The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (41 page)

‘Why not?’

It was during
Dancing with the Stars
, and Channel 7 was doing a cross promotion, so they invited five of us who were already on
Dancing
to do a week on
Deal or no Deal
, which they called
Dancing with the Deals
. We weren’t playing for ourselves, we were playing on behalf of lucky home viewers.

The morning I was due on the show I woke up from a dream where I picked case number twenty-three, and it had $200 000 in it. So there I am, my first time on a game show, and host Andrew O’Keefe turned and asked me, ‘Which case, Anh?’

‘Andrew, I had a dream about case twenty-three. So let’s go with that.’

So case twenty-three got placed in the middle of the studio unopened. It was now my case, and wouldn’t get opened until the end. We started opening up the other cases.

I was playing pretty well,
wham, wham, wham
, and I was feeling pretty good, like this was easy, like there was that thing they called ‘flow’ happening. After all, I’d had a dream.

We got to the end of the episode, and there was only one single case left to open. Andrew looked at me.

‘Anh, you crazy kid, the bank is offering a guaranteed $125 000. Do you want to risk that to go for the $200 000?’

I had heard beforehand that in the history of the show in Australia, over nearly one thousand episodes, only one person had ever won the top prize. I thought about it.

I have a fifty-fifty chance here of winning
$
200 000, what the hell do I do?

Just then my father’s voice was inside my head: ‘There’s now and there’s too late, son—give it a crack and see what happens!’

Shut up, Dad!
Here I was, having a conversation with my father in my head, while I was filming a TV show.

The crowd couldn’t believe I was even thinking about it. ‘Take the deal!’ they screamed. I looked around and they were all saying the same thing : ‘Take the deal, take the deal!’

Now or too late. You guys aren’t me.
I turned to Andrew.

‘I had a dream, Andrew. Let’s go for it.’

The drum roll came on, I walked over to my case, flicked open the latch and opened it up to reveal—
$200 000!

WHOO-HOOO!!!!!!

The audience were on their feet, going bananas. I’ve never had another dream come true in my life. I just stood there in ecstasy.

But here’s the best bit. The show was pre-filmed, and about two months later it was about to go to air and someone at Channel 7 called me up.

‘Anh, you want to know who that $200 000 is going to go to?’

I said, ‘Tell me.’

The producer was so excited, like she couldn’t wait to tell me. ‘Well the most amazing thing has happened. A totally independent body that draws the home viewer winner with a computer has randomly picked a young man called Daniel Martin. Daniel is a stay-at-home carer for his wife who has a hole in her heart. They have two kids, six and four years old, and they live in housing commission.’

Wow.

‘Anh, can you fly down to Melbourne to film a story for
Today Tonight
?’

‘Of course I can.’

I hung up the phone and looked up into the heavens. I was elated, I was happy, I was moved. But I wasn’t at all surprised. I had dreamed it. I didn’t see the name of the winner in my dream, but I remember waking up with a feeling like I’d won it for a poor, battling family.

So there I was, in working-class Broadmeadows, in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, and huddled next to me was Andrew O’Keefe, the host of
Deal or No Deal
. It must’ve been a peculiar sight, two very well-known adult men crouching behind some spindly bushes outside a tiny little fibro shack, each holding one end of a four-foot-long TV cheque with $200 000 written on it. Like lottery secret agents.

‘We’ve got to move back a bit,’ I said to Andrew, ‘otherwise they’ll see us in the reflection off that adjacent window.’ I was good at hiding around houses, lots of training from all those times when the landlord came to collect the late rent, and Khoa, Tram and I would hide from him. This time I was hiding to surprise a family not with a threat of eviction or violence, but to hand them two hundred grand.

Inside the house the TV crew were filming Daniel Martin and his wife Sarah, watching me on
Deal or No Deal
. The couple had gotten their nanna to look after the kids so it was just the two of them sitting there on their little couch trembling, sweating, gasping in horror every time I risked another larger sum of money.

The producers had told the couple I was representing them, but had not said what I’d won. This poor couple were watching a crazy impulsive comedian risking their money, in figures so large they had never in their life contemplated having.

It got to the end of the episode, the bit where I decided to risk a $125 000, and Daniel and Sarah were holding each other tightly. Sarah had her head buried into Daniel’s shoulder, and she was trembling like a three-year-old child after a nightmare. She was shaking so much it was disturbing. I think to myself,
Anh you idiot, she’s got a weak heart!
A big surprise is fun, but I really didn’t want anyone dying.

They watch me open the case… 
BOOM!

Two hundred thousand dollars!

Daniel and Sarah just hugged each other in complete silence, except for the occasional sound of a young couple sobbing. Andrew and I walked in through the front door—the two grown men who had been hiding in the bushes had now turned into two grown men trying very hard not to cry. We handed them the big cheque and Daniel gave me a hug, his tears wetting my ear and my neck.

‘Thank you, Anh. We’ve got the money to look after Sarah now… my wife’s going to be okay now… thank you.’

People often asked me afterwards, ‘If you had known you were playing for that poor family, would you have risked it?’

‘Of course not!’

I would’ve stopped at a few thousand bucks. I really would have stopped much sooner.

Others asked me: ‘If you were playing for you and not a home viewer, would you have risked it?’

‘Absolutely… There’s only two times in life, there’s now, and there’s too late.’

Channel 7 were hosting the Beijing Olympics coverage and offered me my first solo show. It was a one-hour-long travelogue-style program. Over three weeks I visited a bunch of different cities in China to get up to silly business.

We stopped off at a rural restaurant and I asked the owner (via my interpreter) for the best delicacy in the house. He took me out the back where he had a hidden basket. He opened it up and there was a dark writhing ball of black snakes. He grabbed one and, without warning me, chopped its head off. I watched a still ‘alive’ head wriggling on the ground, looking at me, and almost fainted. I then got ushered over to a table in the restaurant and soon the stir-fried snake with black bean sauce was brought out. I tried it and it was fine, a bit like really tough fish, but actually quite tasty.

Then the owner put a shot glass in front of me and it contained a little green jelly sort of thing inside some rice wine.

‘Drink it, drink it,’ he said smiling.

I’ll just knock this back, it’ll be like an oyster and I won’t be able to taste it
, I thought. Just before I went to pick it up, however, the owner grabbed a chopstick and poked the ‘thing’. A thick green slime oozed out of it. I turned to the camera, flashed my best TV smile, and quickly swallowed the whole glass in one quick movement, like a tequila shot.

‘Hmm. That’s no so baaa…’ But I couldn’t even finish the word, I felt the contents of my stomach shoot up my throat. I clamped my mouth shut, covered it with both hands, then looked around furiously and ran to the nearest window, where I violently threw up, just missing a goat outside. My body screamed at me:
No good, Anh, no good at all
…

The owner of the restaurant and his wife laughed their heads off.

‘What was in the glass?’ I asked them.

‘Snake gallbladder.’ I suppressed my disgust.

‘Was it a joke?’

‘No, for real. It helps ‘men’s issues’, you know?’ the owner winked and nudged me in the ribs.

When I got back home I said to Suzie, ‘If I ever have “manhood problems” when we’re in China, well, sorry sweetheart, but you’re missing out because I’m never drinking snake gallbladder again.’

Because my crew was with Channel 7, the Olympic broadcaster, we were given passes into the Olympic compound. At the time, about two months before the games started, no one in the outside world had seen the inside of the Birds Nest stadium. As we drove into the compound, about a thousand Chinese males, ranging from ten-year-olds to adults, marched in, all dressed in white. They were rehearsing for the Opening Ceremony.
Awesome.

‘Film this!’ I called out to the cameraman as I hopped out of our car and found a row of guys about my height, then quickly slipped in and began marching with them. Apart from the fact that they were all wearing white and my shirt was blue, I fitted in perfectly. The Chinese marchers either side of me snuck a look, but didn’t know what to do, so they kept going. Because there was a cameraman filming me, they must have thought I was an official, or at least part of the spectacle in some way.

We got through the first bunch of guards. My heart was thumping.
I’ve just pulled a Chaser-style stunt in a communist country
, I thought to myself.

There were ten guards around, and they all had pistols and rifles and serious looks on their faces. We approached the very last checkpoint. After that we were inside the Birds Nest! Me and the cameraman.

What do we do?
Pull out before we get a look inside the Birds Nest, but save ourselves from arrest and preserve a month’s worth of footage, or have a crack? It was a no-brainer. In we went. We didn’t get far.

‘Excuse me, sir. Who are you? Where’s your paperwork?’ the guard asked in halting English as he put out a long arm. I kept a straight face.