In mid-1972, Amb. Quinn moved from Saigon to Chau Doc Province along the Mekong River on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. This represented his second assignment on the Mekong, with the first being in Sa Dec Province. He would have a third in 1996 when he returned as the U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia in Phnom Penh. In Chau Doc, he described a location along a road that seemed to mark the place where the “tectonic plates” of Indian and Chinese culture came together. His motivation in moving to Chau Doc was to do research in his spare time on the Hoa Hao sect of Buddhism, which had so fascinated him during his earlier assignment in Duc Thanh.
THE ARCHIVE OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH M. QUINN
FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE MEKONG