Where To Bring Your Florescent Puffer Jacket Parents.

I helped them with checking in, printing the luggage tags.
The departure hall was packed like Victoria Market before closing on a Sunday.

“Passport and boarding pass, please,” the gatekeeper said.

They were leaving on a jet plane, and I didn’t know when they’d be back again.

“My water!” Mother yelled. “We need to finish my two bottles of water!”

Nah ma, just empty them in the bins. You can refill them inside.

“No! I spent a lot of effort cooking the water. We need to finish it!”

Dude that’s easily 300ml each. You down this, you’ll need the toilet.

“Oh, you’re right, we should go to the toilet now.” She left the queue, scrambling with her arm bag.

No let’s not go back to the crowd. Toilets, dirty. Contamination. Dump water, refill, save time…

“My water my water my water my water my water my water my water~
水呀水呀水呀水呀水~”

---

I used to fantasize final goodbye to my parents, or my last farewell to my child, next to a bed. With a machine that goes beep. An autobiographer scribbling in the corner.

We’ll laugh, cry, and maybe reach some inner peace, a pat on the forehead.

As I helped my parents pack and unpack their hand carry to finish my mother’s precious bottles of water, her medication, another water-saving tip (rinse the cap of the cough syrup bottle!), I have come to reject that optimism.

Our parting words will most likely be about the gas bill.
Whether a restaurant charged us for the tissue we forcefully returned.
The whereabouts of their favourite child.
Who let the dogs out.

Having said all that, despite a COVID scare, I’d like to think they had a good week in Melbourne.

Our neighbours, who are travelling in Europe now, kindly offered their one bedroom, so we get to experience a brief moment of ‘what if we lived next to each other’.

I’ll save that for a therapy session next time, but food were made, grandchild was walked to school, and in the end, I have a travel report for you, a list of:

Where to take your 80-year-old parents in Melbourne.

In no particular order:

Dumpling Max
Mork Chocolate’s - cinnamon scroll
Market Lane
Good Measure
Small Batch
Pho Chu The
Nhu Lan Bakery
D+K Seafood
Parrot House
A1 bakery
Bench Coffee
Tea Point HK Cafe
Antara 128
Hareruya Ice Cream
Hakata Gensuke Ramen
Benyue***

Italic = new entry, bold = more than once

Sugar to mothers is sodium to fathers, everything they ate was either sweet / not too sweet, or salty / not too salty.
Also, cheap / not cheap.

That’s all you need to know about the judging criteria of Asian parents hitting 80. Service, drinks list, interior design, flavour profiles? Out of the window.

Stand aside, World’s Top 50, it’s all about the price, sugar and sodium.