The Beautiful Game - FINAL

July 13, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Fittingly, the series closes with boys playing in a dirt patch in Téfe, province of Amazonas, in northern Brazil.

To view earlier photographs, click on the Facebook link below.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152461061226558&set=a.10151232947406558.509238.686626557&type=1&theater

Gooooaaaaaallllllllll!!!

TEFE, Brazil

www.armandthomas.com

The Beautiful Game (no.10)

July 03, 2014 • 1 Comment

EL MINYA, Egypt - No.10 of a series of soccer being played around the world.

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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152461061226558&set=a.10151232947406558.509238.686626557&type=1&theater

ANCIENT CEMETARY of MINYA, Egypt

The Beautiful Game

June 29, 2014 • 2 Comments

BOGOTA, Colombia - No.9 of a series of soccer being played around the world.

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BOGOTA, Colombia

King of Diamonds

June 27, 2014 • 1 Comment

Driving home after 9 hours of poker, I thought about some hands I played.

I should have shoved with those 6s when the pot was big; I shouldn't have pressed the King-Queen-suited so early out of position…
And so on…
The Golden Nugget tournament began at noon with 109 players, I was knocked out in 18th place.Six spots out of the money.
Dang, so much work - er, I mean fun - on my day off, and no reward save for more experience.
Hmmpt.

Up ahead on the freeway, I spot a 50s Cadillac Eldorado, pale colored, beautiful curves and dramatic fins.
I pass it on the left and look at the driver, none other than Elvis A. Presley himself, black hair coiffed back, gold metal sunglasses, rhinestone jacket...
I chuckle to myself and think: Ahh, Las Vegas, you sure are something…

As the World Turns

January 24, 2014 • 4 Comments

< Last of the blogging while tripping in Vietnam and Cambodia >

As is customary at the end of a trip to an impoverished part of the world, my thoughts turn to my parents, and my eternal gratitude for having emigrated from Egypt in 1966. My parents’ risky move gave us a chance for a better life, for prosperity, education and human rights.

I adored visiting Vietnam and Cambodia, exotic and intoxicating nations, historical and cultural landmarks, but also distressed and corrupt, nations struggling to recover from tragic pasts. And I am once again reminded of my own good fortunes, and how not to take them for granted. Because there, for the love of Buddha, could have gone I.

Despite threads of melancholy in my writings, it was a trip filled with wonder, both sublime and ridiculous. How these people have such easy smiles defies their meager means. How there aren’t a thousand crashes at each of Saigon’s busy intersections defies logic.

Angkor Wat artist

So many elusive memories over three short weeks.

I chatted with a group of young monks inside Buddha school in Phnom Penh for a half hour – just walked in off the street and climbed a set of stairs to a classroom…. I had a haircut in Siem Reap in one of several shops soon to be added to my Barbers photo gallery… I had 50-cent dinners and 4-dollar cups of coffee, obviously not at the same place. I hung out with a young painter in Wat Prohm (near Angkor) and bought one his watercolor artwork… I treated myself to one cheap massage, but couldn't fathom getting a Happy Ending from a pitiable young girl… I walked in the footsteps of my all-time hero, English writer Graham Greene, whose classic A Quiet American was set partly at 151 rue Catinat (now called Dong Koi) in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). That very arcade now features art shops and a tasteful café called L’Usine… I handed out small bills like tissues at a funeral, and gave kids hologram 3-D stickers of African animals bought at the 99-cent store in Vegas… I got my legs splashed by fish so fresh at the locals market, they were still writhing in a shallow basin of water… I rode passenger at the back of a motorbike "taxi" with my heavy backpack through the dizzying Saigon traffic and for all the gold in the world, I wish I had a GoPro camera on my useless plastic helmet - terrifying and terrific all at once… I found Wifi everywhere and veggie offerings hardly anywhere, thus packing on an 10 extra pounds through a diet of rice, noodles, pasta, crackers and bread… Too Fast Too Furious blared on the TV monitor at the front of the bus as we bounced along a rural Cambodian road, swerving to avoid cattle, deep ruts and sputtering tractors from the 1950s… I bumped hard into an ancient column walking dazedly around the Angkor Wat ruins, and exclaimed "Now, who put that there?!" (but none of the Chinese tourists found this hilarious)… I bought small inexpensive souvenirs galore, not so much from the need to have as from the goal to give… Why then, at times, did I haggle over a huge amount of 15,000 dong when in the end, it amounted to 75 cents?... I was bedazzled by the sweetest 7-year-old in Cambodia who sold postcards and could recite 1 to 10 in ten languages – switched the camera into video mode in time to capture the last 5… On a Saigon city bus (yes, I hopped on those to mingle with locals) I sat next to an old man, maybe 80, who's eyesight was failing, but spirit still robust. He railed to me, in Vietnamese, with relentless passion. "He complains about the communists," the girl behind us explained, in French. She had just come back from studies in Paris and noticed my Cirque t-shirt. Got that on video too… I loved my new gear – the tidy Olympus OMD5, the Lowe Pro messenger bag and the mini iPad… all small and subdued and exceptional travel companions.

A delightful trip, yes - but one of conflicting emotions. One moment supremely awed, the next wholly disgusted. I couldn’t get the Cambodian tragedy of Pol Pot out of my head. Two million people wiped out, the quarter of the population. Just 40 some year ago. “My uncle he die from no eat,” the painter at Wat Prohm told me, a line that I wrote in dread and earnest. Vietnam too can have wrenching poverty, but there’s entrenched desperation in the Cambodia. And a more vile government, not coincidentally. Beggars, amputees, child labor, sex tourism, relentless flogging, peddling, pleading… Hardship comes at you in many ways, and if the heart doesn’t break it does not beat. That's the price of traveling in the real world. We go see not only for pleasure, but also to know, to become aware. To be of the world. To appreciate what matters.

Soon, I’ll be back home, mending my garden, watching hockey on television, polishing my motorcycle, complaining about my job, living the privileged life and trying not to feel guilty about all the disparity.

(Jan 23)

See previous blogs at www.armandthomas.com/blog

Photo gallery of Vietnam and Cambodia coming soon...

Chau Doc

January 21, 2014 • 1 Comment

< Tripping and blogging from Vietnam and Cambodia >

Travel, if you're lucky, is half pleasure and half work. Because the pleasure is so intoxicating, we keep hitting the road like junkies for a fix. But you're constantly dealing, forever on guard - is the passport safe? Is the food clean? When's the next bus? Where's tomorrow's bed? Are the camera batteries recharged? Carry a pen knife and a small tube of crazy glue. Watch out for harassing touts, pickpockets and bag snatchers on motorbikes (I had my iPad nearly ripped out of my hands the other day); don't twist your ankle, always keep small bills handy and never stray too far afield if you have the runs.

The basics.

It develops as second nature, and it's all worth it, every bit.

But, yes, it does wear you down, and my stamina isn't what it used to be. The trip rounding it's final bend, and having caught a cold, the temptation to zip back to Saigon fro Phnom Penh was great.

So glad I resisted, and took a motor boat down to the Vietnamese border town of Chau Doc.

With a population of 150,000, it's small enough to be remote and offer the quintessential Mekong Delta experience, while big enough to have a place to stay like the Murray Guesthouse, one of those pleasures mentioned before.

Run by a worldly Australian man and his Vietnamese wife, it was one of those unexpected rewards on the the unplanned itinerary. Spotless, friendly, helpful. Plus, they provided good bicycles which I used over my 2 days, scurrying around the loud and colorful markets, finding hidden alleys to the water's edge where women in straw cone hats rowed by standing up, and taking the ferry across the tributary to explore the slower and somewhat more pastoral (ie: poorer) outlying communities. Lots of shanty homes and stilt houses perched over the waters. And, it came as quite a shock, a dozen Mosques squirting the area of Chau Phong, most notably one named Mubarak. When the muezzins blared their calls for prayers as students in their flowing silks pedaled by, I stopped to wonder where I was.

Buddhists, Taoists, Moslems and Christians seem to coexist fairly well around communist Vietnam, particularly in the south. Go figure.

(Jan 20)

See earlier posts at: www.armandthomas.com/blog

Picture and video seen here are iPad quickies -

Photo gallery of Vietnam and Cambodia coming soon

Body and soul

January 19, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Lots of white geezers who look like Nick Nolte in that mugshot strut around Phnom Penh with young Cambodian girls for company.

They've come to visit, or even retire, to regale themselves with concubines on the cheap.

Maybe the Beatles were wrong. Money can buy you love, at least a semblance of it.

Granted, some couples are on the up. It happens. Boy meets girl anywhere.

But most unions are dubious, if you were to judge the look by its cover.

Foreigners are accosted relentlessly in the tourist quarters, first for a tuk tuk, then a motorbike and then, in a sly conspirator tone, "You want massage, girl?"

Every dude seems to know a girl who's simply dripping with desire.

While I was in PP, news flashed about an international bust on pedophilia and sex trafficking.

This ragged city with its corrupt government and bounty of stunningly beautiful girls was a prime target. Really? Quelle surprise!

Phnom Penh is also awash in the flowing orange robes of monks.

Talk of juxtaposition. Sultry seediness and demure devotion.

Both the byproduct of destitution.

With all due respect to Buddhism, in poverty riddled Cambodia, a young man can often find salvation through religion.

It's no easy task. And no easy life, by any measure. But at least it provides purpose.

To a stranger, Monks are colorful anomalies of Western life. They add a visual vibrance to the daily scenery -- robes flowing from back of scooters, big shiny orange umbrellas catching a ray of sunlight in a dingy market, the serenity amidst the clutter of a monk reciting a mantra in front of a shop in exchange for a little food or money. I walked into a Buddhist university where young students from the countryside had come to complete their entrance exams. I stood at the threshold of the class, snapping pictures of the marvelous scene, feeling privileged. No one made a fuss, on the contrary, they were enthralled at seeing the images on my small monitor, and were eager to know where I came from, where I was going and to answer my own queries about their lives.

The mantra of street photography is universal: make a connection and you can make art.

(Jan 19)

See earlier posts at: www.armandthomas.com/blog

Picture and video seen here are quickies shot on iPad

Photo gallery of Vietnam and Cambodia coming soon on this website

Ancient Ruins

January 16, 2014 • 1 Comment

All right, roll out the superlatives.

Angkor Wat is everything it's cracked up to be - magnificent, glorious, colossal, beautiful.

It fully merits it's place in the pantheon of the world's great wonders, along with the Pyramids, Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, etc.

It's sheer size is breathtaking. Angkor itself is but one wat (temple) among a series that span an area of some 5 miles. Thousands more a scattered for hundreds of miles in northwest Cambodia.

And they weren't only places of worship. Angkor was the hub of the ancient Khmer kingdom that reached far into present-day Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. To put things in perspective, in its heyday which was somewhere between the 9th and 13th centuries, Angkor's population was more than one million inhabitants, at a time when, say, London was a town of 50,000.

Fast forward about 500 years when Western adventurers in the early 20th century "discovered" the hidden civilization and began clearing the jungle and scrubbing the walls, so to speak, for all the world to see.

Cambodians were filled with national pride, and revenue from tourism wouldn't hurt either. The terror years of Pol Pot killed this venture, along with 2 million countrymen, and it wasn't until the 90s or so that peace broke out and the ruins became a worldly destination.

How's that for an abridged overview?

You can't just walk into Angkor, and you can't stroll from one wat to the other.

It's a protected area a few clicks from the feeder town of Siem Reap and once inside, the distances are too great.

I'd be damned if I joined an organized tour, and with my gear and the heat, renting a bicycle was also out. So I hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. From my hotel, he'd drop me off from one location to the other and wait patiently from my return. Sun up to sundown, 18 bucks. My guy Phoeung was so good and caring, I tipped him $10 each of my 2 days, and picked up the lunch tab too. Hordes and hordes of visitors and busloads of Chinese tourists assaulted the place. Thank goodness it's so big.

And there's also a large population of locals, many living within the confines, who hawk souvenirs at each stop. But none of this alters the fact that Angkor is truly an exquisite relic of the ancient world.

By stark contrast, Siem Reap is anything but the dusty provincial capital of old.

Think Cabo at Spring Break. New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Gaudy tourism with an Asian flare and a Third World underbelly. Siem Reap is swanky restaurants and massage stables, nightclubs and markets overflowing the tidy quarter around Pub Street.

It's the height of party decadence, neon lights and incessant hawkers.

The air fills with thumping traditional music of Whitney Houston and The Who.

Siem Reap is the debauched Yin to Angkor's sublime Yang.

It provided an interesting distraction, but a stone's throw from the mayhem, I walked the grounds of a serene Pagoda and befriended a young monk in saffron orange robe feeding pigeons in front of his tiny cinderblock room.

His name is Pheayum. At 22, he's been studying at the Buddha school for 2 years, and hopes to one day move on with scholarship to a university, become a lawyer, or a doctor.

Monks are numerous in Siem Reap, but are usually furtive and steer clear of foreigners.

Pheayum was eager to talk, to practice his English, to learn more about the outside world.

How long are wedding ceremonies in Canada? (They last 2 days in Cambodia). How do people live in your villages? How many countries have you traveled to?

He spoke softly and had clever eyes.

He told me how difficult it was at first not having dinners, as monks eat only in the morning and at lunch. Nothing more is permitted.

He has 4 siblings back in the village, and he said he chose to become a monk because, no, his English is not good enough to explain.

His arm gestures and facial expression suggested a calling within his heart.

I asked him about girls. Does he ever think about being with a girl.

"Yes," he said, unabashed. "But I am a monk."

Simple as that.

We sat for nearly an hour as dusk settled over the stupa.

He posed too formally for a picture, and I also snapped a selfie two-shot.

I gave him a couple of dollars and, somewhat stupidly, wished him a blessed life.

Back at the hotel, I had a massage appointment.

Dash your filthy minds, my body ached and it was just a massage.

Slightly pricier than on the street, but that's because these girls were professionally trained.

It was awful.

On a twin bed, both of us fully dressed, she twisted my limbs in directions they shouldn't go, pressed on my organs until I grunted and pounded on my backbone in no particular manner.

Still, it was nice to feel the hands of a girl on me.

It brought back, um, ancient memories.

(Jan 16)

See earlier blogs at www.armandthomas.com/blog

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