Lunch with Hung Le: 'I'm too Australian to be a good cook'

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Lunch with Hung Le: 'I'm too Australian to be a good cook'

By Kylie Northover

"There are three types of Vietnamese refugee," says comedian Hung Le. "Those who can do maths, and the ones who can't."

He's discussing the impetus for his new book, The Crappiest Refugee. A play on author and artist Anh Do's best-selling book The Happiest Refugee, Le's third book is a memoir, but it falls more into humour than the inspirational biography category, despite some genuinely moving chapters about his late father.

Comedian Hung Le has written a memoir, <i>The Crappiest Refugee</i>.

Comedian Hung Le has written a memoir, The Crappiest Refugee.Credit: Justin McManus

Le was one of Australia's first Vietnamese refugees, arriving in Melbourne as a nine-year-old from Saigon, after a perilous voyage on a prawn trawler – detailed in equally poignant and amusing detail in the book – with his family in 1975.

After a stint in a refugee camp in Guam (which Le admits he enjoyed – "it was like camping but I had no idea what was going on"), the family settled in suburban Australia, initially in a one-bedroom flat, and began their new lives.

Receipt for lunch with comedian Hung Le at Thanh Ha 2, Richmond.

Receipt for lunch with comedian Hung Le at Thanh Ha 2, Richmond.

For Hung, this new life did not equate to his parents' dreams – he was bad at maths, music and still can't properly use a computer.

"When I went to school it was with Vietnamese kids who came in the 1980s, 10 years later than me and they just breezed through school. Remember on the news they'd have the kid who got the best score at the end of the year and it was always some Vietnamese girl? And they got 100 per cent for English! I'd been here 10 years longer, was failing HSC English and couldn't do maths," he says.

He and his siblings all learnt classical instruments because "that's how you fit into the white man's world – play their music!"

Hung could play, but was always, he says, out of tune. "My ear is a bit sharp so when I play, I hear it in tune – but nobody else does."

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Comedian Hung Le says: "I just don't grow up. And I'm stupid."

Comedian Hung Le says: "I just don't grow up. And I'm stupid."Credit: Justin McManus

But he was to turn that into his talent, using music as a way into comedy.

We're having lunch at one of Le's regular haunts on Victoria Street, an unassuming Vietnamese joint as heaving with customers as it is cheap.

The Banh Khot (mini pancakes with prawns) at Than Ha 2.

The Banh Khot (mini pancakes with prawns) at Than Ha 2.Credit: Justin McManus

Le lives in Coburg, but does his shopping in this part of town.

And while he says most Vietnamese men can cook as well as the women in their families, this is another area in which Le lets down the stereotype.

 The Banh cuon tom thit (steamed rice paper cake with prawn) at Than Ha 2.

The Banh cuon tom thit (steamed rice paper cake with prawn) at Than Ha 2.Credit: Justin McManus

"My mum does all the cooking," he says. "I do my own breakfast and lunch, but she cooks dinner. I'm too Australian to be a good cook – I've assimilated!"

Yes, Le, 52, lives with his mum. "I'm Vietnamese – we're not really allowed to leave."

The Banh xeo tom thit (Vietnamese pancake) at Thanh Ha 2.

The Banh xeo tom thit (Vietnamese pancake) at Thanh Ha 2.Credit: Justin McManus

He has, of course, left – he's lived and worked abroad, done his years in Fitzroy sharehouses and on floors and couches across the continents as he hustled for gigs at comedy clubs and festivals; The Crappiest Refugee is partly recollections and anecdotes from his life of roving – that hasn't really come to an end yet.

As we peruse Than Ha 2's extensive menu, the manager has an urgent discussion with Le in Vietnamese. As well as what we both settle on, she's insistent we also order the restaurant's signature dish, a massive pancake filled with prawns, pork and vegetables and served with a foot-high pile of fresh lettuce, basil and other leaves. She was right to be insistent; it's delicious. We also share a platter of spring rolls, mini pancakes with prawns and steamed rice paper cakes.

The day after our lunch, Le is boarding a cruise ship for four days; for the past six years, his "bread and butter" gigs have been on the cruise ship circuit, which sounds a somewhat ideal lifestyle for someone like Le.

"I love it; it's great fun. I'm on there for at least a few days and do 90 minutes work! Even when it's a comedy cruise – myself and a few other comedians doing shows – I don't work every night and I get to eat whatever I want from the buffet," he says. "The only thing I pay for is booze."

It's not, he says, a gig for everyone.

"A lot of people can't do it, they think it's just too much time to be by themselves," he says. "And there are comedians who don't want to be away from home for 10 days – they have kids, they want to get out and drive their car, do stuff – and you are basically trapped."

But Le loves it. Aside from the "being paid to have a holiday" factor – Le's been all around the South Pacific, the islands of Indonesia, and once a year travels through Asia, including Bali, Phuket and Singapore – it leaves a lot of time for writing.

"A whole day lasts 24 hours on a cruise ship."

And the time he was banned from the bar at the very start of a 14-day cruise was when he began writing The Crappiest Refugee.

He'd thought about writing fiction, a story of a boat person who comes to Australia and eventually ends up working on cruise ships, is really bad at the violin and can't do maths, "and then I went hang on, that's me – I'll just write my own story."

In 1997 he wrote his first book, The Yellow Peril from Sin City, but the new one features "20 more years of more stories."

In between the story of Le's rise to fame from being the "only Asian ever to be kicked out of Melbourne University", via busking with his comedy string quartet and winning the Red Faces talent competition on Hey Hey It's Saturday in the late 1980s, to worldwide comedy festivals, stints on TV ("I was the Chinese porn dealer in the kitchen during the barbecue scene in The Slap," he says. "Forget the actual slap – what about the guy selling porn videos to kids?") and film (Fat Pizza, The Wogboy, the newly released That's Not My Dog!) and, eventually, ongoing gigs with the long-running stage production Wog-a-Rama – there's a parallel narrative about Le's father.

Before the war, Thanh Nhon Le was one of Vietnam's most famous artists and a lecturer in fine arts famed for his large-scale sculptures; in the book, Le recalls growing up with huge sculptures in their garden.

After fleeing Saigon in 1975, Le's father assumed his sculptures, many of which were housed in public spaces in the city, would be destroyed. Some had been, but years later the family learned that one of his 4.5-metre Buddhas had been rescued by Buddhist monks and taken to a sanctuary.

Shortly before he died in 2002, Thanh, who worked for years as a tram conductor in Melbourne, wrote to his artist friends in Vietnam expressing a wish that his works be permanently displayed in the city of Hue, along the Perfume River.

His friends organised this, despite the logistics of moving such large-scale works and on the 10th anniversary of his father's death, Hung travelled to Hue to see the sculptures in their new home along the river.

He and a producer friend have made a documentary, Mist of the Perfume River, now in the final editing and translating stages; there are plans to premiere the film at the Hue Arts Festival in April.

Le isn't sure if he'll try and get distribution for the doco. "I just wanted to shoot it for my dad's friends, really," he says. "The sculptures have become a tourist attraction now. I'm planning to take my mum back this year so she can see them."

It's a poignant storyline that sits among Le's funny anecdotes about school, life as a refugee when it was a novelty in Australia ("Nobody cares about Vietnamese now – first it was the Greeks and wogs, then the Muslims and it's the Africans now," he says. "They'll get their go and then it'll be someone else's turn. If we keep having wars, we won't run out of refugees."), trying to get various film or TV series off the ground, and travelling the world, often hustling gigs as he went; he's seemingly spent a lifetime landing on his feet despite his lack of planning and stability.

"I just don't grow up," offers Le of his lifestyle. "And I'm stupid."

But life seems to have worked out?

"No – it hasn't worked out at all! It works out for stories I can tell my mates, and a book," he says, laughing.

"That's all that counts for me, really. I don't want to make lots of money. I try and do my best when I go overseas, I try to get in Hollywood – but it often goes wrong!

Le says people probably look at him and think, "you're 50-something now, why don't you give up?" but he maintains the "future is always positive".

"I can't give up."

The Crappiest Refugee (Affirm Press) is out now. Hung Le is appearing in Spaghetti Eastern with comedian Gab Rossi, at the Comic's Lounge, North Melbourne, March 8, 15 and 22.

THE BILL PLEASETHANH HA 2, 120 VICTORIA STREET, RICHMOND. 9421 6219.EVERY DAY, 11am-10pm.

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