On a tiny screen at the back of a headrest, an animated globe slowly spun to a thin white line curving from Auckland to Sydney with a miniature plane sitting at its center. There I was, strapped to my seat in a Boeing 787, which was spreading its wings across the Tasmanian Sea, when a feeling of slight panic started to kick in.

The sun was blinding in the small window next to me. There was nothing I could see but the meandering white clouds drifting by. There were so many of them. To the point that it felt like we were travelling over a blank sheet of paper, and the plane is a peculiar em dash connecting nothing to nothing. So lonely is this em dash, and no one can hear us now, not even if we were all screaming. I grabbed my seat a little tighter.

But the ordeal didn’t last long. The flight was just under 4 hours, and I was poring over Haruki Murakami’s An Elephant Vanished to distract myself. Once in a while, a voice speaking in Spanish came to me by way of an old speaker located somewhere that I could not see. The voice interrupted my reading because I couldn’t tell if it might be saying something important in English. Hell, if no one can hear us, I wanted to at least know where to reach for the life jacket.

A pattern suddenly became clear to me: like a child, I have an irrational fear of new places. And the newer a place is, the more familiar my book has to be, which is why I chose a Murakami book.

Upon landing, I took a train on the T8 line from the airport to my hotel in Wynyard. I was sitting by the large window on the lower deck of the double-decker train. The train was half-submerged underground, so while the upper deck was slightly above my head while I was standing on the platform, sitting in the lower deck set my eyes’ level at ground level, and that gave me a perfect view of the variety of footwear in Sydney.

On my left was a young couple having a vivid conversation about how unsure they felt about their relationships with other people. I “accidentally” eavesdropped on them with my noise-cancelling headphones.

“I don’t know, I think Josh secretly hates me,” the girl said.
“Nah, he’s just not really good at telling people how he feels,” the guy reassured her. “He has always struggled with that. He told me he could never find the right words to express himself, and everyone often misunderstood him.”
“Lily seems to understand him just fine.”
“Yeah, Lily is different. She told me the other day she thinks you have the best taste in music in the friend group.”
“Are you jealous of that?”
“Not really, no. I know my taste is better than yours.”
“No jealousy in that at all.”
“But you know, even if Josh actually hates you, I still like talking to you.”
“Yeah?” she said, looking in his eyes as if none of those things mattered. “I like talking to you, too.”

Through the reflection of the train window, I watched as she put her legs on his thigh and they smiled at each other. An air of intimacy filled the train, and I was pulled back to reality again. Better leave these people alone, I thought. I put on Night Train by The Oscar Peterson Trio and distracted myself from the couple by trying to follow the piano melody of C-jam Blues.

About half an hour later, I arrived at my hotel, checked in, left my bags, and began walking in the general direction of the central station. Getting on an early flight had filled my stomach with a violent hunger for real food. My only goal at the time was to find a lunch spot, and I heard there are plenty of good restaurants near the central station.

It turns out to be a slightly bad move. When faced with so many food options, I was stumped by my own free will. My empty stomach was growling louder as I walked down Spice Alley, Paddy’s Haymarket and Chinatown. There was a long line of people waiting for what seemed to be bubble tea in Chinatown. The line was so long that it took me 7 whole seconds to walk to the end. I looked at the people in line, thinking it’s ridiculous to wait so long for just TEA, and they all suddenly stared back at me. So I pressed on with my journey, awkwardly looking down at my shoes.

In the end, I settled for an average Katsudon (deep-fried pork cutlets on rice with a little bit of Japanese curry on top) from a food stall in Paddy’s Haymarket. The owner said my food would be ready in 10 minutes, so I walked around the market, wondering who Paddy was and what made a person want to start a market.

Turns out nobody knows either. The market has been around since the 1830s, and the name Paddy is thought to have been copied from another market in Liverpool. Nevertheless, standing in a maze of food stalls and shopping units housed by a giant orange-brick wall building, I could feel the air of real character; one that was not showy or performative but quiet, subtle and well curated over time.

This shop remind me of In the Mood for Love (2000)

The rest of the day was spent walking through shopping arcades and hopping from bookstore to bookstore. I was looking for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, because my local bookstore in Auckland didn’t have it in stock.

I first visited Kinokuniya but came out with no result; they had only Hell’s Angels and The Rum Diary. But I did find a few other interesting books on their shelves.

I stopped by Abbey’s Bookshop opposite Sydney Town Hall and found nothing but The Rum Diary. The store felt like it first opened in the early 2000s and has never changed anything since. Their selection was decent, but the building was old and stuffy. I was getting sweaty in my t-shirt following the nice lady who worked there. She said that the book was in stock, but after checking on the social sciences and even the fiction shelves to no avail, we accepted that the book had disappeared without a trace.

Someone must have placed it on the wrong shelf somewhere, the lady at Abbey’s said with frustration. I felt a sudden relief that I didn’t have to look for the book in this steamy building. That was her job now, and I felt bad for her. She said she could try ordering the book for me, but I told her not to bother since I was just visiting Sydney for a few days. She told me I can give “dim-micks” a call to see if they have it.

“Dim-micks?” I asked with furrowed brows.
“Yeah, that store on George St, a few blocks away.”

I realised that she was talking about Dymocks. I was still pretty far from getting used to this Aussie accent.

The next morning, I went to grab a coffee and a warm croissant for brunch. The guy at the counter asked for my name, to which I answered truthfully, and so he proceeded to butcher it across the cup and said to me, “It won’t be long.”

howg? ai rứa bạn?

But I didn’t blame him. While most people I knew who moved overseas all decided to adopt an English name, I, for some reason, insisted on keeping my Vietnamese name. So it’s no surprise, and in fact expected, when people mispronounce or miswrite my name.

The worst time was perhaps when I came to this posh sandwich place in Auckland, where they had a stone oven to heat up your sandwich. At the time, the staff was working at 100% capacity. The lunchtime crowd was relentless. One girl behind the counter asked what my name was and hurriedly typed it down on the screen. Later, when my sandwich was hot and ready, my name was scribbled on the bag as “Cunge” rather than “Hung,” and one of the staff shouted “CUNT!” gazing wearily left and right at the long line of people waiting. We all looked around with extreme curiosity. Only when he shouted the second time that I realised: I was maybe the CUNT he was looking for.

While I was having my coffee under the lovely morning sun, a curious creature with a long black beak approached me, but pretended that I wasn’t there. I snapped a picture and asked a few friends about it.

It was, of course, the legendary “bin chicken.” These poor creatures roamed around all day, scouting for food in bins, pretending like nobody was watching, but in their eyes, I can see a twinge of fear; was it of danger? Or judgment? Either way, never had the experience of social anxiety expressed so powerfully by a bird. If this is when I was 17 and new to living aboard, this bird would definitely be my spirit animal.

Around noon, I had the idea to walk across the Harbour Bridge. The sun was shining brightly, and the touristy area around Circular Quay was excruciatingly boring. It was your typical setup - seaside restaurants that never had an empty seat, street performers half-heartedly performing the same thing day after day, while thousands of people walked by, gathering in herds, taking the same pictures from the same angles by the waterfront, ticking boxes off their list. The whole place was just one big theme park, and I wanted to get away as far as possible. I took the ferry to North Sydney and enjoyed the view of the Opera House along the way.

A group of friends sitting behind me was talking about how Sydney has changed. One of them was visiting Sydney for the first time, and she was being given a full tour of the buildings along the shores by these two guys in shades. As our ferry veered right, one of the guys pointed to a cottage on the left, saying, “That’s the house of the prime minister,” which piqued my interest. He was talking about Kirribilli House, a gothic-style cottage sitting near the ocean. I looked at the house’s backyard with stairs leading down to the water, thinking how funny it would be to spot the prime minister hanging out on those steps, submerging their feet in the warm ocean, trousers rolled to their knees, and eating ice cream to cool down on this hot summer day.

There was none of that cosmopolitan metropolis vibe in North Sydney, but rather the vibe of an old-timey rural European town where farmers and pedlars sell their goods on an unattended self-serve wagon and locals put their money in a tin box to complete their transactions. Hardly anyone was outside, and the whole place was submerged in a pleasant silence.

I took a leisurely stroll towards the Harbour Bridge from Kirribilli Wharf, making a minimal amount of noise to preserve the fragile peace of the neighbourhood. I walk in small and soft steps, my eyes fixated on the blossoming jacaranda trees along the sidewalks. I had a flashback of an hour spent enjoying the silence under the cherry blossoms in full bloom in Kobe, Japan. It carries a different atmosphere but almost the same silence.

I walked towards the end of Blight St, made a right at Broughton St and left turn onto the steps that took me on the harbour bridge. From afar, the gigantic bridge looked like it’d take me hours to get from one side to another, but the total walk turned out to only take around 28 minutes. That is, including the occasional pit stops for rehydration and taking pictures of the breathtaking view. The whole thing went by much faster than I had anticipated.

At the tallest point of the bridge, the violent wind tried to knock me down, before changing tactic to blowing dust from the highway on my face. The only friendly thing up there was the few security guards looking after the pedestrian lane, possibly as a last resort in case the tall fences didn’t work.

From there, I walked straight to my hotel and went back to my room to rest. My feet were pulsing with fatigue. I shouldn’t have walked so much, but it was my last day in Sydney before leaving for Melbourne. Outside, the afternoon sun had turned deep yellow, and Sydney’s metabolism had begun to slow down. A sudden craving for Ramen came over me as sleep took away my consciousness.

Ramen always puts me to sleep. Perhaps even more effective than sleeping pills.

When I awoke, the street lights had just been turned on. My stomach made a sad growling sound.

I left my room, checking my bag several times, making sure the key was there. The front desk closed at 6 PM, and getting stuck outside in the CBD on a Friday night doesn’t sound like the smartest idea. The bars on the other side of the street were getting more crowded by the minute.

The restaurants in the city are mostly fancy ones, costing $50 or above per person. So I kept on walking further south and ended up in Westfield, hoping that they’d still have some cheap ramen at Ippudo. Lucky for me, the restaurant closes at 8 and the staff were happy to take me to a counter seat.

As a solo traveller, the counter seat carries a special meaning for me. In bars, it signifies openness. Everybody comes to the counter to order, and bartenders are bound to make conversation with you. It’s a place that belongs to the public. But in a restaurant, it’s a place for solitude. There’s no distraction at the counter seat. It’s where you sit to forget about whatever was going on because the food is the main act. And after the last drop of soup has disappeared from the bowl, you stand up, with a new perspective, and feel a sense of gratitude fill up your stomach. To me, not finishing up the soup is like skipping the credits at the end of a movie.

“One Miso Tonkotsu Ramen for youuuu,” a staff member said to me. “Please enjoyyy..”

For some reason, they always stretched the end of the sentence at ramen restaurants.

“Thank youuuu,” I said, matching their speaking style and devoured my bowl of noodles.

I left the restaurant when the staff began to clear the nearby empty tables, and there were only a few diners left at the counter.

When I was back at my hotel, the opposite bar had completely overflowed with people. Some in business suits, some in jeans and T-shirts. They were talking, singing, and laughing loudly until nearly 2 AM. I lay in bed listening to the drunken laughter mixing with motorcycle engines and, at one point, the unmistakable sound of a cat being murdered, though somehow it got away.

I thought about the couple on the train, the bin chicken pretending I didn’t exist, the guy miswriting my name, the bookstore lady pronouncing Dymocks weirdly. Maybe that was all it was — just different ways of saying the same thing. And although I might not realised it, everyone was trying to reach me in their own way.

I clutched my pillow like it was a flotation device. This was my last night before Melbourne, and the city was determined to scream its personality into my window until 2 AM.

I should probably have had more ramen.