#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