His story began in 1962, when an old rust bucket of a ship sitting in a Norwegian fjord was hiring a crew. It is a story not as much about him as it is about the people and cultures he encounters. From Europe, the ship travels to Louisiana to pick up a cargo and begin the long route to Indonesia. As their journey begins, the sailors establish an internal pecking order. The mostly Norwegian crew means that the Danish narrator is placed firmly at the bottom. But as they travel and stop at exotic ports, all of the men indulge in good-humored drinking and local women together. After a six-month journey that took him to numerous tropical lands, the narrator and some of the crew left the ship and became illegal immigrants in Australia. After a series of menial jobs that passed by in the blink of an eye, his adventure began anew on Thursday Island at the Torres Strait. Thursday Island was a haven for misfits, hippies and drifters like himself. It was also an incredibly rich multi-cultural...