When I was little (2000s) the consensus seemed to be that Vietnam was a shitshow. It was sort of not talked about because it was considered an embarrassment for the west.

Lately on Boomer TV I've been seeing a lot of stories about gusano Vietnamese that "escaped" the "eeeevil communist north Vietnam".

Shits weird. It's one thing to paint a country like North Korea as evil because it's easy to make shit up about an isolated country. But people can watch like a billion travel shows that show communist Vietnam is a normal ass country. The idea that people fled from that becomes less harrowing when you see that it's a beautiful place that's just as free as any other country.