.  Trung obtained papers under a false identity so he would be allowed to leave.  "I don't know how much he had left," says Trung, "but he took care of the whole family from son to son-in-law, daughter-in-law."  29 people left.  Le My's family didn't have enough money to leave.  "But after I came here I did help to bring them here.  So all our family is here.," he says, and then laughs, "So I did a good job."

They landed in Air Raya refugee camp in Indonesia, where they lived for eight months.  "When I went up there there were three or four hundred people so I tried to organize the working group.  I represented the group and was the contact for the United Nations, and provided organization and a helping hand for my people."

This work, including acting as interpreter, got him a strong recommendation from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that said, in part, "He has always carried out his duties faithfully and untiringly, remaining behind when he was due to go to the Galang refugee camp only because his assistance was required.  In this way he has not only been of great assistance to his own people, but also to UNHCR."

"Because I worked with the US assistant I guess I got priority to go to the US," he surmises.  The Lams were flown to Seattle and from there to Ithaca.  "The first (Vietnamese refugee) settlement in the United States was Ithaca," he says.

When the Lams arrived in Ithaca they found themselves on public assistance.  It would be ten years before they opened Wok Village.  I came in 1980 and opened the restaurant in 1990, exactly ten years."

In that ten years Lam worked hard.  He worked at NCR on the night shift, while attending TC3 and BOCES during the day.  "I had heard that you could go to BOCES and they would teach you a skill, so I went to see a Dr. Lewis.  He said "BOCES is for young kids.  It's not for adults like you.'  I told him, 'Sir, if you can not let me in, I'll have to stay on public assistance permanently.'  

He said, 'OK, come here tomorrow.'  The next day I talked to Mr. Mahoney, the Principal of BOCES.  He said "OK, I accept you.'  Oh my God I was happy.  I went to BOCES for two hours every day and another two hours I went to TC3.  The second year mornings I went to TC3 and afternoons I went to BOCES.  Then I had one hour left before I had to go to work."

From there he went to Denver Automotive College, leaving his wife and mother in Ithaca, to pursue his dream of becoming an auto mechanic.  He drove from Ithaca to Colorado in a car he had rebuilt himself.  He took a double class load to shorten the time there, finishing in one year.  The Lams had two children at this time.  "The church gave her money to visit me, he says.  "One day I'm going to pay them back."

He worked as a mechanic in Ithaca and in Texas.  "Then My Le told me, 'why don't you work in a restaurant and then we'll open a restaurant'," Trung recalls.  My Le had been working for Chef Peking, where Hai Hong is now located.  "She said if we have a restaurant she can help me out, but if I worked as a mechanic she couldn't do it.  So that is how she convinced me to open it."

Trung left his family here again to go to Minnesota for two years to manage a franchised Chinese restaurant.  "Of course I had to cook, I had to wait tables, overlook everything for the owner."  He learned the business, but when he returned to his family he still wasn't convinced.

In 1990 he saw that the restaurant that had been Danny's Place was up for auction.  "I thought this one is probably the opportunity even thought the location wasn't so good," he says.  "But it was good to start with.  It was low cost.  I think it was tougher for me, but I made it."

At one time or another the Lams had a second restaurant, first in Trumansburg and later in Ithaca.  Feeling they were spread too thin, they closed them, concentrating on their original site.  A few years ago they redecorated, doing much of the work themselves after the restaurant closed for the day.

The Lams say their business is about half and half take out/delivery and customers who eat on the premises.  They deliver to Cornell, and into Ithaca as far as the Commons.  To the South they go as far as Tops, to the East as far as NYSEG, and in Lansing as far North as Asbury Road.  The cuisine is Chinese American.  Some of the Vietnamese food is like what they ate in Vietnam, but like many Asian restaurants in the US Wok Village adjusts its recipes to American tastes.  

Five years after opening Wok Village the Lams became US citizens.  It has been a long, winding journey for the Lams from their childhoods before the war to war refugees to successful restaurant owners. "I'm an Ithacan, not a refugee any more," says Trung.

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