The week in review

Hi folks, sorry for the long gap in posting, but there hasn't been much to say. Well, plenty of thoughts in my gerbil-mind but none that you'd likely care to hear about! It's been a long last week filled with some homesickness, some frustration, some learning how to balance life, etc.

I was having a debate with myself about what to do after the build - come back here for a month and train and maybe pick up a fight? Or keep to my plan of heading up to Chiang Mai/Chiang Rai for a couple of weeks and tour around. Everytime I start training hard, training with dedicated fighters and in a group I feel supported in, I want to fight. I want to get in the ring. But then reality kicks in - until the end of February, I'm here for work, which means that I can train in the morning during the week, but I get home too late to train in the afternoon. Problem 1. Problem 2 is that finding a girl to fight here at 160 would hard. And to get down to 150 would mean cutting. And aside from how incredibly bitchy cutting makes me, it's not healthy and I do want to enjoy myself here - which means having a beer or something not entirely nutritious if I wish!! So although fighting in Thailand is a dream and a challenge, I suspect it's just not a good idea. But of course the snark part of my brain takes over and says I'm making excuses because I'm a wimp and lazy and fat and don't want to commit and put the work in. The snark can usually be tamed, but it never fully goes away. Thanks to all who have put up with this debate via email!! Full permission to smack me upside the head.

But the final decision is that fighting right now is not in the books for me. Work, rest, recuperation, a couple of weeks of holidays with the build and going to Chiang Mai/Chiang Rai, and then back here for another 2 weeks to finalize stuff at the Museum. All in all, a much healthier plan, mentally and physically. I wish I had found Muay Thai at an younger age - it would have made this urge to fight much easier to deal with. However, I also suspect I wouldn't have been mature enough to handle it...

Today is a full day off - no training, no running around anywhere, a bit of regrouping before my last 2.5 weeks here commences tomorrow. I'm actually sitting outside at a Starbucks at FuturePark, having paid an extraordinary amount for an hour's worth of wi-fi time, enjoying a real coffee.

Yesterday, I spent 12 hours in Pattaya. Sangtiennoi's son, Moses, was fighting at a WBC event all of us from the gym went down to watch. I took a cab down with Ana and Mike (from a TBA gym in LA) and we spent the day hanging out on the beach, eating seafood, spending money at Fairtex (new Thai pads) and then going to the fights. We were targets for every hawker on the beach, wanting to sell us fake pearls, every sort of pharmaceutical you can imagine, and even oil paintings of naked women (although when he finally figured out we didn't want the naked woman wall hanging, he showed us one of Buddha instead! Sums up Pattaya right there!). We did manage to work our way through a large plate of freshly-steamed shrimp and a couple of bottles of Beer Chang though.

Moses wound up competing in a 4-man tournament in the midst of all the regular 5-round fights. He won his first fight to a farang, but lost the final fight by split decision to a guy from Germany. A hard loss for him, but it was a close fight. If it had been 5 rounds, he likely would have won. He's had +40 fights. For someone his age, this seems to me like so many, but I guess here it isn't that many in reality. Such a different world.

It's an interesting experience sitting in a crowd of mainly beach tourists and hearing them all boo the Thai fighters who won against a foreigner. It was a bit of a shock to me actually - like watching a MMA crowd on TV or something. Certainly not the type of crowd that you would find at the big stadiums. Sangtiennoi had quite a bit to say on the subject of 'farang gyms' like they have in Phuket and Pattaya which are aimed at simply making money and coddling foreigners. The more I train with him, the more I like him - he's no bullshit and simply about the sport and hard training, whether your Thai, non-Thai or alien. I like that.

It was a late night/morning when we got back at 1:30am. I finally got to sleep around 2:30am and slept in this morning late. A few errands today (stocking up on coconut water, laundry detergent, toilet paper and protein bars for breakfasts) and then maybe some more relaxing! It's actually quite warm here today - the last days have been "chilly" - +25 or so. But today is warmer and even outside in the shade, I'm starting to feel it. I'm not sure I ever truly get used to the heat - the 5 minute rounds hitting pads in the afternoon sure don't get any easier even after being here 3 weeks!!