Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam
    Unavailable
    So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam
    Unavailable
    So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam
    Ebook293 pages4 hours

    So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam

    By Karin Esterhammer

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A lighthearted memoir of new friends, delicious food, and culture shock . . . A brisk chronicle of a family’s (mis)adventures in Vietnam” (Kirkus Reviews).
     
    During the 2008 recession, Karin Esterhammer was laid off from her job as a travel writer for the Los Angeles Times. No longer able to afford their comfortable lifestyle, she and her husband sold everything they had, rented out their house, and took their young autistic son to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. They thought that teaching English and living cheap for a year would help get them back on their feet.
     
    Boy, were they wrong . . .
     
    So Happiness to Meet You is the funny, inspiring, and eye-opening true account of one family’s quest to regain their financial footing while living anything but the high life. Esterhammer tells of her family’s trials, adventures, and victories in adapting to a foreign culture, overcoming the language barrier, and enduring the kind of heat and humidity that could drive a soul insane. She also paints an endearing portrait of neighbors who unabashedly stared into windows, kept cockroaches for luck, taught Karin how to shop and cook, and ultimately helped her find joy without Western trappings.
     
    Full of love, laughter—and a surprising amount of barbecued rat—this is a “loopy adventure and charming cautionary tale for anyone who’s ever dreamed of packing it in and starting over somewhere new” (Mark Haskell Smith, author of Naked at Lunch and Baked).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 19, 2017
    ISBN9781938849985
    Unavailable
    So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam

    Related to So Happiness to Meet You

    Related ebooks

    Asia Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      'So Happiness to Meet You' Spins an Improbable Premise Into a Deft Memoir

      Aug 31, 2017

      Author Karen Esterhammer talked her husband into selling nearly everything they owned to move to Vietnam with their 8-year-old son.

      3 min read

    • Article

      American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake

      Jun 26, 2017

      The best American writer of his generation would have been sixty-five this week. The post American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Refusenik

      Jan 1, 2021

      I was promised a girl held her glossy image, shatterable, ice skating on a Soviet pond. I’d never seen snow but for the cut out paper flakes hung in school hallways. I only knew rain as intermittent confusion. Los Angeles in the ’80s. We set fire to

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez

      Dec 10, 2019

      Can you imagine a world without frogs? Or even less of them? What is the night without a symphony of croaks? I want to ask that to everyone. The post A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Whole Texas Thing

      Oct 17, 2023

      The Whole Texas Thing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Elizabeth Wetmore

      Oct 7, 2020

      Elizabeth Wetmore
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

      Jun 10, 2020

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
      6 min read

    • Article

      One Word: Salty

      Jan 2, 2019

      One Word: Salty
      6 min read

    • Article

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men

      Mar 2, 2021

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men
      12 min read

    • Article

      In Country

      Jan 1, 2017

      In Country
      5 min read

    • Article

      Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri

      May 12, 2022

      "I come to fiction to suspend my disbelief. The book is a drug. I'm trying to take this drug. Get melted off this drug." The post Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Jun 1, 2018

      Table Talk
      9 min read

    • Article

      American Survival: The Millions Interviews Jung Yun

      Jan 19, 2022

      Growing up in an immigrant family, I was taught the value of hard work and pulling myself up by my bootstraps. But what happens when hard work isn’t enough? The post American Survival: The Millions Interviews Jung Yun appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: José Vadi

      Dec 13, 2021

      Simply put, these are the stories I wish I read growing up in California. The post A Year in Reading: José Vadi appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Know What You Write (Not Write What You Know)

      Feb 24, 2017

      In 2015 I relocated to Tennessee from Louisiana, where my family’s lineage dates back to 1785. During and immediately following the move, I began writing many of the new stories that would eventually appear in my collection Signals: New and Selected

      4 min read

    • Article

      Eric Nguyen

      Jun 16, 2021

      Eric Nguyen
      5 min read

    • Article

      LETTER FROM Kleinmond

      Dec 3, 2021

      I like winter. The colder and wetter it is, the deeper I huddle into my cocoon of warm beverages, broody Brontë novels and Harry Potter reruns. And in any case, since the “big C” struck and social activities wound down, my hermit party of one hasn’t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Porochista Khakpour on Stephen Dixon: An Excerpt from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #63

      Aug 4, 2021

      When you really live, and when you really tackle that life in your art, the pages never quite end. The narration might drop out, but the story is still in motion. If done right, the border blurs, the boundaries of life and of art fade into each other

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kaulie Lewis

      Dec 23, 2018

      I've tried to bridge the growing distance between my literary life and daily reality by tackling fiction and nonfiction that feels closer to the world in which I live, commonly known as Texas. The post A Year in Reading: Kaulie Lewis appeared first

      3 min read

    Reviews for So Happiness to Meet You

    4/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words