Porky Prig

Walk into any bookshop or go online, and you’ll find more books and articles on vegetarianism than you could shake an organic carrot stick at. Any question you may have about the pros and cons about being vegetarian, what it is, why you should do it, what are the medical benefits and drawbacks, how to cook it, what to eat, where to eat it, how to eat it…somewhere out there, someone has written about it.

            But one thing nobody writes about is just how much more difficult it is, if not impossible, to travel when you’re a vegetarian.

            Last weekend, Saffy, Amanda and I scooted up to Penang for a long weekend. The official excuse was that Amanda had a Friday meeting, but as Saffy pointed out, it’s difficult to take any meeting seriously when it’s held in the lobby of a hotel.

            “I mean, who does that, unless you’re in a Hollywood movie set in Washington D.C?” she said, her impressive bosom threatening to burst out of her new Marni sequined tee-shirt like one of those chest-busters in ‘Alien: Covenant’.

            Amanda rolled her eyes. “He’s the CEO of one of my most important clients and he’s literally heading straight to the airport from the meeting, so it makes sense to just meet in the lobby!”

            Saffy was unimpressed. “Has he heard of Skype? Anyway, whatever. Jason and I are coming with you. I am dying to have some char kway teow!”

            “But that’s got prawns and cockles in it,” I pointed out. “You’re vegetarian now.”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated. “Yes, but I’m not blind! I can pick out the seafood and just eat the noodles!”
            Which is how, as Amanda sat down in the lobby of the E&O hotel in downtown Penang, Saffy and I settled in at Ah Leng’s with a plate each of steaming, fragrant, garlicky char kway teow.

            After the obligatory Instagram snap, we tucked in. “My God, this is so good!” Saffy moaned as she delicately picked out the fat prawns and little brown nuggets of cockles and dropped them onto my plate. “There’s just so much flavour and wok-hei!”

            “What should we have for lunch?” I mumbled through a mouthful of noodles.

            A cone of silence dropped over our table. Saffy stared hard at the ceiling as her mouth chewed rhythmically. She frowned and cocked her head. “Huh,” she said eventually. “I’ve just realized that everything that I love to eat in Penang has meat in it. Nasi kandar. Bah kut teh. Lor bak. Fish head curry.” Her fingers ticked off the offending foods.

            “Rojak! You can have rojak!” I said helpfully.

            “That’s got shrimp paste, no? And anyway, I can’t just eat fruit salad the whole trip.”

            “Oh.”

            “Kueh pie tee, babi pongtay, assam laksa, chicken buah keluak…My God. There’s meat in everything! And if I pick out the meat, there’ll be nothing to eat except gravy!”

            When we swung by the E&O to pick up Amanda for lunch, Saffy was practically hyperventilating.

            “Surely, there’s something we can eat!” Amanda said as she struggled with her seatbelt.

            “There’s nothing!” Saffy insisted. “It’s all got meat in it! There’s only char kway teow!”

            As if on cue, Saffy’s phone pinged with a notification on Instagram. Sharyn had posted a comment on Saffy’s picture of the glistening curls of Ah Leng’s char kway teow: “How can you eat this? Got pork lard, you know!”

            Saffy immediately dialed Sharyn’s number. “No, it doesn’t!” she began hotly.

            Sharyn’s amplified voice boomed out on the speaker. “Aiyoh, you so bodoh! How you tink so tasty? Where got vegee-tuh-ble oil fry, one? Confirm it’s pork lard, lah!”

            “Well it may be lard,” Saffy said, her face turning pink, “but it’s not pork!”

            As Amanda later pointed out to me privately, sometimes Saffy made Donald Trump look like a genius.

            “I think she’s devastated,” I told her. “She was thinking she could just eat char kway teow the entire trip.”

            “You know,” Amanda said. “I just had a horrifying thought. You know how we’re going to Paris in September? What the hell are we going to eat? No coq au vin, no boeuf Bourgignon, no steak tartare, no oysters, no cassoulet…I can’t just eat croissants for a week!”

            When Saffy heard about it, she literally started shaking. “But what would be the point of being in France then?” she cried. “Oh my God, why does every dish that I love have meat in it?”

            On cue, a message from Sharyn pinged on Saffy’s phone: “Who ask you become vegetarian?”