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Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Anh-Tuan Bui, known as “Cao Boi” is participating on the reality television show “Survivor: Cook Islands.” He and his wife, Kristol Bond, manage a nail salon in Christiansburg. “I always look forward to new adventures,” Bui said.

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• Meet Cao Boi on his "Survivor" profile

CHRISTIANSBURG — His name is Anh-Tuan Bui, but he goes by “Cao Boi,” which around Christiansburg translates to “Cowboy.”

He wears a happy Buddha pendant around his neck, along with a silver Star of David and a stainless steel dog tag he hasn’t removed since serving with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne more than 20 years ago. A Cherokee-inspired tattoo embellishes his right arm and his chest is partially covered with inked designs representing both eastern and western civilization.

And tonight, he’ll be on television screens across the country as a contestant on the popular reality show “Survivor.”

To Bui, whose day job is managing a nail salon inside the Christiansburg Wal-Mart, it’s no biggie that “Survivor” decided to open its 13th season with its most controversial theme to date — dividing contestants along ethnic lines. The decision sparked a furor among New York City officials and others who say it will cause racial divisiveness.

“Every race has its own quirks,” Bui said last week. “What’s there to hide? What’s there to be ashamed of?”

Bui’s friend, Judith Liberman, agreed.

“I think it’s something that needs to come to the table, even if it’s on a show like this,” the Russian-born and Israeli-bred woman said of “Survivor’s” plan to color code its 20 contestants by segregating them into four groups: black, white, Asian and Hispanic.

Liberman believes “Survivor” can group all it wants. There’s no group big enough for her friend.

“Cao Boi is truly a paradox of an individual,” she noted. “He’s a community thinker, and he thinks locally and globally. He gets along with every kind of culture.”

That, of course, remains to be seen.

Bui debuts on “Survivor: Cook Islands” at 8 p.m. on CBS. How far he’ll get toward the million-dollar prize is top secret.

After auditioning for the show in January at Blacksburg’s Kent Square, he was one of two contestants with local ties selected for this episode, set in the South Pacific where Capt. William Bligh visited just days before the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789.

Virginia Beach-born Adam Gentry, a Virginia Tech graduate, now lives in California.

But Bui, a Vietnam refugee who came to this country when he was 11, has made the New River Valley his home for the past 11 years.

An incorrigible wayfarer who spent his youth following the wind, 42-year-old Bui counts his experience on “Survivor” as just another adventure.

He insists he’s not doing it for the prize.

“I don’t care about money. I don’t have any, but I don’t lack it.”

No, Bui’s reason for agreeing to join 19 strangers on a deserted island for the purpose of trying to “outwit, outplay and outlast,” as the show’s slogan says, one another is very simple.

“I always liked the name 'Survivor,’ ” he said.

What’s in a name?

Bui’s nickname — Cao Boi — goes back to his early years in South Vietnam.

“We used to watch cowboy movies. We didn’t understand English,” he explained. “We thought cowboy was tall man.”

In Saigon where Bui lived, cao boi literally meant “tall man,” but it also carried negative connotations associated with hoodlums.

Today, Bui proudly calls himself “Cao Boi.”

“It is my old nickname,” he explained in his deep, booming voice, slightly tinged with an accent and heavily accented with laughter. “When I went hiking in 2003, I had to have a trail name.”

Hiking the Appalachian Trail is just one of many adventures that he believes destiny gave him.

“Three days after I was born, I was taken to a fortune teller,” Bui recalled. “He said, 'At age 11, this kid will climb the roof and won’t come down.’ ”

The “kid” soon became a free-thinking, free-handed and free-spirited man. Bui escaped Vietnam in 1975 with his two younger siblings and his father, a photographer, and mother, a tailor.

The family was caught up in the frenzied evacuation of Saigon as the government announced its surrender to North Vietnamese forces.

Bui and his family found themselves in California, where he quickly adjusted to American life.

“Nothing was scary for me,” he said. “I always look forward to new adventures. I always want to travel.”

Before he even learned to speak English, he was elected secretary of his class, he said. By his junior year in high school, however, he was itching to quit school.

“I had no interest, I took one look at all the Asian people and said, 'They’re boring.’ They were boring.”

All around him, he saw immigrant families pushing their children to be doctors, lawyers, engineers. The lifestyle didn’t appeal to his cowboy’s heart.

“One day my dad yelled, 'My way or the highway!’ The next day, I left. I was 16.”

Blowin’ with the wind

Bui, whose interest in cameras led him to learn how to repair them, found himself working as a repairman in Chicago’s West Side.

“Everyone there was black,” he said. “They all thought I was Bruce Lee.

“The whole neighborhood took care of me. I ate soul food.”

Soon, Bui made his way to the Vietnamese neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago, where he volunteered as a translator.

A year later — at 17 — he decided to join the U.S. Army.

“I always wanted to jump out of planes,” he explained. “Plus, I felt I owe a debt to the country.”

From 1981 to 1983, he served with the 82nd Airborne’s 508th Infantry at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“Being a Vietnamese in the U.S. Army at that time was not easy,” he noted. “I loved it.”

After his discharge, Bui traveled the U.S. doing all sorts of work. He peddled suits, sold cars, took photographs and worked on a shrimp boat.

“I never do a job for money,” he said . “I do it because I like the job.”

He got married in Boston, moved to Miami, separated from his wife and came to Virginia. A friend told him he ought to go back to school, which he did, earning a diploma from Northern Virginia Community College.

In 1995, he came to Blacksburg and enrolled at Virginia Tech. At the university, he said he earned enough credits for two degrees but never picked them up.

He began working for John Kline of John’s Camera Corner, repairing cameras, and later opened his own camera shop in Blacksburg.

“He’s a fixture in Blacksburg,” Kline said. “People can’t forget that smile.”

Kline said Bui’s appearance on “Survivor” does not surprise him.

“He’s the kind of person who will do very well,” he noted. “I don’t think he’ll have any trouble with physical challenges at all. Come on now, he hiked the Appalachian Trail. I hiked 50 miles of it and that was enough for me.”

“He’s a very strong personality,” Kline added. “He’ll either make it all the way or get booted out early. When people try to side up against each other, I think that will be very difficult for him. I think it would be very hard for him to lie.”

The next Survivor?

Just the mention of Bui’s name elicits fond laughter from those who know him.

“This guy is cool,” said Justin Schroeder, a former roommate of Bui’s who lives in California.

Schroeder had traveled in Vietnam when he met Bui in Blacksburg.

“We hit it off right away. Cao Boi invited me to stay at his place. After I left Virginia, I went back to Vietnam. He and Kristol came to visit me.”

Bui married 24-year-old Kristol Bond of Dublin two years ago. In 2003, the couple made their first trip to Bui’s homeland. There, they rescued a dog Bui named Charlie Woof from a restaurant.

Bui took the dog with him on the Appalachian Trail and now jokes that he wants “to go back to Vietnam and abolish dog-eating.”

Hopefully, canine casserole won’t be on the menu at the “Survivor” eating challenge.

But Schroeder doesn’t think Bui will have a problem.

“I think he would be fine with eating something gross,” he said. “The Vietnamese eat livers and hearts and intestines.”

Schroeder believes his friend’s color blindness will serve him well.

“I would really be surprised if the race issue bothered him,” he said. “He doesn’t judge people at all. He’s tuned in by people’s spirits.”

Allen Sisler, a bartender at the Christiansburg Moose Lodge where Bui serves as prelate, seconded that.

“He’s definitely one of a kind,” Sisler said of Bui. “There’s nobody like him. He can talk to anybody. It can be a stranger off the streets and he welcomes them with open arms.”

Sisler said he will be glued to the screen during this season’s “Survivor,” along with others at the Moose Lodge. Right now, he said, everyone has high hopes that Bui will go all the way. The way he sees it, Bui has only one weak point that might cause an early elimination at tribal council.

“He’s easy to get along with. That might intimidate the others on the show.”

On the Net:

www.cbs.com/

primetime/survivor13/