This is a quick and nasty post to see if I've gotten the hang of blogging from my ipadmini right now, from Vietnam and Cambodia. Just a stupid picture from a street corner is attached, again to test if my website links with Facebook. If it all works, well, expect some "Random Thoughts from the Bumpy Road" in days to come.

Saigon

MayoArizona Two women took seats in front of me at the Mayo Clinic waiting room.
"Did you bring any candies like I said?" barked the younger one.
The older one shook her head.
The younger one huffed and twitched.
"You still don't get what being diabetic is?" she said, too loud. "Is that why you lied to that woman at the desk?"
She glared at the older woman.
Under her breath, the older woman said: "I didn't lie."
"But you didn't say anythin’ neither!" said the loud one. "Omission is a lie!"
The older one kept still.
The younger one continued: "Did you hear what she said? She said you’re lucky to have such a nice daughter taking care of you!"
She shouted "LUCKY," her mouth throwing a punch.
"I bet you hate it when they say that!" The younger paused, letting her venom sting the air.
"No," the old woman finally said.
"Ohhh yes you do!" the daughter continued. "You do because you're a bitch, and you don't listen, and when you die I won't come crying at your funeral."
The harangue was relentless for another 5 minutes or so.
I pretended to be reading my ipad, but kept an eye on the seething daughter.
Finally, I said: “Wow, maybe you can relax a bit.”
It was like waking the Minotaur.
“And maybe you can mind your own business,” she blurted at me, eyes flaming wide. “Go sit somewhere else and mind your own goddam business!”
I offered: “I’m not moving and you should not talk to your mother that way.”
Steam came out of her ears.
“Don’t you tell me what I can’t do! I’m going to report you to security for meddling in private affairs… Twelve years I’ve had to deal with this! Goddam! You must be a Scottsdalian or New Yorker or something… telling me what I can’t do…!”
Just then my name was called and as I got up, I brushed by the old woman and gently said in her ear, “Good luck, ma’m.”
The daughter continued to rant like a banshee as I headed for my blood draw, curdled by having witnessed such blatant abuse of the elderly.

On this very day 30 years ago, my erstwhile friends on Koh Samui gave me this birthday card - a caricature of myself at 24.

me at 24

A jolly stickman, rather fit, bearded and bushy.  It's one of my most prized possessions.

I was in paradise, with coconut palm trees, smiling sunshine, a bottle of Mekhong in one hand, a volleyball in the other.

Oh, Lordy, how we loved our daily volleyball games.

Koh Samui is an island off Thailand. 

Back in 1983, it was reachable only by ferry boat, a rusting bucket of a ship spewing diesel fumes over a slippery deck of passengers and cargo alike.

The ferry pushed off the coastal town of Surat Thani thrice a week, on a 6-hour voyage across choppy waters that made the South China Sea look like captain Ahab's ocean of lore.

It was fabulous - a fine way to separate the travelers from the tourists.

Samui (Koh means island) was the heralded mid-point destination for hardy backpackers doing the South-East Asia trail, from up high in the jungles of Chiang Mai, to down low to the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, and onto Singapore, Indonesia, and onward to Australia, if the time permitted.

And time is what we had plenty in supply.

It was a well-beaten road, most young travelers toting Tony Wheeler's original Lonely Planet guidebook – the legendary, yellow-covered South-East Asia on a Shoestring.

Koh Samui had white sandy beaches, fine like Turkish coffee. Family-owned "bungalows" dotted the coastline, rudimentary and sometimes ramshackle huts with frond roofs and bamboo walls.

The “villages” had names like Joy Bungalows, Liberty Bungalows, Moon Bungalows and Big Buddha Bungalows. Each ran about a dozen huts, none with electricity nor running water. I stayed at Sunshine Bungalows, with a startlingly beautiful view of the bay.

Granted, they all did.

KO SAMUI

The main house up the hill served as the owner's domicile, restaurant, lavatory and communal hangout. We'd while away the days by lounging, reading each other’s novels, writing long letters of self-discovery or short postcards we couldn’t yet send. We played with pet monkeys and hiked the leafy forest on the other side of the main road. We lived in idyll.

We made fast friends from all parts of the world, sharing remarkable stories of adventure and distress. There was Dolf from Denmark, Toby from Vancouver, John and Hanna from Tasmania.

I went by "Tom", to keep things simple.

Local Thai women in sarongs would stroll by each day on the beach, selling rambutan, lychee, coconut milk and trinkets.

We ate like fiends, acquiring exotic tastes that still linger with nostalgia on my tongue’s memory buds.

By mid-afternoon, we'd be freshly roasted, both by the blazing sun and the ganja cookies so dutifully prepared up the hill, and on the menu.

Then came the ritual of volleyball, as the day cooled and players from all surrounding bungalows gathered around the net.

me at 24

The games were ridiculously competitive, and fun beyond reason – an exclamation point to the splendor of each day.

It was hilarious, like being intentionally stranded on fantasy island, no worries, no fears, no connection to the outside world.

Or, at least, not much.

Tragic news did somehow drift our way about a Korean jet shot down by the Soviets over the Sakhalin Islands. I couldn’t forget the airline number if I tried: KAL007.  Hearing about this, 2 weeks after it actually happened, standing in salty surf running through my toes, looking beyond the horizon, the world was distant, surreal.  

We were detached, like Lords of the Flies without the ambition. A nation of ephemeral travelers sharing a bubble of time.

The volleyball games ended with just rewards. We plunged into the luxuriant sea, washing our sweaty, sticky bodies and refreshing ourselves for lovely evenings of eating, sitting by bonfires and reading by candlelight.

Times have changed. Koh Samui now has an airport, big-chain hotels, newspaper delivery and crime. 

It's a popular getaway destination for weekend merrymakers, I think there may even be a Club Med where once stood tin shacks.

KO SAMUI

I've never gone back. I don't imagine I could.

I spent one month on Koh Samui exactly 30 years ago.

And, somehow, I don't think I ever left.

Sept 26, 2013

see the gallery at:

http://www.armandthomas.com/p65248846/h70154a26#h70154a26

The chaos in Egypt is not sectarian.
It does not pit Moslem against Moslem, as in, say, Iraq and Syria.

my family in Heliopolis, circa 62 The vast majority of Egypt is Sunni Moslem- to almost 97% of the population.
In Iraq, Saddam was Sunni, but the opposition and majority was Shiite... and old rancors led to the vicious civil war.
In Syria, Assad is a Shiite, and the rebels are Sunnis - different ideologies and different backers vying for power.
Assad cheers the fall of the Morsi government - not because he's supports popular uprisings (ha!), but because he has disdain for the Sunnis.

No, in Egypt, it's about fundamentalism, the rule of law versus the rule of the Koran, and an articulate, sophisticated opposition to demagoguery and autocratic rule.
Simply said, the modern, connected and well-read Egyptians -- even as a minority mainly in Cairo -- were sickened at the thought of overturning a dictator like Mubarak in order to promote a fundamentalistic religious ruler like Morsi.
Egyptians was willing to give the Muslim Brotherhood a fair shake in the last elections, preferring this well-organized and long-oppressed group to finally prove its mettle.

But after one year, it was clear that promises were being ignored and hope for true progress was a delusion.
The world's most populous Arab nation was heading down the revolutionary road of Iran (a Shiite nation) - where Islamic Law primed over a legislative constitution.
That may have been celebrated by millions of devout supporters of the Brothers, who blame the hardships of the past half-century on the secular rule of military leaders: Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak.
But for more liberal Egyptians, the free-thinkers who abhor the dogma of religious rules (in the footsteps of my own parents' generation), the revolution continues in the name of human rights. The struggles must continue if the future will improve.