SO HAPPINESS TO MEET YOU

Nonfiction

Lock you door. People very friendly.

SO HAPPINESS TO MEET YOU:
Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam

By Karin Esterhammer

259 pp. Prospect Park Books

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

It’s 2008, and the recession has destroyed non-essential jobs like journalism (Esterhammer’s profession) and selling soundtracks from old films (her husband’s business) (honest, I’m not making this up). They realize they can’t afford their L. A. house.

“So,” she writes, “I did what I always do to ease existential pain. I bought airline tickets…While America was closing up shop, it seemed perfectly reasonable to leave the country and head to Southeast Asia.”

Esterhammer and her husband, Robin, had visited Vietnam two years before. Her recollection was of an intriguing culture but, more to the point, of a tightwad’s dream: a huge bowl of pho cost 85 cents; parking a motorbike all day cost eleven cents; a gorgeous linen blouse, three bucks. And the country’s growing economy made learning English a very desirable goal. Robin could teach it, she figured, and she could supplement his earnings with travel writing.

Her mother’s reaction to the plan was typical: “What will you do for work? Will the Communists even let Americans live there? More important, will they let you out?”

As the book begins the author sounds like a thirty-something, but as it develops we learn that she has grown daughters and that her son, Kai, is an adoptee from Crimea who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and could be a poster child for ADHD.

Esterhammer shoots herself in the foot in the first chapter, trying too hard to be funny. Things improve when she sits back and lets the peculiarities – for a Westerner – of life in an Asian culture take their course.

In a taxi with Mr. Nice House, who appears to have only one property to rent, the street is so narrow that ...

I feared we’d sideswipe a house and knock its many occupants out. We could only go as fast as the man walking in front of us who pushed a wide wooden cart heaped with roasted peanuts. Peanut Man looked around at us, nodded, and smiled sheepishly, but he had nowhere to pull off out of our way because the sidewalks were cluttered with goods spilling out of each shop…food vendors selling noodle soup, hot soy milk, French-bread sub sandwiches and iced coffee.

The house is nine feet wide. The Western concept of privacy does not apply. “Every house’s ground floor opened completely in the front, like an American garage…in the daytime, one’s family life in the living room was splayed out for all to see.”

To Kai’s joy, their house is suddenly filled with curious children; language doesn’t seem to be a barrier. The visit is cut short when a young man walks up to the doorway and speaks brusquely to the kids, who put on their sandals and leave.

“Sorry…This first time we see foreigner in neighborhood.” He holds out his hand. “Welcome. I’m  Hung…I work at Sheraton Hotel, so I have much contact with foreigner. You must lock you door. Vietnamese people very friendly. They want meet you. They want walk in you house. Maybe you can’t get them back out!

His name is pronounced “home,” so the author calls him Homie. He proves to be the key to their integration into Doan Van Bo Street and Vietnam life.

She meets a gray-haired little woman who is the entire staff of the neighborhood pharmacy. “Hello, Madam, I talk a little bit English. You come my house, talk to me?” Esterhammer does. The woman, Jade, confides in whispers that she was a nurse for American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The author says, “My inner journalist was itching to pull out a notebook and debrief her…But I held myself back. It occurred to me that saying too much might be dangerous for her.”

The Vietnamese seem so open and friendly that it is hard for the author to remember this is still a Communist country, and open discussion of the war, politics, or human rights is never a good idea. Shortly after arriving, she and Robin notice clicking noises on their phone. It continues for six months, until the government finally loses interest. Early in their stay their landlord drops by and casually asks when her upcoming trip to America will be.

My head flinched backward. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Oh, sorry, my police friend say you go soon.’ 

Then I remembered: I had been pricing airfares back to Los Angeles on the Internet in case some emergency came up.”

Emergencies do come up, so many that they can’t afford to go back. They feel trapped. They both take the arduous course to become qualified as English teachers; they both hate teaching. Then suddenly Robin’s business hits pay dirt. They have enough money to leave – but they realize they have friends, they have roots in Vietnam. They’re not sure they want to.

This is a charming account, ringing with veracity.

Once a journalist chasing facts for The Boston Globe, Marty Carlock finds it’s more fun to make things up. Her short fiction has appeared in a dozen-plus journals and quarterly publications. She’s author of A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston and several unpublished novels. She sometimes writes for Sculpture and Landscape Architecture magazines.