Cruising Forty Years Later

Couple of Florida Viets drab street-wear asking directions at the Al Wadi table. Do you speak English?... (First a face like that bending from the pavement with such a question.) How might they get to the city? What was there to see? Something to recommend for a one day stay…. They knew of.... forearms erected and a horizontal spar spanning across the top. Ya, ya, Marina Bay Sands. Trying not to be a party-pooper squirming, no call for that for nice people. (Later the woman had the iconic wonder up on her iPhone.) Jocular warning to be sure keep their money in their pockets at the casino, unlikely as it was they were those kinda suckers. The morrow was a cruise ship. Ah, cruise?... They were going on a ship cruise?... That was what they were doing. But, surprise-surprise, not around the local islands. Dubai eighteen days!... Seriously. There would be a casino on-board too, yes, the chap knew; all cruisers had them, he likewise knew. The picture here before you did not tell the story at all and far from it. Pair had left '75, grateful to America, considered themselves very lucky and reluctant to call out any racism, all part and parcel. Nonetheless it was pleasing to hear unexpected responses from a fellow migrant, though he certainly did not look like one. Pretty decent English both, surprised to be immediately picked. Husband was a little less accomplished: let's say twelve when he climbed outta the boat at the Thai or Malaysian camps looking like a drowned rat; she was four years younger carried in arm by an uncle and the meeting in the food queue….

         ….Was Le Van Thai still going strong Downunder there, liver holding out? Continuing with his placid tropical-coloured pictures he painted for the local market that gave no hint whatever of what he had been through? (Showing them for the first time Le was surprised to hear the point of view.) And Nguyen with his PhD going to Arkansas to marry the lady running the Nail stores, was he still wearing his pyjamas around the streets of Footscray? 

         Pair here had been down to Oz, found a good place with good people down there. They had been very good to their people, the woman had heard. (Mal Fraser at a time when the Jesuit Abbott was still learning his catechism.)

         Trump. Oh well. Couldn't be blamed too bad. (Hardly after what they had endured.)

         They knew of the Viet quarter out back at Joo Chiat which they had passed through the night before. With the dark the woman had gotten a bit concerned about the bars and karaoke joints featuring their compatriots. (No Soliciting On the Premises.) Over in Florida one would no doubt need to keep wits about you, even Viets.