One iced milk coffee, please!

Dawn in Hong Kong, photographed by two sleep-derived travellers 

"Delete 879 items from all of your devices?" A black line of text appeared on the screen.

The second I hit the button on the Pad image gallery to delete the enormous bulk of screenshots from my lectures and assignments from second year, it still hadn't dawned on me that I was two months into summer. My backpack sat near the staircase, with the haphazardly arranged folder still placed inside, waiting for me to pick up and sprint to the bus every weekday morning. Now that I wouldn't be taking summer courses this year, the passage of time was felt in every bit of my presence. Winter mornings rushing to catch the bus at the crack of dawn have been replaced with waking up to the warm sunshine creeping outside the window, the laughter of playful kids from my neighbourhood elementary school lighting up the day. A cup of lukewarm milk coffee on the rocking bus to get me through the first half of 9:30 AM lectures has now become a chilly cup of homemade matcha sipped slowly on my rotating chair as I slowly checked off the items on my to-do list — a newspaper article to finish, data to collect, practice problems to do, emails to send, or just groceries to get. Being always bored with just an hour or two of reels, I would take time off for every hour to gaze outside, then return to my normal grind until I started craving some fresh air and going for a long walk when the heat outside abated. The weekdays flew fast after staring for a while at organic chemistry problems, though. 

 Little did I know how much I would miss my favorite tree on campus

The early June sky was getting into a crisp blue shade, without any traces of the torrential drizzles. As soon as the weekend came, by noon, my sister and I were already walking down the sidewalk near the train station, constantly sipping iced caramel macchiatos after exceeding our daily step count around AC-blasted shopping malls, the tantalizing scent of baked pineapple buns from a nearby bakery lingering in the pollen-dusted air. Some days, we would take the bus to Steveston to see the fish market, with vendors and customers busily chattering and exchanging colourful banknotes fluttering in the strong riparian wind. Strings of familiar intonations and diphthongs that I've heard my entire life filled the air (fun fact: most of the vendor owners are Vietnamese!), radiating from my chest an immense warmth every time I step on the rocking deck leading down to the anchored boats. I gazed longingly at the salmon with silvery scales and piles of red shrimp next to spiky sea urchins dripping with seawater, my shoulders bumping with families also admiring the bountiful catches. There was also a small farmers' market nearby that day, so we bought a giant bag of mixed popcorn and munched our way through the lupin fields at Garry Point Park. As I watched the kites soaring, the sails puffing like bellies filled to the brim with salty breezes, I could feel my thoughts flying beyond the pristine white clouds.

Crispy kettle corn! Crispy kettle corn!

Getting tanned for real this time

After nearly two months enjoying the brief BC summer, I embarked on a frenzy of packing for my trip back to Saigon. On another steaming day, I went on my annual haul, where we piled every item you could think of to open an exact miniature replica of Walmart on a Saigon sidewalk to meet the requests of the sheer size of my family and relatives and their acquaintances, who saved a fortune for the glories of consumerism: oranges, apples, at least twenty chocolate bars, five kilos of supplements, and cans of spagetthi sauce I didn't even have space for in my luggage. Then came a few days of exerting our full creativity on thinking about how to finish the leftover whole ingredients in our fridge. My sister, inheriting my mom's talent for cooking, came up with quite a few good ones, such as making Korean banchan with leftover spinach drizzled with vinegar and sesame oil. After cleaning inside and out our house, we finally returned to the soft carpets of Vancouver International Airport to board the classic red-eye flight taking off at 2:00 AM for Hong Kong. I slept for a bit, then relieved the boredom of eleven hours of tossing and turning among sardine-packed rows with two winning streaks of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, ten attempts at winning 2048, and a cheesy Vietnamese romance movie adapted from one of Nguyen Nhat Anh's novels. 

I guessed the last question, but in a trivia where they asked about Enrique Peña Nieto out of the blue? Count me in.

The roaring abyss of aircraft engine sounds was finally over when the plane landed in Hong Kong at dawn for our transit. After six years, I saw Hong Kong again among a vast azure ocean with emerald speckles of islands. And suddenly, all of my weariness vanished when I saw the majestic first rays of sunshine behind the lush mountains backing the soaring skyscrapers on the Chek Lap Kok island, with Ngong Ping 360s gondola lifts moving slowly towards to top of a hill. After almost tripping a few times through the shiny terminal floors (did I remember correctly that everything was carpeted back in the 2010s?), I was finally nestled on a plastic chair in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Terminal A's (almost) ground level facing the runway. The sun was radiating brilliantly on the shiny airplanes, each with a destination miles or oceans away. My breath was taken away once more with the amazing breakfast I had in the restaurant: steaming congee with thousand-year egg with a jelly coat black like onyx and pork sticky rice delicately wrapped in lotus leaves, the light floral aroma enough to soothe any tired traveller. I also tried yuen yueng, a Hong Kong coffee mixed with iced milk tea — and just for 3 HKD (53 Canadian cents), life would never be the same. My last view of this beautiful city was through the window of another Cathay airplane, mesmerized at the Pacific Ocean shrouded beyond the cloud blanket, just to see a glimpse of the sprawling buildings beyond the skyline. Till we meet again, Fragrant Harbor!

I would stay awake for another 24 hours again for this heavenly breakfast and yuenyueng in a million lifetimes

Two hours later, just around noon, I was woken up by the thump of the aircraft wheels running on the bumpy airway of Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport in Saigon, where the sheer heat of the monsoon season could be felt soon after landing. The gentle land embraced me again as if a year had been forever, kissing my cheek with a wisp of humid breeze, stroking my black hair with a few drops of rain when I left the arrivals gate for home. Through the taxi window, ensconced in my parents' loving arms touching my shoulders, I saw the jets of motorcycles, the bustling coffee shops, and afar, draped in long orchid vines flowing from the balconies, my childhood home, my căn nhà tuổi thơ— where I know the best meal on Earth was waiting for me, plus endless bánh mì and laughter or the next two months. 

Oh, and a fuzzy whiny four-legged creature too, I knew for sure. But why didn't I expect Nest to sit like a duck?

A pomelo tree and orchids in my garden. The pomelo, first seen in March, wouldn't be ready to be picked until October, according to my mom. Imagine waiting a whole seven months for a fruit that you don't even know if it's going to be sweet or tart (it's a Russian roulette game).

The only drink that could rival yuenyueng. I've recently discovered that I could knock out two cups of Vietnamese iced coffee a day, one at 4 PM and still sleep by 11 PM. Such is life.