Sep 2007

Tuesday night's 8-person elimination format was a first for Bangla Stadium. Hyped as a marathon of muay thai, it started with the usual youth matches. Then they called 8 fighters to the ring and proceeded to hand out free t-shirts and cooling fans. Quite a treat for them I'm sure. Chok drew the 4th fight and won his first match by decision after 3 rounds. In his second match of the night, however, he lost to a much larger opponent from a rival gym. No judgements here, but the other fighter was clearly doing some steroids and should have been two weight classes above the 7 others in the pool. While Chok showed superior technique and speed, the weight advantage of his opponent proved too much. Still a great night, interrupted only briefly by a sloppy match between two overweight and ill-conditioned American and Australian visitors. I want my money back!

Post-fight festivities were spent in the rain in Patong, where there are bars within bars. Go figure. I have no appetite for that town, but it was Rachel's last night so a bunch of us tried to party it up. The highlights of the evening consisted of Boyan and Gareth beating the bartender at connect-four and some shameful dancing at FBI Thailand (Finest Bar In. . .). =P

Rain has been coming down in Phuket since the beginning of the week. Today it’s been non-stop, making it difficult to travel far by motorbike. It also make going to the beach kind of pointless. On the bright side, I’m living 40 ft from the gym and tonight we’re all going to Bangla Stadium in Phuket to watch one of our trainers fight. SuperChok (a.k.a. Lucky) will be fighting in an 8-person K-1 style elimination tournament in the 60kg class. Basically, this means the champion will have won 3 fights in a single night, giving an incentive to end each bout as quickly as possible. Regardless of the outcome, I’ve arranged to do private training sessions with Chok all next week. This also assumes that my eyes are healthy enough for training. This past week, I’ve been missing training because of mild conjunctivitis. If all else fails, I’ll just do it blind without my contacts. That should be interesting . . .

A host of other injuries have also halted training for a number of guests at the camp. At least 3 other guys have similar eye infections as myself. Rachel's ankle is jacked up from kicking improperly (she'll be touring through SE Asia while until it heals). A Swedish guy just punctured the sole of his foot from a sharp rock that speared through his flip flop yesterday. He can barely walk now. And I just saw Martin, who I've learned has been MIA for 5 days because of a rib injury. The sad part is when you get hurt from something completely unrelated to training.

The first week at Rawai Muay Thai has been fantastic. The day after I arrived, I visited Bangla stadium in Patong with Wat. Three guys from our gym (two foreigners and one trainer) competed and won their matches.

We’ve had pretty nice weather most of the week with only a few showers in the last few days. I’ve met a ton of great people from Dubai, UK, Canada, Sweden, and Singapore to name a few countries. Some of the guys showed me how to get to Nai Harn Beach, which is about 10 minutes away from camp by motorbike. You can rent a lounge chair and umbrella for 100 baht. Not many tourists and one of the cleanest from what I’ve been told.

And as expected, I’ve gotten pretty banged up. Mostly huge blisters on my feet from training on concrete and carpet (no nice mats like in the US). And of course the shin conditioning - bruises on top of bruises sprinkled with a few mosquito bites to make them itch. I’ll spare all of you the photos. I’m basically trying to work through the bruises while taping up my feet until they heal. Going to Bangkok this weekend to run some errands and hang out with my cousin. The break should give me some time rest – probably get a couple massages in as well.

Just got into Beijing from Korea. I'm staying with some Penn Law friends, Derek and Lance, until the end of the week. We're at the WenJin Hotel, Tsing Hua East Gate, just down the street from BLCU, the language school I went to back in 2003. Most of Beijing seems the same, except that all of the old 1.20 and 1.60 cabs have been retired and traffic is slightly more orderly. I guess the government decided to replace those 25 year old Citreons with brand new Hyundai Sonatas, charging 2.00/km, in anticipation of the Olympics. I also got a glimpse of the Olympic stadium (the birds nest) from the 4th ring. It's pretty impressive in person.

Heading out to Mix tonight with the other Penn guys - yes, it's still around apparently. Tomorrow I'm visiting Michelle and Andy after a quick massage.