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

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,

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.

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.....