It was spring, and we were eating almond croissants. Why would she go into a room alone with a man she didn't like or really know? Because she didn't know if she liked him or not. Because she wasn't confident enough to not go in. I went to the beach with a man I didn't know. I was finishing my tea and chatting with a sunburned English boy at my favorite kedai kopi. Our conversation was faltering. A man swaggered up to the table and said. "I will take you to a good beach." I smiled at the boy and said, "Perhaps I'll see you at dinner?" Wrapped in my blue sarong, I went.

The man was a Malaysian fisherman, and his red motorcycle was in bad repair. But we got to the beach and it was a very nice beach. Small and undeveloped, with clear turquoise water and white soft sand, a few large rocks to climb on at low tide that were mini islands when the tide came in. The fisherman stripped to his underwear and we swam in the ocean and held hands in the blue blue water while waves broke over us.

"What is biting me?" I asked.

"A fish," he said. He cupped his palms together in the water and then held up something pinched in his fingers for me to see. "When it is big it will have hard skin, and it is good to eat."

The shrimp was not as big as his pinky nail, which was long.

After three hours, we rode back to the cafe. I kissed him before he asked me to and then he left. The sunburned British boy was still there, drinking tea. So I sat with him and ordered tea.

"Can you pour the tea and make it fizz?" I asked the girl who was minding the tables. I gestured with my hands to try and communicate. I looked in my dictionary. She waited. "Uh, terbang?"

She nodded and left and came back with two jugs, one full of malty Assam tea and condensed milk, the other empty. She poured the tea back and forth between the two jugs until the tea became frothy. Then she poured it into two cups, even though the British boy was not finished. The girl waited until we had tasted the tea to leave.

"It's very good," I said. "Thank you."

Later that day I went swimming with several Bhutanese economists. "We are old Bhutanese bureaucrats," one told me, "but we like to have fun."