Chris and I met his best friend at a relatively new Indian restaurant called Vel Restaurant & Cafe in the Carrum Downs suburb of Melbourne today for a quick Christmas Eve lunch during his lunch break (it was actually our second time eating here this trip, as Chris’s aunt and uncle introduced us to this South Indian restaurant last week when we saw them – the dosa here is delicious!). He got there earlier than we did and sat at a table that was apparently dirty, covered in crumbs and food from the previous diners who were at the table. When we arrived and he got up to greet us, a worker immediately noticed and came over to clean the table he was sitting at. Chris’s friend laughed, saying, “Wow, so I was sitting here for at least 15 minutes on my phone and never got looked at, yet as soon as CJ comes in and he’s a brown person, the table magically gets cleaned! That’s service!”

Chris’s best friend is a white Australian, clearly a minority in this very crowded and busy Indian restaurant full of Indian families with their children, in addition to this massive birthday party of a very large extended Indian family celebrating in the back of the restaurant. It was a bit comical to see the “reverse racism” that he experienced today as a white person in a predominantly white person. He took it all in stride and laughed about it with us, though. He knew the food was going to be good, so he sucked it up. Plus, Chris was his brown “majority” savior and would make sure he got his food.

Every year, the city of Melbourne gets fully decked out for the holiday season in Christmas trees and lights everywhere. The center of the city, or the central business district (CBD) always has a Christmas light show, usually at the Town Hall, and last year, in Federation Square. This year, there’s actually a light show at the library, the Town Hall, AND at Federation Square. Along with the annual Gingerbread Village and the Myer Christmas windows (this year, themed with gum nut babies!), it makes the city so festive and fun. And every year I think, wow, this really makes the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and the light projection show at Saks Fifth Avenue seem so boring.

This year, the actual light projection show is at the State Library of Victoria on the Swanston Street facade. The Town Hall has a fixed light projection given that there isn’t enough space along Swanston Street to safely allow big crowds to watch. The projections at the state library tell the story of “A Melbourne Night Before Christmas,” written by Melbourne Writers Festival Director Marieke Hardy and narrated by Lee Lin Chin.

It was a fun and unique rhyming story of a night before Christmas with a very Melbourne twist, mentioning local neighborhoods, buildings, and staples throughout Melbourne such as St. Kilda, the Rialto Tower, and lattes (because what would Melbourne be without its coffee culture?). Chris noted that unless you were a Melbournian, you probably wouldn’t understand most of the rhymes. Since I’ve been coming here for the last seven years, I actually understood a good number of them. It’s almost like I am a quasi-local, or at least a regular at the same time each year.

The projections are on repeat every four minutes and light up the library daily from 9pm until 10:45pm every day until Christmas Eve. It’s such a fun and happy tradition to have here each Christmas season. I always get excited to see this changing and evolving light show each year; it’s one of the biggest highlights of our visit during Christmas.

One fun thing I always do when I travel anywhere, including Melbourne, is check out the local grocery stores to see what interesting things I can find that I do not normally see back home. Today, we did some Christmas cooking shopping in Clayton, a very Asian neighborhood of Melbourne, and discovered some interesting finds: Singapore laksa, Hainanese chicken rice, and egg paratha with fish curry flavored chips (or crisps); Malaysian Chinese New Year treats ranging in flavors from pandan to vanilla — things I never see in New York. They are imported from Malaysia! We also found Taiwanese papaya and mango milks, like the ones we actually had in Taiwan on the streets, but in a canned form. Of course, they cannot compare to the freshly blended milks we had on streets of the night markets across Taiwan, but these were still tasty nonetheless and did contain real fruit juice and not just artificial flavoring as you might presume.

In Melbourne’s central business district (CBD), we also came across an Asian grocery store that specialized in goods imported from Southeast Asia, and I found jarred minced galangal. I wasn’t quite sure how good it would be, so decided to hold off on buying it. My experience with buying dried galangal in Thailand was awful; it ended up making my soups taste more like sawdust. In most cases, the fresh stuff is always preferable, but fresh galangal is rare in New York to find unless you are at a Thai grocery store. Even then, it’s quite expensive. The jarred version may be a consideration, but I’d need to do more research on this before buying it; I hate food waste.

I’ve had a number of colleagues in New York tell me that they cannot get over the idea of how jarring a summer Christmas would be — they say they want a white Christmas, that cold is what they think about when they think of Christmas. “Have you adjusted to a summer Christmas?” I am often asked. Honestly, how does one need to “adjust” to being warm?!

One of them has a fiance who is originally from LA, and she said she’s sick and tired of spending Christmas in LA, where it’s always warm and sunny. I told her she can do whatever she wants, but I’m perfectly happy being warm in a sunny place with Santas in trunks and on surf boards; I fully embrace warmth any time of the year. The only time I want to see snow is when I’m warm inside with a hot drink in my warm apartment. I’m over the snowmen and the snow ball fights completely. When people think of a snowy and white Christmas, they immediately forget how disgusting it can be when it’s piled up on the streets and mixed with mud, dirt, and dog pee and poo. They forget the salt everywhere ruining their shoes. They forget how slipper and dangerous it can be walking on black ice. I do not romanticize ANY of that in my head. I hate it all. But, I tolerate it because it’s only for a couple months, and it’s not like we get constant, steady snow in New York City.

Another thing I love about spending Christmas in Australia is how fun and festive it is everywhere. The Rudolph red noses, antlers, and tinsel on cars, people walking around on the street with Santa and elf hats, girls walking around with Santa and reindeer bouncy headbands, and people wearing “elf” T-shirts always cracks me up. On Christmas Day, families everywhere here will be snapping their Christmas crackers to unveil their paper crowns, which everyone is happy to wear, young and old. I also join in on the fun by totally acting my age and wearing the bouncy Santas headband myself. You can be quirky and whimsical here as an adult, and no one will think you are being childish. It’s just getting into the Christmas spirit.

Everyone’s allowed to have a preference. But my preference is warmth year-round. Who doesn’t want to be warm?

Sydney siders and Melbournians can be quite competitive in the same way that San Franciscans and Los Angeles residents can be. One of the biggest complaints I tend to hear from those who either live in Sydney or are from Sydney originally is that the weather in Melbourne is cold, unpredictable, and flat out schizophrenic. Here is an example of the weather pattern in the next five days here in Fahrenheit:

Friday, 20 Dec: 110 degrees

Saturday, 21 Dec: 83 degrees

Sunday, 22 Dec: 69 degrees

Monday, 23 Dec: 67 degrees

Tuesday, 24 Dec: 72 degrees

I think if you were to ask anyone, going from 110 degrees all the way down to 69 degrees in just two days is… quite extreme. It also makes getting dressed more challenging in the morning. From the perspective of someone who loves warm weather, I did not find this pleasant to see and plan out my next few days of clothes for, either. Then again, I have little to complain about since today in New York, the high was 18 degrees F. I’d take this schizophrenic weather over New York’s horrible winter any day, always.

While staying at the Midnight Hotel in the heart of Canberra, we were given complimentary a la carte breakfasts at Braddon Merchant, which is a restaurant that shares the same space as the hotel. All of the food was fresh and beautifully presented (so many local components; I love places that support local producers!), but funnily enough, the biggest standout item for me while having breakfast here both mornings was their porridge. I generally love Chinese porridge/congee/jook, and I’ve had many different version of oatmeal/porridge in my life across many cities and homes. But this porridge was just so different in terms of its flavor layers and textures. The description on the menu was: steamed millet porridge, golden fig jam, muscovado sugar, and fried thyme. The nuttiness of the millet and the fine bite of it was amazing, as was how the sight sweetness of the jam and muscovado sugar complemented the savoriness of the fried thyme. I would never have though to add an herb like thyme into porridge before this meal!

I purchased millet at home this year to mimic the vegan lemon coconut millet loaf I had while in Vancouver last year, but now I can use it to experiment with porridge now, too, since this dish inspired me. I never would have thought any porridge would excite me this much, but here we are, still thinking about the best porridge I’ve ever had right here in Canberra.

We used points to purchase our two-night hotel stay in Canberra. Originally, Chris had booked another hotel in another hotel group on IHG points, but he checked a couple months ago to see if anything else had come up in Canberra under the Marriott group, which we are also loyal to. He found out that this new hotel had just opened called the Midnight Hotel, which is an autograph collection hotel under Marriott in the heart of the city. Because the hotel was only about a couple months old, we didn’t have much information to go off of, but we ended up being pleasantly surprised when we first arrived in the front of the hotel and immediately found the service on par with some of the best hotels in Asia. The entire staff, from the moment we walked in, was friendly and kind, and truly tried to go above and beyond. They gave us free breakfast a la carte for both mornings at the incredible Braddon Merchant restaurant, which shares the same space as the hotel, told us about their fully free mini bar, which I’d never heard about in my entire life at any hotel in any city in the world, and even gave us free refills on the mini bar, which included things like hyper local wine from the Canberra area, San Pelligrino blood orange drinks, and even locally made milk! They also gifted us a sample box of Enigma Fine Chocolates, a local chocolatier who hand makes chocolate just a few blocks away from the hotel.

I’m not used to service this good or attentive in Australia, or really anywhere in the western world, so I was really surprised and excited that we got the opportunity to stay here. It definitely set a whole new standard for us for Australian service and hospitality overall.

Chris and I were visiting the Parliament House during our quick trip to Canberra today, and it was interesting to see how the new Parliament House in Australia has been build into the actual hill; it’s as though this structure has been fully incorporated into the natural environment that it’s in. Chris kept remarking how Frank Lloyd Wright-esque it was. I didn’t quite appreciate it much while looking at it from the ground level; it was only until we got to the top of the roof and looked down at the grass and hill that I really got the full impact of the building and the way it was built into the earth (also, can you believe you can so easily even go into the Parliament House and just walk in as you’d like in Australia? That’s like just walking into the Capitol Building in the U.S. at your leisure, which would be completely unheard of!).

Another fun thing that happened today (that Chris would not agree was fun) was being able to see cockatoos in their natural habitat. We spotted a whole group of galahs, or pink and grey cockatoos, wandering around and picking at insects along the lawn in front of the Parliament House today. Cockatoos are native to Oceania, which means that you can see endless cockatoos throughout Australia. During all my visits, I most vividly remember seeing cocktatoos in Hamilton Island, Perth, Adelaide, and in the Dandenongs in Melbourne. We also recently saw rainbow lorikeets in the St. Kilda area of Melbourne. Because I once owned and took care of my own parakeet (or budgie, depending on where in the world you are from), I have always loved birds (just not pigeons or seagulls — the worst and most disgusting birds on earth) and have been especially fascinated by tropical birds in warm climates. Birds like cockatiels, cockatoos, and parrots are so incredibly smart, and the colors you get to see here in Australia are so bright and vivid. It’s amazing that colors like this exist in nature. I could watch cockatoos interact with each other and eat for hours in the same way that I could watch elephants, koalas, or pandas roam around and play. Koalas and pandas aren’t too smart, but elephants and these birds certainly are.

One of my very favorite noodle soups in the entire world is bun bo hue, a Vietnamese noodle soup that originates from Hue, formerly the capital city of Vietnam when the Nguyen Dynasty seized control of the country and ruled from this central city. Because of the royal history of Hue, many “upper class” dishes, such as banh nam, banh bot loc, and banh it tran (the main theme of all three? All are EXTREMELY laborious and time-consuming to make!) originate from here. In addition, bun bo hue, likely the most famous dish of them all, originated here. Bun bo hue is definitely one of the spicier noodle soup dishes you can get in Vietnam; it is rich both from being flavored with shrimp paste as well as pork and beef bones, but also gets its bright red color from the anatto seeds that are used to further flavor it. Lots of garlic, shallots, and to me, its biggest key fragrance, lemongrass, are all added and contribute to this multi-layered, extremely complexly flavored broth. Round, thick rice noodles are added to the broth, along with slices of beef pork, pork hocks, and cubed pork blood. Banana flowers are used as a unique garnish (you would never see this served with pho).

You always know from the smell of a bowl of bun bo hue whether it’s going to be good or not. The first scent that should hit your nostrils absolutely needs to be lemongrass with a mix of long-cooked meatiness; if you don’t smell lemongrass, then it is definitely game over. And sadly, so many of the bun bo hues I have had over the years have been like this. They want to be bun bo hue, but they simply fail.

This morning, Chris and I went to Springvale, a Melbourne suburb with a large Vietnamese population, for some filming as well as to get a quick bite to eat before going over to his aunt and uncle’s house. We randomly passed a place called Nam Giao Bun Bo Hue, which looked promising from the outside. Despite walking along this street each time we have visited over the last seven years, I’d never really noticed this spot until Chris pointed it out to me this time and suggested we go in. I realized after doing some reading afterwards that they had remodeled recently and also reopened. We popped in to share a bowl of bun bo hue and a Vietnamese iced coffee, and as soon as we walked in, a strong, pungent smell of lemongrass and bone broth hit me, and I knew that this bowl of noodle soup had to be promising. They took great care to put together a bowl with all the ideal ingredients and even placed each item in carefully (I knew this because when I went to use the bathroom behind the kitchen, I watched as workers in the kitchen were arranging bowls to serve); the staff was extremely friendly, much more than the average Vietnamese spot back in New York or San Francisco. They even checked to make sure that we really wanted “everything,” as in the pork hock and the cubed blood. Yes, I confirmed, we wanted everything.

The first spoonful of broth until the very last was incredible: this was likely one of the top two best bowls of bun bo hue I had ever had, with the other one being (funnily enough) in St. Louis, Missouri. Honestly, even the bowl we had in Saigon was not that great this past January when we were in Vietnam (unfortunately, we never spent enough time in Hue to have a proper meal outside of our day tour from Danang there to try it in its founding city). Here, the broth had a strong, unmistakable lemongrass flavor, a brilliant spiciness that was just enough (I added some extra Thai chilies to make it even more potent), and all the meat components were delicious, tender, and well executed. And the pork blood, as I had discovered three years ago, also in Springvale, was smooth, creamy, and actually pleasurable to eat. I really did not want this bowl of bun bo hue to end. Chris even remarked how much I was obsessed with this broth. I never do this even with the best chicken or beef pho.

Pho ga and pho bo (chicken pho and beef pho) are delicious and mainstream now, but they really need to move over and give bun bo hue the real spotlight to shine. When bun bo hue has become mainstream in western countries like the U.S., that’s when I will really know that people have gotten over their racist, xenophobic tendencies (well, at least towards southeast Asians) and have embraced people of other cultures with different foods.