You're the reason I'm traveling on, but don't think twice...

There are sixteen of us on the boat, plus guide and crew. I chose a mid-price tour but it feels luxe to me; my cabin is all dark wood and air conditioning and a very soft, rather tilted bed. With the exception of two Spanish couples traveling together, the guests are all native English speakers. I'm the only American. 

Ordinarily I pretend not to speak Spanish so I can get all the good dirt, but I feel sorry for the Spanish speakers. The guide speaks English well but they are struggling with his accent. His Spanish sounds pretty good to me too but it's difficult for him to deliver an entire tourist spiel and then start over all in Spanish. They've begun clucking with confusion, and he shoots me a grateful look when I sidle over and start translating. The Spaniards reward me too - they are three retired teachers and a librarian, and especially the librarian lady is the sweetest, most appreciative, cutest little thing.

My favorite, though, is Ray, the Australian professor of sociobiology traveling with his two grown sons. The younger is in school studying pre-law (reluctantly), and the older is a psychology PhD candidate who left a successful theater career which included four years of training in London. He, needless to say, is fascinating, and we monopolize an entire dinner conversation with a detailed analysis of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. He once played Rosencrantz. 

 "You're very literate for a biology teacher," Ray observes. I shoot back, "Thanks! That was a very British compliment for an Australian."

Ray rewards me with a rich belly laugh and I know he's a keeper.

Later that evening the younger son finds me on the front of the boat, lackadaisically squid fishing with a reed pole and a light. (And catching nothing. You really have to want it.) "Do you play 500?" he asks. It turns out 500 is a card game, a lesser relative of bridge, that's best played with partners so their family of three needs a fourth.

And so it comes to pass that - because, they later reveal, I "seemed competent," - I spend a densely humid summer night on the back of a junk in Vietnam, lit by a lone bare bulb, drinking Hanoi beer, listening to Bob Dylan, and holding my own at cards among the Australians. I don't know if it was the temperature, or the locale, or the light - or perhaps it was just the easy way that Ray had with his boys, each so evidently enjoying himself - but this ranks as one of the more memorable evenings of my life.

title credit Bob Dylan