Round 2!

 The second term has started with a flurry of unfortunate events and bad news, but the weather is really nice. That's right folks, the unrelenting heat of Bangkok has proven not so unrelenting. In fact, it was damn near brisk on the way to work this morning, and thank god there's finally work. After getting an additional five weeks off work and being advanced fifteen days pay the company and it's workers have jointly fucked the teachers finances for the remainder of the school year. Paying back those fifteen days isn't going to be pretty, this month in particular. I suppose there'll be lots of movie nights in with mama noodles (Thai for ramen) and definitely no christmas presents, not that I was actually considering getting any anyway.

I've got two new schools and one of them has a whole host of special kids, you remember what a special kid is in Thailand right? No they're not gifted, capable of lightning quick computations, smashing standardized test benchmarks or stringing together eloquent lines of poetry, these kids are dim. The school gets extra money for taking these kids on and so in an odd turn of events they get the privilege of being in the classroom with me, wait, did I just call that a privilege? What I mean to say is that out of all of the two thousand kids at this K through twelve school who've pined after proper English classes with a native English speaker these awkward looking, lovably affectionate, and disturbingly popular students get to attend out of the good graces of the government's compassionate subsidies.

We were playing charades to help the kids practice vocabulary like, taking photographs, feeding the fish, and skateboarding, when I announced that it was the last round. Everyone in the class started shouting out that Bank had to go. It was my second time teaching this class and since I teach 160 students at this school I hope that you'll forgive me for not knowing who Bank was at the time but I'll surely not forget him now. When Bank heard his name he covered his face with his hands and started rolling around like he was inebriated. I saw the student doing that but didn't realize it was Bank so I called Bank up to the front of the class, sure enough the seemingly drunk student got to his feet. Barrel legs and arms like cannons, if the smile on his face wasn't so completely infantile I would have been intimidated. Bank came up to the front of the class and stood facing the students as though he was going to teach a lesson. I came over to him and whispered into his ear “drinking,” one of the easiest of the vocabulary words. The Thai teacher came over and said it to him in Thai knowing he wouldn't know it. We backed away and the kids said the question phrase we'd been practicing, “What was he doing?” Bank raised one of his hands, to me it looked like he was holding a glass but it could have been a fishing rod or a box of fish food or any of a number of the other pieces of vocabulary to the other students who were not privy to my instructions. Then one of the students in the front row jumped up from his seat on the floor and pantomimed a cheers with Bank and Bank turned his invisible drinking vessel upside down above his head and started jumping from one foot to the other as he snorted incessantly. The students all began calling out drinking but Bank didn't stop until I put my hand on his shoulder. Then he went back to his seat on the floor as though he'd just woken up from a mid-afternoon nap, just the way he came up from his seat.

There is a definite kindness to the people of Thailand, the actual people of course, not the establishment or the government. The lack of critical thinking certainly deserves a lot of pontification but among the more beautiful things is that when walking through the crowded neighborhoods where families live in unimaginably close proximity and the streets are lined with beauty salons, convenience stores, and fruit markets one will see six and seven year olds walking through the streets on their way home from school without fear of any kind. To be feared in this town are the police, and the tourist areas. A friend came out of a bar well drunk and was stopped instantly by two police. They reached into his front pocket and pulled out some marijuana. It wasn't his but someone from the bar had planted it on him. The cops didn't even search him, they just pulled it right out of his front pocket and took him down to the jail. Originally they asked for a bribe worth about $3000 but when he told them he didn't have it then it was off to the cell with the other unfortunates. He was the only farang in the place and unlike the other detainees he was allowed to roam around between the cells and chat with whom ever he wanted. After two days in the police station and numerous visits attempting to negotiate an appropriate bribe he was finally sent to court where the lawyer and fines and of course a small bribe were all paid that almost equaled the amount originally asked for when he was stopped. The court case was of course a joke, a television with a judge skyped in on it and no witnesses presented or evidence asked for. A mandatory requirement for a visit in jail was that the visitors all bring a pack of cigarettes for each officer on duty. I was asked to donate my back pack and we all got some food, water, clothes and reading material together for him. He never saw it and it was all confiscated. The ordeal is all over but the mark that it has left is lasting, we've all heard the stories but we all now know the dirty little truth about the Bangkok police. I'm quite lucky I must say as there has been a law passed recently in Thailand that forbids anyone from making or agreeing with any anti-monarchy statements online. So much as liking an anti-monarchy statement on facebook can land you in prison. There is no such law regarding the police.

Among the other bad news about the beginnings of the new term was the flood. I had a dream last night that it was back and I waded through knee deep water that instantly appeared while I was on a night out. I of course, never had to wade through any water aside from the kitty pool in our apartment building which we use to play the most amazing game ever,  

Aqua Fives.

Aside from taking the opportunity of the floods to make this amazing game up I also went and did some volunteering.  We were making rafts, why?  I don't know.

The bamboo shoots before they've been fashioned into raft frames.   Some of my friends made the frames.

I of course chose to stick with the ladies and do the much more manly job of sewing the bags shut.  These bags were filled with empty water bottles with screw caps on them to make them float.

Here's a finished frame up on empty gas
cans waiting to have bags affixed to it.

And here's a finished raft.  I didn't go out on
the buses to deliver them but those of us
who did say that the rafts actually worked.
Don't worry, they also brought food, water
and bug spray.

Bangkok is definitely getting Christmas like, it's a bit odd to see in a Buddhist country but I suppose Christmas isn't really Christian anymore, even if that's what some people like to think.  All of the major malls here have Christmas decorations up and if they don't put them up they have happy new year decorations, everyone wants a piece of the economic pie that is December.  

Decorations outside my office.  There are even more up now, this was just the beginning.

Of course no back to school entry would be complete without a word or two about the children.  Here's a self portrait that one of my kids drew while we were learning about facial features, you know, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, all those parts that are completely indistinguishable in this picture.

Gam's self portrait

 Another of my students didn't wear his uniform on the first day of school, this little four year old wore his favorite t-shirt.

 And another lovely new student who's name I can only imagine is spawned by a certain popular rap star.

 This actually what Gam looks like, not what you expected from the self portrait eh?  I cannot tell you where her other sock went, she came to class wearing it and left without it.

Of course the beginning of the flood also heralded the end of my business English class and what a fun bunch they were.  Here's a few of them the day before our final exam.  The tall one next to me is actually wearing my glasses, not his own.  

As for now folks, that's all.  Good luck with your holidays, mine will probably be spent with some mama noodles and a movie and lord willing I'll be able to pay for my plane ticket back to Bangkok as it does look as though there's one more term in the cards for me here.  I love you all and I'll see you soon.

#16 - Off the Cuff

I bring this to you off the cuff and unedited as the internet providers have screwed us over due to the floods, or in this case, the lack there of.

Unfortunately I now write to you from an internet cafe next to a main canal that is directly connected to the Chao Prayha River.  Even more unfortunate is that my new house is just down the street.  I have woken up and taken a walk down to the river every day since I moved in and found the water level to be unchanged.  However this morning the river was at the brink.  There are groups of high school students out on the street with instruments waiting to be picked up by vans full of volunteers headed for the refugee camps.  Other vans go out to the outer areas of Bangkok where there has been five feet of water covering all the roads for weeks.  Some of our friends have left and gone south.  One friend went to Phnom Phen where a heavy rain flooded the street his hotel was on.  He waded through waste deep water full of filth and all the while his street back here in Bangkok was bone dry, we will see how long that lasts though.  One teacher I work with took a plane back to England with no clear intention of ever returning, I suppose I should say one teacher I worked with. 

In spite of all the impending doom life is mostly rather normal.  Aside from all the free time and the lack of necessities at the grocery everything else seems to be quite normal.  The motorbikes and taxis are operating, the public transit is mostly unaffected in central Bangkok, all the banks are still open and if it weren't for the stupid politicians people probably wouldn't be so wound up about everything.  Most of the people we know literally saw the flood a day before it actually arrived. 

"Hey Kevin how's it going?"
"Pretty good."
"You coming out to Billy's birthday tonight?"
"Naw I probably shouldn't, I can see the water down at the end of my soi."
"Oh shit man."
"Yeah, I want to be here when it gets to my house, make sure the sandbags hold."
"Alright man, good luck."

His house's drive way has now turned into a two foot deep kitty pool. 

For us there is still a silver lining.  Despite being poor and bored we can always go for a swim.  And since our apartment is slightly higher than the rest of the area we probably won't actually get water up to our doorstep.  If we do though it will be a long time coming and I'll finally be able to curse the banks and the shopping malls like everyone else has been doing.  There is talk that if they shuttered the big businesses and closed the banks for four days but let it pass through the city center then the outlying areas would only be under water for a matter of weeks rather than months.  The water would likely pass through the business districts in a few days and then business could resume as normal.  This is not how it has played out though and northern areas, two of which my schools are in, have had six to nine feet of water for well over a month and there are minimal signs of improvement. 

Last night we went out and got chicken wings and drank some beer.  There was a promotion, buy ten get ten free.  We all sat around the table, no talk of floods or disaster, and yet we were all there because school is canceled.  Our Thai friend who was with us has been bumming around our houses, the refugee is what she calls herself.  Her home as well as her parents home have flooded but she works near us so she stays here.  Still, as we sat there in the heart of one of Bangkok's three major business districts the men were trying harder than ever to rope us into a ping pong show.  The lack of tourists is the most obvious side effect that any of us have seen...well, there are also the sandbags everywhere, mostly unused as well.  In the end I suppose I will be able to say that I lived through the greatest flood Thailand has seen in over two generations, and that is pretty damn cool.

#15 - God willing and the creek don't rise

There are some kids next to me smoking hooka. They look to be about fifteen and I can't believe they're allowed into the bar. Maybe it's the floods?

The waitress at lunch misunderstood my order and brought me a hot plate with little sizzling strips of pork on it. It never occurred to me before I came to Thailand but I now realize that accents don't just change pronunciation but actually entire words. Water and wada for example, or hello, elo, and hulo. It's a bit unnerving when you hear a word you know in another language said so differently you don't recognize it. How useful is learning this language if I can't understand people from outside of Bangkok?

Over the last week I've been running into people from all over Thailand, they're all escaping the flood. Their accents confuse me and because many of them have not traveled much they struggle with my bastardization of a Bangkok accent. When I went to the train station it was very crowded with families who were spending the night there in hopes that the flood water would recess and they could take a train home. The train I took went south to start me on a journey towards the beautiful island of Koh Phangan, where I would find an insane party, a little Thai playmate named Axel, and that pavement is hard and unforgiving.

When I got back to Bangkok a week later my street was preparing for the floods which now, a week after that still haven't happened. I walked up onto the skytrain and saw the 7-11's and every other shop with any money behind it sandbagged three feet high. Here in the land of conspiracy theories, where too often they have been true, people are saying that they're deliberately diverting the water away from the rice fields that Thaksin owns at the expensive of homes and rivals rice fields. Being an exiled prime minister who still holds a large body of support makes him the most obvious target for such rumors. Although in my short time spent in Thailand it would not surprise me if they were not just rumors.

The one body that is not being given any praise during this multi-billion dollar disaster is the army. They have undoubtedly done the most good for the people of Thailand, sand bagging, levy construction, evacuation, all the things that need to be done in a disaster but without all the politics, the accusations and the misinformation. The science minister went on national TV and issued an evacuation order for two northern districts and then twenty minutes later went on again and said it was a mistake. The prime minister, who happens to be Thaksin's sister, said the worst had passed in the same morning that the governor of Bangkok announced that it was only going to get worse. All of this has led to a massive amount of discord in peoples expectations of what the flood actually will do. For me the most shocking thing has been going down to the grocery store and seeing them completely out of bottled water, ramen and eggs. It's been this way for over a week. They've changed their story about what is going to happen so many times that at this point I will only believe it when I see it.

The frustration from the locals is palpable. Facebook has become a war zone.

Thai, “It's so frustrating.”

Farang, “The government is doing the best they can, what have you been doing?....exactly.”

Thai, “Actually I’ve been sandbagging for businesses. What have you been doing?”

(Half a day goes by in the usually instantaneous world of Facebook, then...)

Farang, “I have work.”

It's not difficult to see how quickly an event like this turns political. The political parties turn on each other and attack instead of turning to each other and asking how can we help?”

My friends have almost uniformly had their work canceled for the coming week, as far as I know I'm the only person who's not be notified that my work is canceled. I'll be going in, God willing and the creek don't rise. Ah now that is a funny phrase. Originally the phrase went, God willing and the Creek don't rise. The Creek that Benjamin Hawkins was referring to was the Native American tribe the Creek. The saying does take on a very different tone when it's seen that way.

Adieu my friends, and wish me luck and dryness.  I will leave you with some pics floating around from the floods over the last couple months.  Keep in mind these are the worst floods Thailand has seen in thirty years.

A photo from outside my friends house

Northern Bangkok

A crocodile farm flooded and released over 100 crocodiles near a neighborhood in a northern province

See now that's Bangkok, and those little red dots are places where it is flooding, and the pink is pretty much gonna flood, everything in the middle might flood, and that little arrow with the bubble, well that's where I live.

#14 - Frustration

 Picture this, a scooter trolling through the off white smoke that floats down the still slick damp soi. The vendor on the curb stokes his flame and another burnt bit of air is left in its wake. The scooter leans across the orange center line of the street to pass rows of just stopped cars. The wheels roll up the pavement and onto the sidewalk where I, the man who hired this pigeon jockey, get off to go to work. At the steps of the train a legless woman waits with a cup for change from kind passersby. In a manner of speaking she sits, although it seems a cruel description of an even more cruel plight.

As I board the train waves of densely cool air fall out of the open doors and opposite my entrance, I see a mother and her nearly teenaged son cuddled closely. The son seems disengaged while the mother pets his head and runs her thumb along his cheek. Then she fusses with the yellow sash around his neck, a piece of uniform that seems better suited to a cowboy than a schoolboy. This constant fuss continues the duration of my thirty minute train ride. That it is a mother who does this is of no particular note except for the mental fact check of my brain. I've seen fathers similarly engaged. That it is a son is undeniably important. Inalienable truths, the power of a chromosome, the dissolution of the delicate shell of the ovum to yield that all important son.

I spoke with a woman once about what she was looking for in a husband. She wasted no time with her answer.

“Must love me.”

“Is that all?”

“Don't care anything else.”

“What if he drank all the time or was racist?”

“He drink or he racist he can't change, but if he love me, ok.”

I took her to mean that she didn't think someone could change themselves, and perhaps she is right. It could also be the Thai conception of love that brought her to this answer, however I don't think so. If a man is unloved he whores and parties and thought the family may not be happy with it he is still a son and a part of the family. If a woman is unwed, and thus unloved, she is a failure. If she were to exhibit similar behavior as I mentioned about a son, she would be dead to the family. Simply put, a man is more important. So important in fact that his love is valued highly enough to make or break a woman's life, even if it's the love of a racist alcoholic.

I arrive at the office and pull open my lesson plan, review the vocab, the language structure, introductions and name-tags. Then our first game, it is meant to take eight to ten minutes. The students walk around the room exchanging the question and answer pattern used in the lesson. After wards they play rock paper scissors and the loser must then hop around on one foot. I am desensitized to the children at this point, they are still cute and funny and little rascals and naughty but they don't evoke the same joy or frustration that they did when I started this job. So much of life is the search for new sensations because so much of life is the loss of sensation, the desensitization to the things that you see nearly every day. After the student loses their second game of rock paper scissors they then have to walk around on their knees. After the student loses their third game they have to walk up to the teacher and play the teacher in order to stand up again. The name of the game is legless, and today I don't want to play this game, today I remember the way it felt the first time I passed the woman at the steps of the train who, in a manner of speaking sits.   

A photo I took from a temple in Ang Thong and then did a little work on.

#13 - Who cares if it makes sense, does it work?

 When you walk into Siam Paragon, Siam Center, or MBK, the metal detectors or bomb sensors or whatever they are will probably be flashing at you with a bright red hand that I can only assume is a signal to stop, no one does though. These massive city like malls that fall somewhere between casino and flea market in design seem relatively unconcerned that nine out of ten people set their alarms off. The security guards pull people aside and search bags but I can't say that I've ever seen someone go through one of these portals to consumerism without setting it off. Why do they have them if they never stop alerting you to the supposedly dangerous elements entering your shopping center? Like so many other things in Thailand there is little sense to be made by us.

My friend Adam got pulled over on his motorbike while his girlfriend was on the back. He has no license, which is not unusual in Bangkok and after a little conversation with Adam's Thai girlfriend the officer informed them that they had to go to the police station to pay a one-hundred baht fine. They said they didn't have time and the officer offered to take the fine right there and then to save them the time. They paid and then went down to the end of the street and made an illegal U turn before heading back the way they came. They passed a different officer on that side of the road who tried to flag them down but they yelled to him that they had been stopped by the cop on the other side of the street already and the officer waved them on. I don't need to tell you that the fine never made it to the police station.

My boss Lee hurt his foot rather badly and chose to fore go a plaster cast, after a few days he could tell that it wasn't right and he went back to have a cast put on. He returned to the doctor and after a confirmation of his suspicions a lengthy conversation ensued between them. The doctor seemed to be convinced that there had been some other accident that had happened after his initial visit. Lee assured him that nothing had happened to it but the doctor kept on insisting. Finally the doctor explained to him that if he had slipped in the bathtub and injured his foot again then he could bill the insurance company for it and any time they billed the insurance company they charged double what they would charge a private party. So Lee could pay four-thousand baht or the insurance company could pay eight. Now I understand why they tell us at work that if we go to the doctor for anything we should tell them we want to stay over night, otherwise they can't bill the insurance company, and they really, really want to. No one in Thailand denies this goes on, it simply is the way things are.

I know a teacher at a school outside of Bangkok who was fired for drinking on the job. He was not, of course, drinking on the job. However the culture of saving face would not permit his superiors to admit they'd made a mistake by hiring someone with too thick of a South African accent, an accent that is definitely not sought after in Thailand. Another peculiar example of the saving face culture, are the people at my company who manage the relationship between the company and the schools. One of my schools has been continually uncooperative throughout the semester. They change our room and don't tell us, they give us no room at all, they bring our students late and then remove them from class without warning, we teach with other classes going on in the background or in the middle of the library while copy machines and activities cause constant distractions in the background. Our school manager had spoken to them about this but nothing was changed. She wouldn't go to her boss though because then it would look as though she couldn't do her job, or the school would become upset with the company and try and place the blame on our school manager and she would again be seen as incompetent. There is no reward in this culture for stepping forward and admitting a mistake, it is seen as a damning admission of failure. Even my adults that I teach business English to at night cheat when we play games in class, for the life of me I can't fathom how this is so easily accepted, and even expected.

Despite all this there are still some people and students that operate on a level of morality and respect that I find amazing. These people are few and far between though, it seems that like many religions the Buddhist philosophy of karma only applies when it serves ones own interests. However there is an explanation of another phenomenon that stems from Buddhist philosophy I find quite interesting. Homosexuality is not seen positively in this country for the most part. The city of Bangkok may be a more tolerant place then most but Thailand is staunchly against homosexuality especially when it comes to the upper strata of society. Because of this many gay men choose to become women. At first this seemed like a silly thing to me, but when the ideas of Buddhist philosophy and particularly reincarnation are brought to bear on the idea it becomes much more clear. In Buddhism there is no infallible creator who chooses the body you are put into, as a result you could very well be reincarnated into a body of the wrong gender. A family is much more accepting of a straight woman than a gay man, even if that woman used to be a man.

Now a quick funny story about a visa run.

Martin went on a visa run to Cambodia and as with all visa runs it seems he met a few very unusual individuals. This particular one was an American who was a truck driver, but not just any kind of truck driver, he drove trucks through war zones. He was on vacation for a few months and he was staying here in Thailand. He told Martin and another girl who was Filipino about how the women in Thailand had been quite cruel to him on his previous visits but on this latest visit he had reunited with an old girl he had dated and she had bore his son after his last visit, a son which he was now helping to take care of. After talking for a bit he showed Martin and the girl a photo of his child and the Filipino girl, knowing at this point that the American spoke no Thai, said in Thai, “Oh god that is not a farangs baby.” Martin was in agreement though they spoiled no ones secrets that day.

Cherrio folks, and whenever you see a metal detector think of me and how useless it's Thai counterpart is.

I asked my kids to draw elephants on the board, this is what I got.  That little mark above the one on the left is the kids signature.

Some of the schools have pets, this is Ake Authaya's pet cat.

#12 - 1...2...3...Fight!

It's the end of the second round and my lungs are on fire. Two hours of grossly transient sleep marred by shouting children and blades of sun burning through my shut eyelids has left me less than prepared for what's coming next. Olly is bent at the waist in front of me giving me encouraging words, a Thai man who I've never seen before has locked my knee straight and is lifting my leg up towards the sky that caps this island night. A young boy of perhaps seven or eight is doing his best Mickey Goldmill impersonation on my shoulders. All that I can manage to define out of the mess of thoughts is that I'm almost there.

The queen's birthday is today and we've just been up all night. Ian dives onto Olly to wake him up. His obsenities are laughed off as I photograph Ian planking on Olly, the silly photo trend known as planking has yielded millions of photos and at least one confirmed death. We went to the after hours bar known as Wongs. The drinks are cheap and the only thing that is more memorable than the décor is the pure sleeze mixed with classy aged expat drag queens. As the sun rose the bar kicked us out and we went to an Argentine designer's house. We go in two cabs and we're all drunk. We arrive first and one of the Russian girls points the house out to me. We are stuck standing outside the front gate until the other cab arrives but I can see the latch on the other side of the eight foot fence isn't locked. As I leap down from the top of the fence I land awkwardly and scrape my elbow. I've made better decisions in my life than this most recent one. This wisdom is made even more apparent when a woman who must have been nearly one hundred starts shouting from the balcony of the house at me.                                 

Ian

“Adam, guy, what are you doing?” Ian seems distressed and I suddenly realize that the fall off the fence isn't the funny feeling I have it's the realization that I've just jumped into some random persons front yard. I vault the fence quickly and land with an adeptness that betrays my drunkenness. The Russian girl never explains why she pointed me towards the wrong house, a joke perhaps?

It is only one hour and two beers before the Argentine kicks us out of his house. The next thing I know we've all dispersed and the Russian girls who said they wanted to come to our place decide at the last minute to go home. Thank god, we have to get going to Koh Samet if we're going to enjoy our first day on the island paradise that the Thais coloquially refer to as Magic Crystal Island.

The ferry away from the island

The bus ride is loud but having not slept in thirty six hours and consciously becoming soar from a massive work out about twelve hours before I manage to close my eyes and turn off my brain, it could hardly be considered restful. Off the bus then on to a ferry that will carry us across the Gulf of Thailand where we will be deposited on Koh Samet. Little do I know what awaits me on the island.

                           

A sign at the head of the beach entrance
We support to conserve environment
A perfect example of Tinglish

We are walking down the main street towards the largest beach on the island when Olly spots someone he knows from a previous trip to Samet. Roger, a Canadian who's moved to Samet and opened up a restaurant that also rents out a couple of rooms in the back seems to be a cool free spirited sort of guy. He tells us he's all booked up but if we want we can crash upstairs for free. There are a couple of mattresses, a few sheets folded in the corner, a fan, an empty wardrobe and in the middle of the room sits a disconnected toilet, thankfully it is brand new. We tell him we'll have a walk about the island and if we want to crash at his place we'll come back. After an hours walk we find that there are no double rooms left anywhere near where we want to stay and the prices are high. We return to Roger to drop our bags off and have some dinner.

Before the sun drops below the horizon we have a dip in the gorgeous crystalline water and then rest on the beach with a host of people from my work who arrived on the island the day before. After dinner we walk to the open air bar next door which has a huge ring in it for Muay Thai fighting. One of the people in the bar we start talking with tells us that the matches will be starting in one hour and that they're looking for a second on the four card fight. They recruited an amateur Thai fighter earlier that night but they were still looking for a challenger. I laughingly told Ian that I'd fight but only if it was a farang. We all laughed about it but in about ten minutes the Thai fighter's friend came over to me and began negotiating for a fight. I had only had half a beer in the last two hours, it was still sitting in my hand and while I will admit to being rather skeptical I was also deathly curious. The Thai fighter had only been training in Muay Thai a few months and he was about six inches shorter than me. He looked in shape but I had sparred with people who'd been trained in martial arts for years and I knew how vastly important size was in a striking sport such as Muay Thai.

If I said I was making a good decision to accept a Muay Thai fight working on two hours sleep the night after a major work out I'd have to be as crazy now as I was then. The closer the fight came, about a forty-five minute wait, the more confident I became. Olly and Ian had gathered all my friends from work and many more farang followed upon hearing news that there was a nak muay farang, the Thai title for a farang kick boxer, about to step into the ring with a Thai boxer. The Thai boxer and I dressed in the grass above the bar. Twelve year old boys watched us as we had our jock straps affixed to us and our hands wrapped in cloth. I hadn't worn any underpants and the young boys snickered at my nakedness. Our gloves were then put on and it was explained to me that there were no elbow strikes allowed. Though I was thankful for this it was also contrary to the name Muay Thai. Muay Thai comes from a Sanskrit word that means science of eight limbs.

The beginning of the fight and I can
see the intimidating look the fighter has on his face

My housemate and trainer Olly on the left
the referee on the right

When the referee looked us both in the face he held a bit of dread in his eyes, I was quite sure at this point that not a soul in the bar thought I could survive even one round. The bell rang and I stepped into the middle of the ring and danced on the balls of my feet around him to try and spread his narrow frame.  The moment I paused he flung a stiff sweeping right right side kick at my head. It was at this point that I realized he didn't have a chance against me if I played defense and waited for him to get tired. The kick, close as it was to striking me, posed absolutely no threat given my height, and speed. In that first minute of the match he had slap kicked me twice in the leg and I had landed a series of solid fist combinations including a couple of front kicks directly into his chest. The next two minutes I switched over to fighting left handed, my natural stance, and the look on his face was priceless when he realized that I was in fact left handed. Before the round was out I had vaulted him over my hip and onto his back scoring the first knock down of the fight. As I sat back in my corner and looked across the ring I could see his friends looking back and forth at each other wondering what just happened.

That's my corner

Olly jumped into the ring as though I'd already won, screaming that I had this in the bag. Someone poured ice cold water over me from behind, the shock of it was a little unsettling. With a couple helpful words of wisdom about keeping my hands near my face the second round started. I was in complete control, his short limbs couldn't reach me and every time he came at me I used my quickness to evade him. A light drizzle began to fall and the mat grew slick and I decided to make my move. I threw a fainted punch that missed horribly and then spun around with a back fist that landed right on his guard. The move had failed in practice but the theory of it had succeeded, his surprise was so great that he forgot his ring position and the next punch I threw caught him off guard, he tried to back up but found the ropes and the corner behind him, I landed it squarely between his gloves and knocked his head back. He began flailing aimlessly and I would block with something less than precision but more than carelessness. Then without pause I would hurl my own fists out to pin ball his head. It wouldn't be long before I would score the second knock down of the fight and all hell would break loose in the ring. He began coming at me like he was trapped and with every approach he only tired more and took more pummeling. I threw him down once more, as he also did to me and then the second round was over.

This is where we all started, at the end of the second round with Olly calling out different ways to break his guard and Ian jumping up and down on the side of the ring like he'd won a new car. I could hear my co-workers cheering, I could hear everyone cheering. Oddly enough I think the Thai's were more excited that I was winning than anyone. As I stood up for the third and final round I was tapped on the back and someone stuck a camera in my face.  I smiled with my mouth guard stuck to my top teeth and then three steps into the middle of the ring the referee began waving his arms, the Thai fighter had quit, I'd won the match. I had the referee pull off my right hand glove and I walked over to the other fighter and shook his hand. A few minutes later after I had put on my clothes and was out of my boxing shorts I brought him a shot of whiskey and a beer. We exchanged what words we knew of each others language and then I pointed to my right index finger and said jep, the Thai word for hurt. He then took both of his hands and pointed from his waist up to his head and said jep, jep. We laughed, a genuine thing that neither of us could control, not knowing what reaction he would have losing to a farang my guard was up double that of when I was in the ring and yet he had broken right through it, unfortunately for him it was the only time he broke my guard that night. I returned to the bar where many congratulations were had and astonished Thais came up to me and said things to me with huge smiles and chipper voices. A British girl approached me and asked if I had a light, an obvious chance at a pick up. Olly had a light and I didn't, she invited us over to speak with her friends, I stayed only as long as I had to and returned to my crowd. Everyone was happy to have seen the match, there wasn't a single sour face in the bar, even the fighter's own friends seemed happy to have seen the match, I was happy to have seen it end.

The young boy massaging me as Ian encourages and the Thai guy massages my abs

The night continued, we found ourselves bouncing around in chest high water with a collection of people who we had never met. The water was warm and so were our insides. Some girl grabbed me and started kissing me, she was from Indiana, six weeks shy from a plane ride to Korea for a job that would last a year. Then as the night drug on, nearer to morning than the preceding evening, we were sitting in Roger's restaurant around a large central table. Travis, an Australian traveler who'd been staying with Roger for a week was regaling us with stories of his travels, they were extensive. Roger too was quite the globe trekker, he had taken his son with him through South East Asia for a month long excursion. He also told us about his Thai wife, whom we'd met earlier in the day. She was pregnant, a beautiful thing in its own right. Roger had gone back to Canada three months earlier to tell his Canadian wife of the new child, needless to say she was not happy.

Olly and Ian in Roger's restaurant
I don't know what Olly just said but the look on Ian's face is priceless

It was nearly five in the morning when Roger called in our tabs and began collecting money. We all found our cash, all except for a sour drunk Swede, he was quite in communicative and it was not clear if he simply didn't have his money or was not going to pay. Travis, who'd invited him, began talking with him quietly while we all watched Roger stalk back into the kitchen for a moment to check his math and count our money. When Roger came back out, he was drunk and angrier than before, the tension was electric. Roger is about six foot three and though his physique was nothing to be admired the sheer size and breadth of his body was an intimidating thing. Unfortunately this Swede was also no small man, though smaller than Roger he certainly outweighed everyone else in the room. In Roger's drunkenness his English slipped into what we refer to as Tinglish, an amalgamation of Thai and English that is spoken almost exclusively by Thai's and Westerners who are in relationships together. It is essentially English words spoken with Thai grammar and the occasional Thai word for clarification. It's one thing when you hear a Thai say,

“He give you card for birthday, red.” It is quite another when you see a six foot three Canadian who was speaking excellent English moments earlier break out into,

“You no have? You no have! I no like you. Out, out! You not welcome back, no come here any more. Out!”

We were all standing up and Travis was trying to usher his friend towards the door while Ian Olly and myself all stood in front of Roger interrupting his broken, angry tirade. Eventually the Swede was out in the street and Roger was in the doorway yelling at him with all three of us standing on the porch. There was no way we were letting anyone get Roger in trouble, he'd been too nice to us, and unfortunately it didn't matter if someone hit Roger or Roger hit someone, he'd be in trouble either way. Travis returned from the street and apologized from bringing the Swede, we all agreed that the man needed to be sorted out and that if we saw him the next day he'd be ignored.

Met them on Kho Samet

Despite the one odd unfortunate encounter there were loads of other people abound, Germans, Portuguese, Americans, Brits, and more, people who would be people forever but only in our life for a moment or a night or a weekend. There in lies the problem with such things as this. What permanence can be had when we cannot maintain an established base. Enjoy the moment? Enjoy the pleasure that you will never again regain? Maybe that's the thing of it though, maybe it is perpetually lost to the seconds on the clock ticking away, these moments don't last even if the people do, everything fades away in time.

A photo I messed around with from the fight

Ian, Nat, and Olly

Reason #55 not to become a professional Muay Thai fighter, glove burns

Once one girl did it they all wanted to

And again

Even Olly got his

A host of teachers I work with and the housemates as well