DURING THE FIRST month of my residency I knew hardly anybody in Hanoi. Although I told my friends and family in Australia that I was meeting cool people, making art and experiencing the ‘real’ Vietnam, I was usually lurking in the Old Quarter with a bunch of expats: some French, American and British men in their fifties with yellow sweat stains bonded to the collars of their business shirts. I made no attempt to start painting, convincing myself that first I needed to find my feet, which took me around the lake and through shopping malls but never to my studio above Thang Long Gallery, not far from where we drank. 

It was winter and surprisingly chilly; I had expected it to be warm. During that cool, smoggy month, I spent some of my stipend on a knock-off North Face jacket and thought I understood very little about the world beyond my home.