The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (37 page)

For me one of the greatest charms of doing stand-up around Australia is meeting the characters. I sat and drank and laughed with these four guys for several hours. Eric then said something else that stuck with me.

‘You know why we lost the war, Anh? It was all those bloody tunnels that the communists dug. We could never do that. You know why? Because with us Aussies, for every one guy who’s digging there’s got to be five standing around having a smoko.’ We all threw back our heads and roared.

A couple of nights later I did a show with Dave and I told him all about it. He slapped me hard on the back and said, ‘Congratulations! Anh, you will never ever do a gig harder than that in your life. Consider that from now on, you shall have no fear of an audience because they’ll all be easy compared to those old soldiers.’

He was right. That gig was the greatest gift, because I have not since encountered an audience even remotely that terrifying.

I was starting to do a lot more TV work now, making appearances on bigger programs like
The Footy Show
and
Rove
. Many of these were filmed in Melbourne and if they were Dad would always pick me up from the airport. At the time he had a couple of the crappiest cars you ever saw. One was a van and its engine was so loud that we simply couldn’t speak to each other while he was driving. It was like trying to talk over the sewing machines when we were kids. At the traffic lights, he’d stop and I’d try to get a quick question in.

‘So how you been, Dad?’ He’d start to answer me and then the lights would change,
RRRAAAARRRRR!
the deafening noise would start again. It was the only time in my life when I was grateful for bad traffic. Our staccato conversations would last the whole distance from the airport to his place.

Dad drove me to a TV appearance on the talk show
Rove Live
. We arrived at the front gates and the security guard must’ve freaked out about the Sherman tank he’d heard approaching. The guy took one look at our van and pointed us over to where the audience parked their cars.

‘Thank you,’ Dad said, and he started to head over there. Then the guard looked into the passenger side.

‘One second, sir.’ He squinted at me. ‘You’re Anh Do! Oh, I do apologise, you’re on the show tonight.’ He pointed us over to the VIP parking.

Dad drove his tank over and parked behind a row of black limousines. On the show that night were a bunch of superstars, including the American actor, Will Smith. Dad patted me on the shoulder.

‘How good’s this, Anh?’ We both laughed and laughed, realising the ridiculousness of the situation. Dad then grabbed my props case like the devoted roadie he was and we marched on in to film my live TV spot, which went magnificently well.

As I headed back to my dressing room a huge big guy in sunglasses stopped me in the hallway. He was one of Will Smith’s large entourage and he said in a rapper voice so deep it sounded like Barry White’s uncle, ‘I don’t really know what you were talking about, but they seemed to love it.’

My own entourage, which consisted of one skinny Vietnamese man with his pullover tucked deep into his pants and wearing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen, put out his hand and shook the big guy’s hand.

‘This is my son,’ Dad said proudly.

We went back to Dad’s place and cracked open some wine. When Dad was in a heightened state of happiness he liked to reminisce about old times. The happier he was, the further back he’d go. On this particular night, after seeing his son share the spotlight with Will Smith, Dad began talking about his eldest brother. Even in a drunken fog, my ears pricked up. Mum had told me that Uncle One had been murdered, but she’d never told me how. In fact, no one in the family ever dared talk about
how
. Except for Dad. And now Dad was about to tell me.

Uncle One’s name was Binh. He was the eldest of the ten children, and according to family folklore he was the most kind and gentle person. With their father often away at war, Uncle One took it upon himself to help his mother raise his nine younger siblings. He was the apple of my grandmother’s eye and had entered a seminary to study to become a priest. Everyone loved him.

When my family were planning to leave Vietnam, they pooled all their money together until they had enough to buy a boat. Uncle One was the eldest and Dad the most brash. The two of them negotiated to buy a boat on the black market and then travelled south for many, many hours to arrive at the bay where they were to meet the sellers.

When they came face-to-face with three men, they were told that only one person was to come with them to inspect the boat, which was moored another half-hour’s trek away. If there were more people, the communist guards would become suspicious. Dad volunteered to go, but Uncle One insisted that Dad should stay and wait, and that he’d go. So Dad and Uncle One split up the boat money between the two of them, and Uncle One went with the men, while Dad waited. An hour later… no Uncle One. An hour and a half later… no Uncle One.

‘I had an ill feeling in my stomach, Anh, like something was wrong.’ Dad looked up to the ceiling, and his face turned a deep red. ‘I felt an urge to go down the track, to see what had happened… in fact, as soon as Uncle One left with them, I felt an urge to track behind them.’

I listened, stunned.

‘I didn’t follow. I just waited.’

‘That’s what you were supposed to do, Dad.’

‘No… no, I was supposed to follow them when I felt the urge. But I didn’t.’ He was holding back tears. ‘I didn’t because… I was scared.’ Now he was crying.

‘Did you go in later?’ I asked him.

‘No. I turned around and went all the way back home…  without my brother… because I was scared.’

I’d never seen my father this honest before in my life. He took a huge gulp of beer, spilling it all over his mouth; it mixed with his tears and ran down his shirt.

‘The next day I returned with some of your uncles… we went into the village and asked around. An old lady told us that her neighbours had seen something strange in the bamboo bushes. We went in and found Uncle Binh’s body.’

As Dad said these words he broke down completely. He pounded on his chest in rage and sadness, sobbing violently, and said to himself: ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so sorry, Mother. I’m sorry for brother Binh’s death, Mother.’

In that moment I fully understood my father’s life philosophy: There’s only two times in life, there’s now and there’s too late.

The next morning Dad was driving me back to the airport so I could return to Sydney. ‘So… how’s your health, Dad?’ It was the standard answer I got.

‘Look at me… a hundred per cent,’ followed by a grin.

‘You still seeing a doctor?’

‘Of course I am.’

Truth be told, I hadn’t heard his speech slur in a while, so maybe he was getting better. I wasn’t sure. My father had a well-trained poker face; it was hard to tell when he was lying and when he wasn’t. I was just happy to believe. I had one more thing I wanted to ask him.

‘Dad, you know when you went in with the fake ID to get Uncle Thanh and Uncle Huy out of the re-education camp? How come you weren’t scared then?’ He laughed hysterically. ‘Is that what people say about me, Anh?’

‘Yeah, pretty much… like on the boat with the pirates and all the other times. Everyone reckons you have no fear.’

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
He was enjoying this immensely.

‘Let them believe it, son. But if you really want to know the truth, I was shitting myself! All of the those times… shitting myself!’
Hahaha
. ‘Just don’t let the bastards know you’re scared, then conquer them.’

Jesus.
He was scared all those times, and yet he still managed to pull it all off. In that moment my respect and love for this man went up tenfold.

All through my childhood my father taught me how to handle animals.

‘Don’t see them as animals, Anh, see them as young children. Many animals are as smart as a two-year-old child,’ he would say.

I had no idea my animal handling skills would land me my first ever regular acting role on a TV show.

In 2002, they began casting for a children’s show called
Don’t Blame Me
, a modern-day take on
Skippy
. It was an English–Australian co-production and it featured lots of kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles, and the like. It was about an English family who came out to live in Australia after they inherited a wildlife park that needed a lot of love. The producers wanted me to try out for the role of a park ranger named Vinnie. I was so grateful to them for creating a non-stereotypical role. Here was a Vietnamese-born expert on Australian animals, an Asian Steve Irwin. I really wanted this job. I already knew how I would audition for the part.

On the day of the audition, I walked in with Rocky, my budgie, sitting on my head and said hi to the casting agent. She took one look at the bird, screamed, and ran out of the room.

‘What the hell just happened?’ I stood there, shocked.

A man walked in and saw the look on my face.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Christine has a bird phobia. I’ll do the audition with you. Not your fault. You weren’t to know.’

This is going well
, I thought.

So we started reading the lines, and it was as if Rocky knew what was going on. He was the perfect cast mate. I’d turn to him and kept throwing him lines.