A Fat Purple Fig

I once spent valuable time with a person who believed the sole purpose of life is to ‘work out who you are’. I’m not sure if I’m achieving that, but I do know I spend at least as much time thinking about everything I do, as I spend actually doing it. This is never more apparent than when I am alone, and have a pre-conceived idea of who I should be in in that particular moment. Who, for example, visits restaurants that have a Michelin star?

Not me (according to me).

‘I’m going to regret this,’ I say to Eva, ‘because I will always remember that I ordered the Pigmund Freud from The Hungry Pig for lunch in Vietnam. And I made someone deliver it to me on a scooter in a thunderstorm.’

It is so hot here, the rising sun feels coercive. When it appears, the temperature is a number that will not be repeated until midnight, or thereabouts, so a creeping dread accompanies the mercury rising. A silent voice entreats, ‘Leave. Leave now. Get out and do something’.

I am a newly-turned sucker for the wind in my hair. Tonight’s tour guide, Hieu, is immediately likeable. We shake hands upon meeting and, when asked how to pronounce his name, he flashes a big, warm smile and says, ‘Hieu…like Hugh Jackman!’. Dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and crocs, he feels like a neighbour, or perhaps a nephew. His scooter looks like the scooter he rides every day, likely because it is. The spare helmet is, as expected, too small, so I perch it on the back of my head…and we’re away.

Well, there is only one thing for it, but to get on the back of one of the bikes. Hyped up on coffee, and after witnessing two scooter falls in the rain (after which the victims were honked at furiously for blocking traffic), I decide it is time to throw caution (and my no doubt slow-to-heal body) to the wind, and book a food tour with these guys.

I blame the caffeine.

We leave at 8am, bound for 42 Nguyen Hue, an apartment building that housed government officials and shipyard workers before becoming a social media darling known as the Coffee Apartments. Getting there is more challenging than anticipated. ‘I can feel sweat streaming down my inner thighs’, I tell a harried Eva, whose own droplets are forming on her temples and chin. The heat is cloying, but nobody but us seems remotely bothered by it, slurping their soup on stools dotted all over the footpaths.

It can be satisfying to be wronged, to stand on the side of the right and rally those around you to sympathy. The truth is, difficulties of life aside, the late visas were entirely my fault. When they arrived, however, the greater problem was that I didn’t in fact have my ‘hopes up’ after all. In fact, I was quite enjoying the idea of staying at home, topped off with the added martyrdom of having missed out.

Tuesday announces our outing to Winchester, and its famed cathedral. We walk to Woolston station, in the first stage of a carefully-planned day. I am reminded of how much I love trains, not so much for their mechanics, as for the way they support a community at work and leisure. Social norms are reflected in public transport, in the way people share close quarters with one another, although, here, I spy nothing of particular note.

Easter Sunday brings a heavy hangover and, mercifully, a late barbeque. Our driver is cooler than us, and mans the stick shift like a weapon. As we tear down Southampton’s streets, I try to pinpoint the key differences between the suburbs here and those at home, and particularly those in the inner west of Sydney, where there is a multitude of terraces and space is at a premium. I am familiar with the narrow streets and limited parking, and the compact rooms and squares of outdoor space. It is different here though. We may have more vegetation, and they may have more exposed brick, but it’s hard to say.

Part I

‘We’re going on a little walk’, my cousin announces, as I open the front door. Marley, her enthusiastic Labrador, pushes past me with an excitement that I struggle to match.