Schhhhh, dont't disturb - working!

Still in Lamai on Koh Samui


[My hotel corner, the road I walk down to the center.]

No, I am here to survive winter, not to discover a new world - I did that when I came the first time, in 1975.

In the good old days it happened that writers and artists travelled for weeks and months to find their "paradise" to create, to think, in the right environment. And then travel all the way back to sell it.

Nowadays lots of people are also relocating to anywhere you find the end of an internet cable, to handle the information, to write about it, and enjoy the environment, nice weather, nice food, cheap living. I do not remember the first time I read about a guy who sat here on Koh Samui writing computer programs, and then sending the results via the first telephone cables to his customers in USA - some decades ago. The place was a coconut island with some fishing villages back in 1975.

And when one starts to get old and hates the Swedish winter weather? I cannot go out if there is any tiny risk of slippery roads - I have minimal balance, and some bones in the right foot have only half the thickness left, if I break it I get a wheel chair for free for the rest of my life, instead of only a crutch. If I can pay I can get a real fancy one.

I am not at Swedish långvård, "longtime care" yet - if I had not started to travel here regularly ten winters ago I had probably been close. First trip back in 1975 as a young student, when I took the slow road - left my university town, Lund, from a student party at midnight: "bye - going to India" then I did that. A few hours later I stood on the ferry over to East Germany, train south, to Istanbul, a guest house for travellers, a whole wall was a noteboard with info from and to traveling people. Then I found a bus to Tehran.

Many adventures later, buses and trains, I came to Calcutta, where I got an air ticket to Bangkok. I had penfriends between Bangkok and Singapore so I took train after some time in Bangkok with a LOT of walking and sight seeing!

I had an air ticket Bangkok-Copenhagen in my pocket when I left Sweden.

After that I was in SEAsia 1987, 1999 and almost all winters after that. A pity I did not make any permanent writing but I was a master in filling post cards with characters you almost needed a microscope to read - and my ma demanded a card a day during the first trip. Strange - she was the typical hen mother thanks to my diabetes but never ever said anything against my travelling. You can see a scattered lot of travel photos on my old personal web site at http://ralphtheogre.dyndns.info up in the menu under Asia trips or someting. Hm, an almost microscopic ant walking over my text, what to do?

It is incredibly much better here than Swedish "långvård".... Do you know what that is? It is what the Swedish government has invented to bore old people to death in Sweden.

It means to keep old people alive as long as possible. They get medicines - free - to think as little as possible. Sweden is so modern that families have neither time nor place nor money to take care of their oldies.

Remember my ma, she grew up in a little house in the forest a bit outside Ulricehamn, that her father had built there, his ma lived in a room on the second floor and when she wanted something she banged her wooden leg in the floor - very practical!

All those old people who spent their old age teaching the kids around them a lot of useful things in the good old days. They felt useful, they WERE useful.

I have described the phenomenon to a few friends here in SEAsia. Most explicity to a few in Laos, the poor Thai neighborhood in the north with almost the same language. One girl described how well the whole family took care of old cancer-sick grandfather until he died.

They have been related for an eternity, Lao and Thai, many less educated people in Northeastern Thailand mainly speak Lao. They learn Thai when they enter the village school.

The Thai girls there, Isaan, have become very exposed because the beauty ideal for falangs/farangs (choose your favourite dialect of ThaiEnglish) are those small brown cute but poor girls. They make up a big share of all bargirls in Thailand. And a big share of all Thai girls in the West. The Bangkok guys want them tall and white.

Anyway, in Laos it is still mostly the kind of old family structure, they take very well care of the old ones until they die. Remember when I was in Vientiane, the capital city, which sometimes is called the biggest village in the world. I got that feeling. You can read about that trip in my "book" on the same web site as I mentioned above. It is like that also here in Thailand out in the villages, thou it is changing to the worse in the big cities - becoming more like the West. But more crowded, Bangkok has more inhabitants than all of Sweden.

I feel it all the time now when I am a bit older than the first trip, got my beard, and everyone helps me, I am generally called "papa" and I see the care I get in this guest house!

If retired people in Sweden had been an important voting group they had been treated completely different - now they are often not at all handled like human beings but something to store as cheaply as possible. A place like Thailand can still offer a lot to old people of different categories, which is so much better for THEM, thou the Swedish Försäkringskassan hates that some people sneak away from their claws and enjoy their life here. More and more - especially people who have been here a few times before retirement, sell their villa in Sweden and put up something here. Imagine the four Swedish winter months that are dangerous for anyone who has stopped playing in the snow.

A friend of mine, Thai girl I have known for ages, recently finished her nursing studies in Germany, and her new boyfriend also taking the same course, German, came here some months ago to look for jobs. I met them one evening in Bangkok in December. After many disappointments they got in touch with an organisation in Germany that is planning sick homes here in Thailand, so now they will soon go back to Germany for two years of training for that.

It is also a fact, that here are lots of ladies, say she is uneducated, has a kid or two and above 35 - she has no chance in the world to get a good Thai husband but has the Asian positive attitude to older people, while many of the older Western guys here still can have a long life left and enjoy it with such a company. And young Western journalists can make money by writing horror stories about it.

Back to my work - reading a lot and writing a political blog about what I find - see http://israelisverige.info