I wrote a long article here, but lost it. Could not find it, remember I wrote it - and then I realized I wrote while dreaming, and it sort of did not stick in the computer. Bad cabling.
It is always an experience to spend a few days in the hospital. I never feel as healthy in spite of my diabetes, as when I see all these half corpses trying to walk around without succeeding much. It happens to be one too common result of diabetes, there is definitely less feet on the patients of this department than twice the number of patients. Still, most do not seem too devastated, they talk like normal people, not like mental wrecks. Human beings can accept and stand an awful lot, that many young strong 'uns do not understand.
I have a vague memory that in an investigation of at what age people are most happy, the happiest was a normal 70 years old with family and not too many problems. I feel like a kid here, I am only 61 and many are as close to 90 as to 80, with horrible sicknesses but what the heck......
A thing I do not understand though is . that they do not DO anything. The greatest thing they know is to hang in front of a football match on TV, even when they got only a few hours of life left. They can still think, most of them, but seem to have disconnected those cells.
There seems to be an ongoing game between the old men and the young nurses - taking lots of humor from the gals, and not too much sensitivity for stupidities, they seem to love their job, being the princesses of the oldies.
The guy at my feet, no feet, think he said the first one was cut 8 years ago, so experienced with the troubles from all kinds of social help one gets - and he was satisfied with the available help. Meanwhile in the paper today I read abouit another case with no arms and no legs - with problems to get help........
Guy beside me, the one I have talked most to, 20 years my senior, one black toe I think and rather much pain there, was a bit noisy and demanding from the nurses in the night. And all night some real strange stink from him, not human, not corpse, like some chemical, never smelled that before but definitely not pleasant. He came from Austria to Sweden in 1950 and got stuck with a girl.
The guy in the corner sleeps most of the time, apparently very bad general condition, was down X-raying the lungs today, relatives around, no problems with his foot odor.
And me, feeling better. My wife was here yesterday and today, her visitors now, from Thailand, she showed them around in Lund yesterday (I was part of the show), today it will be Malmö.
Tomorrow Monday, so docs around, will be interesting to see what they say about me. I suppose they cannot say much if they have not got the result of the bacteria culture from the ulcers and no guess how long I have to stay here.
2010-07-03
Suddenly in a wheel chair
In the hospital in Lund. In a wheel chair. Not allowed to walk.
No real fun, I have all spring in Sweden had problems with ulcers on first the left little toe, that must have started in Thailand, thou I never saw it, my wife saw it when I came from the first shower. And a month later, a cracked place at the side of the left foot also opened up, sigh. So she has worked with cleaning up them until a few days ago, when we saw that the left foot got more red and all the foot hurt when I walked on it, so I got an appointment with the diabetes foot girls yesterday, took taxi up, they looked, said "SHIT", put me in a wheel chair and Yui drove me up to the central hospital block and to clinic #5, to present my humble self two hours later. So - some inflammation in the foot, and I am barely allowed to stand on it when I pee. Ah well, sooner or later I have to buy a wheel chair, but I have been in no hurry.
Anyway, as usual when I have to stay in the hospital, I feel healthy suddenly, seeing the guys and birds around, with an assortment of number of feet available for walking. One almost ok and one not ok at all, is a common combination.
They have taken samples of the bacteria in the wounds, sent for cultivation so they know exactly what antibiotics to put in, and meanwhile they have given me two broad spectrum kinds, supposed to kill rather much. Saturday today so on Monday the docs are back, I do not know how many days it takes to get response on the culture, so they can find some more specific antibiotic.
In the beginning I got one kind, in March, Heracillin, a rather general kind of penicillin I have had before, after a month I got some allergic chock, red itchy spots all over, fever, so stopped and back to the clinic a few days later, got a new kind of antibiotics for ten days. Then nothing for a week waiting to go to the doc and not only the nurses. So a new antibiotic, but apparently tht was not murderous enough. So let us see how many feet I have when I leave this place, and when - have no idea.
No real fun, I have all spring in Sweden had problems with ulcers on first the left little toe, that must have started in Thailand, thou I never saw it, my wife saw it when I came from the first shower. And a month later, a cracked place at the side of the left foot also opened up, sigh. So she has worked with cleaning up them until a few days ago, when we saw that the left foot got more red and all the foot hurt when I walked on it, so I got an appointment with the diabetes foot girls yesterday, took taxi up, they looked, said "SHIT", put me in a wheel chair and Yui drove me up to the central hospital block and to clinic #5, to present my humble self two hours later. So - some inflammation in the foot, and I am barely allowed to stand on it when I pee. Ah well, sooner or later I have to buy a wheel chair, but I have been in no hurry.
Anyway, as usual when I have to stay in the hospital, I feel healthy suddenly, seeing the guys and birds around, with an assortment of number of feet available for walking. One almost ok and one not ok at all, is a common combination.
They have taken samples of the bacteria in the wounds, sent for cultivation so they know exactly what antibiotics to put in, and meanwhile they have given me two broad spectrum kinds, supposed to kill rather much. Saturday today so on Monday the docs are back, I do not know how many days it takes to get response on the culture, so they can find some more specific antibiotic.
In the beginning I got one kind, in March, Heracillin, a rather general kind of penicillin I have had before, after a month I got some allergic chock, red itchy spots all over, fever, so stopped and back to the clinic a few days later, got a new kind of antibiotics for ten days. Then nothing for a week waiting to go to the doc and not only the nurses. So a new antibiotic, but apparently tht was not murderous enough. So let us see how many feet I have when I leave this place, and when - have no idea.
2010-05-16
I did come home :)
even if I have been busy the last month here in Sweden, and not thought too much of my pleasant winter in the jungle. Unfortunately part of my troubles have been ulcers on my diabetes feet, one had started already in Thailand but on a place where I did not see it - so my wife discovered it once in Sweden.
I left my room at 4PM on March 4 - my tourist visa was valid for maximum 90 days so I had booked the air ticket for 89 days and had some margin. Taxi for 500B to the little airport
Finally on my back street in Bangkok. - easy to find. Go Khao San Road to the Temple, then right, then left.
Lots of cheap hotels and restaurants. You can get a room for 200 Baht (no private toilet, only fan) and up.
You can see my favourite place at the tiny restaurant Popiang, "Just Enough", where I hve visited for at least half a dozen winters. An unending stream of more or less strange people are passing by, many of the exotic longtime traveling kind, who have spent years traveling around Asia with a story to tell.
This winter there seems to have been a truce between the restaurant owner and the police. It is a marked walking street, still the police has been harassing the restaurant owners who place tables on it - as the tourists want. The pies of course know well in advance, so suddenly everyone sitting outside must move inside......
Another phenomenon is, that sometimes a dry day is declared, whatever it might be, the birthday of the King or election day, and no alcohol can be served. Visible. Meaning no beer bottles visible, and you get your beer in paper mugs. Impossible for the police to see!
Blind ((?) singer (?) begging for money.
I stayed at this hotel (also when I came to Bangkok 3 months earlier) as I have done a number of times the last few years. It is ok, hardly perfect, not the cheapest at 500B, but not so far to walk for me to the restaurants, 7/11 etc. I know a number of the people there, do not know how many years I have been fairly regular there.
Now back in Sweden since 2½ months I am thinking back. I sure hope to go again, minimizing the problems caused by age and general rottenness. It is of course much of an economical problem. I doubt I go again without out my Thai wife, Yui. Her intense studies now and 2½ years more is of course what we have go to after - and the hope she gets a well-paid job after that :) Not impossible.
The last evening my friend Amp and her German bf came and we sat at the restaurant outside my place. Did I mention her in the beginning? I met those two also one of the first evenings in Bangkok. We have been friends for - maybe a decade, she married a German guy, regretted the marriage after a day but well - she was in Germany on a student visa and Germany is much more troublesome on that point that Sweden. She has separated long time ago - I met him a few times and I understand why - he looks as the gals want, he has money, he has one big interest in life when one discusses things - himself. So then Amp studied to be a nurse in Germany, found her new bf there, a German guy somewhat younger than she is - gave a very positive impression. They had planned to try life in Thailand working as nurses but found it impossible to find a decent position. Nurses there is a very low-income job, and their knowledge from the West, language etc., did not make them find anything good. So they will go back to Germany to find jobs - unfortunately now she STILL has problem with visa as she left that guy before..... So these two married in Thailand, and now she still waits for papers to come to Germany.....
While sitting at the restaurant my best Akha friend found me there..... She knows I usually sit at that other restaurant, Popiang. The Akha girls up in northern Thailand have lived there for hundreds of years, but still seldom have any citizen rights, hardly even governmental schools. So a number of them work as street sellers of handicraft in Bangkok and other places. This girl, Suan, I have known since a number of years, she sold me a handmade "hat" long time ago,
I left my room at 4PM on March 4 - my tourist visa was valid for maximum 90 days so I had booked the air ticket for 89 days and had some margin. Taxi for 500B to the little airport
My worktable with a typical Thai dinner delivered from the small restaurant by Pui.
Then to the Airport
Finally on my back street in Bangkok. - easy to find. Go Khao San Road to the Temple, then right, then left.
Lots of cheap hotels and restaurants. You can get a room for 200 Baht (no private toilet, only fan) and up.
You can see my favourite place at the tiny restaurant Popiang, "Just Enough", where I hve visited for at least half a dozen winters. An unending stream of more or less strange people are passing by, many of the exotic longtime traveling kind, who have spent years traveling around Asia with a story to tell.
This winter there seems to have been a truce between the restaurant owner and the police. It is a marked walking street, still the police has been harassing the restaurant owners who place tables on it - as the tourists want. The pies of course know well in advance, so suddenly everyone sitting outside must move inside......
Another phenomenon is, that sometimes a dry day is declared, whatever it might be, the birthday of the King or election day, and no alcohol can be served. Visible. Meaning no beer bottles visible, and you get your beer in paper mugs. Impossible for the police to see!
Blind ((?) singer (?) begging for money.
I stayed at this hotel (also when I came to Bangkok 3 months earlier) as I have done a number of times the last few years. It is ok, hardly perfect, not the cheapest at 500B, but not so far to walk for me to the restaurants, 7/11 etc. I know a number of the people there, do not know how many years I have been fairly regular there.
Now back in Sweden since 2½ months I am thinking back. I sure hope to go again, minimizing the problems caused by age and general rottenness. It is of course much of an economical problem. I doubt I go again without out my Thai wife, Yui. Her intense studies now and 2½ years more is of course what we have go to after - and the hope she gets a well-paid job after that :) Not impossible.
The last evening my friend Amp and her German bf came and we sat at the restaurant outside my place. Did I mention her in the beginning? I met those two also one of the first evenings in Bangkok. We have been friends for - maybe a decade, she married a German guy, regretted the marriage after a day but well - she was in Germany on a student visa and Germany is much more troublesome on that point that Sweden. She has separated long time ago - I met him a few times and I understand why - he looks as the gals want, he has money, he has one big interest in life when one discusses things - himself. So then Amp studied to be a nurse in Germany, found her new bf there, a German guy somewhat younger than she is - gave a very positive impression. They had planned to try life in Thailand working as nurses but found it impossible to find a decent position. Nurses there is a very low-income job, and their knowledge from the West, language etc., did not make them find anything good. So they will go back to Germany to find jobs - unfortunately now she STILL has problem with visa as she left that guy before..... So these two married in Thailand, and now she still waits for papers to come to Germany.....
While sitting at the restaurant my best Akha friend found me there..... She knows I usually sit at that other restaurant, Popiang. The Akha girls up in northern Thailand have lived there for hundreds of years, but still seldom have any citizen rights, hardly even governmental schools. So a number of them work as street sellers of handicraft in Bangkok and other places. This girl, Suan, I have known since a number of years, she sold me a handmade "hat" long time ago,
2010-03-06
Man Hunter.
February 21, 2010
Sunday evening, and on Friday afternoon I fly to Bangkok.
The other day I relaxed in a street corner down in the center:
It is a funny feeling, both going and - going. Going here and going back. The weeks before leaving Sweden were sort of - made myself tense as I am after all older and a bit more handicapped and stiff for every trip, but thinking back how stiff I was after the previous winter in Sweden, when I had to sit on my work chair for a few months, not going out, this is better. And once the trip starts, it has always just worked, made me tired but ah well, given me memories.
She seemed friendly enough when popping into the room in the evening, and only wanted to use the toilet. No problem, nothing to steal there.
There are all kinds of people so one can be friendly and careful at the same time. She was pretty and nice enough, for her age, a bit over 40, sat down a little on the bed beside my work desk, good English, told she had been living in Europe with a German old man until he died 3 years ago, now back home in Thailand with her teenage son and - uh - judged me, asked my age - and her eyes ere somewhat shining until I told I had a Thai wife in Sweden and would return in a week.
So - after a few minutes I told I had to go on working on the laptop, and knowing well that I had everything of value on the table here in front of me, she said bye.
Then.... The little "blonde" - kinda cute with slanted eyes - caretaker, Pai, had seen that gal going into my room, and called Pui, the other caretaker, sort of big and strong and with better English.... who soon came on her motorbike to see everything was ok. So I am well taken care of!
And I had a quick thought of a Swedish friend here, just now up in northern Thailand, who is with his kinda girlfriend there, same age I guess, and incredibly dull, he said he would not dream of bringing her to Sweden, "then she would just sit and stare into the wall"..... I met her once with him, and cannot imagine how he can find any interest in her. After 4 years of schooling, and no interests of anything......
Ah well, just some nightly thoughts about life here. A girl in that age - well, they got no social welfare here, and for a Thai guy who is reasonably ok, he could easily find a much younger girl so the hunt must go on for the girls.
And this laptop also wants to go home, slower and slower, I barely dare to close it at night.
And in Sweden there is still snow, and I cannot walk in snow. Ah well, Yui comes to the airport in Copenhagen to pick me up, train directly to Lund, then we can take a taxi so I should survive home to my home computer with BROADBAND yippeeeee!
Sunday evening, and on Friday afternoon I fly to Bangkok.
The other day I relaxed in a street corner down in the center:
It is a funny feeling, both going and - going. Going here and going back. The weeks before leaving Sweden were sort of - made myself tense as I am after all older and a bit more handicapped and stiff for every trip, but thinking back how stiff I was after the previous winter in Sweden, when I had to sit on my work chair for a few months, not going out, this is better. And once the trip starts, it has always just worked, made me tired but ah well, given me memories.
She seemed friendly enough when popping into the room in the evening, and only wanted to use the toilet. No problem, nothing to steal there.
There are all kinds of people so one can be friendly and careful at the same time. She was pretty and nice enough, for her age, a bit over 40, sat down a little on the bed beside my work desk, good English, told she had been living in Europe with a German old man until he died 3 years ago, now back home in Thailand with her teenage son and - uh - judged me, asked my age - and her eyes ere somewhat shining until I told I had a Thai wife in Sweden and would return in a week.
So - after a few minutes I told I had to go on working on the laptop, and knowing well that I had everything of value on the table here in front of me, she said bye.
Then.... The little "blonde" - kinda cute with slanted eyes - caretaker, Pai, had seen that gal going into my room, and called Pui, the other caretaker, sort of big and strong and with better English.... who soon came on her motorbike to see everything was ok. So I am well taken care of!
And I had a quick thought of a Swedish friend here, just now up in northern Thailand, who is with his kinda girlfriend there, same age I guess, and incredibly dull, he said he would not dream of bringing her to Sweden, "then she would just sit and stare into the wall"..... I met her once with him, and cannot imagine how he can find any interest in her. After 4 years of schooling, and no interests of anything......
Ah well, just some nightly thoughts about life here. A girl in that age - well, they got no social welfare here, and for a Thai guy who is reasonably ok, he could easily find a much younger girl so the hunt must go on for the girls.
And this laptop also wants to go home, slower and slower, I barely dare to close it at night.
And in Sweden there is still snow, and I cannot walk in snow. Ah well, Yui comes to the airport in Copenhagen to pick me up, train directly to Lund, then we can take a taxi so I should survive home to my home computer with BROADBAND yippeeeee!
2010-01-31
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
[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
2010-01-07
A less-than-5-star balcony
It took weeks before Pui showed me that the ornamented net-provided door at the backside of my room actually could be opened. At the inside the metal door, then outside it is a normal door.
As you see, even a chair is provided if you want to sit on your three square meters towards that direction! Should be some sun in the evening.
The view is somewhat debatable though, the backside of something else
- unless you are fascinated by the laundry of other people. OK, maybe the room to the right is populated by some gals mostly working in the night by being pretty and other stuff, so they do the laundry themselves. The fee and frequency of such services is probably not even taxable here in Thailand.
More tubes to the left. Ah well, if this place was 5-star they had probably hidden all the tubes but now - no reason really. Everyone knows there are tubes.
And the service here is really excellent! Pui, one of the gals working here and taking care of most stuff including troublesome farangs, seems to like old men, always three minutes to sit and talk and her English is understandable. After some practice. Today I put out my beardy head thru the door, saw an old lady picking dry pieces of all the flowers, said "Pui water", she did not understand "water" but Pui - I got good Thai intonation there. So Pui came, first with 12 liters of water for 45 bath, then she sat talking a little for the latest gossip like she had worked with cleaning at home until 02:30 last night, and overslept. Then she walked over the street to the wine shop, and got me one box, 12 bottles, of Chang beer, my favorite, and one 2-liter wine bottle, French Merlot wine, for 500B. And then she wondered what food I wanted from the little restaurant. "Nah, that is boring, you always take that!" and she recommended spicy Thai salad with seafood and glass noddles. Moderately spicy, I said - and it tastes fine and is not fattening! Excellent balance to the beer that just might contain a few calories,
2010-01-04
Night between decades
If you are lucky and have the right kind of browser, you can click on the pics and get them full size.
I went to Mr. Phu the day before New Year Eve so I would not feel any urge to go out for the decade shift. I just looked at the sky.
Fireworks have been popular and impressive for ages. Still - even if it was invented by the Ancient Chinese - hot-air-balloons have a more subdued way to impress. Look carefully at the pics, you see the fires in the sky, I have no idea if they are bought or home-made paper bags of different sizes with a fire under, so they fly. Maybe a mix.
I also lowered the camera a bit and took a pic straight out on the night garden here. And then a bit up, to the hotel belonging to the same guesthouse, with a bit of sky.
I went to Mr. Phu the day before New Year Eve so I would not feel any urge to go out for the decade shift. I just looked at the sky.
Fireworks have been popular and impressive for ages. Still - even if it was invented by the Ancient Chinese - hot-air-balloons have a more subdued way to impress. Look carefully at the pics, you see the fires in the sky, I have no idea if they are bought or home-made paper bags of different sizes with a fire under, so they fly. Maybe a mix.
I also lowered the camera a bit and took a pic straight out on the night garden here. And then a bit up, to the hotel belonging to the same guesthouse, with a bit of sky.
2010-01-01
At Mr. Phu's
The day before New Year Eve I walked downtown to my favourite restaurant 2 years ago, to try their food again. I did not want to walk that road down at New Year Eve as it was more crowded by unsteady drivers.
I walked down just before 6, during the short evening, the full moon was shining:
I ordered my favourite - as they always prepared it well - deep-fried squid with a big plate of green salad - and a cold Chang to wash it down with.
Hm, the squid was a bit too big for me, had to squeeze down the last pieces, but very tasty indeed - and I enjoyed all 3 hours of the meal!
Well, while waiting for the squid to sizzle in the open kitchen behind me, I took some pictures of the market stands that are set up every evening in the middle of the walking street in front of me - where I lived 2 years ago, down at the other end.
The camera goes from left to right: to the left you see the display of seafood. You see it clear on pics from 2 years back, a bit down on the blog.
A few days earlier I only came as far as to Soppköket, the opposite side of this block, with a view while sitting there looking against the still empty small German restaurants - they get more noisy later on.
And now back in my room, looking at the ants on the wall.....
I walked down just before 6, during the short evening, the full moon was shining:
I ordered my favourite - as they always prepared it well - deep-fried squid with a big plate of green salad - and a cold Chang to wash it down with.
Hm, the squid was a bit too big for me, had to squeeze down the last pieces, but very tasty indeed - and I enjoyed all 3 hours of the meal!
Well, while waiting for the squid to sizzle in the open kitchen behind me, I took some pictures of the market stands that are set up every evening in the middle of the walking street in front of me - where I lived 2 years ago, down at the other end.
The camera goes from left to right: to the left you see the display of seafood. You see it clear on pics from 2 years back, a bit down on the blog.
A few days earlier I only came as far as to Soppköket, the opposite side of this block, with a view while sitting there looking against the still empty small German restaurants - they get more noisy later on.
And now back in my room, looking at the ants on the wall.....
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