A Fat Purple Fig

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.