The pasty’s (almost) over

Fuck me, has it really been two and a half weeks already?

I’m now counting down the training sessions till it’s time to hop on a plane back to my dull, dreich homeland. It may be clichéd to say time flies when you’re having fun but it doesn’t make it any less true, I could swear I just arrived a couple of days ago and I’m actually almost angry that it’s time to leave.

At the same time though it feels like I’ve been here forever, so quickly and easily did I manage to fall into the routine of training, acclimatise to the oft-stifling heat and humidity and grow to love the trainers and trainees at the camp. There seems such a natural rhythm to it now – wake up, warm up, training, chill out, eat, invent new swimming-based games to pass the time, warm up again, train, cool down, eat, read, watch movies, sleep. Repeat until visa expires. My nose anticipates the smells of cooking every morning and afternoon, my ears perfectly attuned to the rhythmic thwacks and grunts of day-long training.

Okay, so my body may never be the same again – my middle-finger knuckles on each hand are ground to a fine powder and my injured shoulder barely exists any more – but other than that I’d happily stay here a year. I’m already noticing a difference in my build so god knows what a few months in this place would do.

It’s going to be tricky to adjust to ‘normal’ food again as well. I’m so used to curry for breakfast and dinner that the idea of cereal, pizza and the like just seems so bland that I’ll be forced to take a couple of Thai cookery lessons. Between-meal snacks here take some beating too – just nip down along the road within five minutes, no matter where you are, you’ll find a stand selling all manner of skewered meats for about 60p per skewer – a hell of a lot cheaper than any protein shake! Annoyingly I still can’t track down my favourite condiment ever, a variant of nam pla used in the kitchen here which packs a hell of a kick but seems to be absent from the shelves of every supermarket and corner shop in the area. I’ve tried asking the cooks where to buy it but the just smile at me – I think it’s a family recipe not to be divulged to farangs, more’s the pity.

On top of everything else I’ll really miss my trainer. It seems everyone else here is actually pretty jealous I ended up with him; his passion for the sport is incredible, his attention to detail incredible and his sense of humour – as difficult as it may be to synch with initially – is better than any energy drink when I’m ready to throw in the towel after a heavy session. It’s a shame there’s such a language barrier – my Thai is pretty damn weak and he didn’t do much school so his English is almost as bad – but we’ve developed enough of a pidgin/sign language to understand what we need to. He still insists on pronouncing ‘toes’ as ‘twos’ but I’ll let that slide

Ach well, enough moping.

Time to look forward to five or six weeks back in Scotia before leaving for the long term. A month or so of kicking back with mates, indulging in slight debauchery, even more training (albeit of an inevitably lower standard) and fixing up a new flat in preparation for finding some tenants. Actually that last one is slightly daunting/terrifying but I’m sure it’ll all come good.

Inevitable Panicky Footnote – Now I just have to pray that the ol’ H1N1 problem here doesn’t get so bad (24 dead, WHO level 2 epidemic so far) that the government decides to close all language schools for the duration, thus rendering me jobless in a foreign country. The possibility is already being mentioned in several papers…

Who was in my room last night?

Since Marty hit the road I’ve been fortunate enough to have this 3-bed dorm to myself, plenty of peace and quiet, a welcome touch of privacy and, just as importantly, some sense of security. Not sharing with strangers means I can relax a bit, I don’t have to be quite as overly protective of my valuables and I don’t have to worry about other people leaving the door unlocked while there’s no-one around.

Well, almost…

Yesterday I got back to the room after using the internet in reception (this lack of wireless access is seriously getting to me) and found that it was locked. Well obviously it was locked in the sense that I had to use my key, I always lock the door behind me – and yes, like at home, I’ve locked myself out on a couple of occasions I mean the catch was on the door, it had been locked from inside and there is no way on earth you can accidentally flick that catch on your way out.

My first thought was that I had new room-mates and he/she/they were having a shower or otherwise engaged in a manner incompatible with sudden unannounced interruptions. I managed to open the door a couple of inches and a quick glance around put paid to that idea. How curious…

Luckily there’s another way in; behind the dorms is a long, narrow corridor used by the laundry for hanging out wet clothes. Each dorm has a window opening onto this dank passageway, pointless except for purposes of letting air circulate through the room. The windows consist of two parts: one sliding panel containing the glass, which is lockable; and another containing mosquito netting, which is not. I, like most of the rest of the camp, tend to leave the glass section open and keep the mozzies at bay with the netting – a decision which sacrifices a little security for a great deal of comfort.

Anyway, I walked around the back and counted down the identical windows on the back wall until I reached the one which should have been mine. And which was completely open, both panels.

Not good.

I gingerly clambered in – these window-frames aren’t the strongest or highest quality in the world – and took inventory of my belongings. Now maybe leaving that window unlocked isn’t the smartest thing in the world but at least I had the sense to keep anything valuable – camera, netbook, hard drive, phone, passport, etc – secured in my locker, also using my own padlock rather than the flimsy piece of crap you’re supplied with on arrival (note to anyone planning on staying here – all the padlocks use the same keys so anyone else can open yours, you have been warned).

Thankfully everything was in order. The only sign of intrusion was my tupperware first aid kit, which had definitely been shut earlier, lying open on the floor of the cupboard but it hadn’t been ransacked. The most potent supplies I have are 400mg tabs of the local generic ibuprofen, hardly a hot black market item.

So I got off lightly – home invaded, privacy breached, sanctity despoiled but nothing taken, nothing broken and no-one shat on my bed. I’m not bothering to report it to the local cops – the constabulary around here aren’t too well versed in the Queen’s own English seeing as we aren’t in touristville and I can’t be bothered with a two-hour sign language session to explain that someone had failed to steal anything from me. I’m tired enough from training and just don’t have the energy for the mental gymnastics required to describe a crime scene without a common language.

Still, I’m going to have a word with management. Fair enough you need to take responsibility for your belongings, but surely locks for the mozzie screens can’t cost too much. Or a single CCTV camera (even, in fact preferably, just a dummy one for purposes of deterrence) covering the alleyway. From the owners’ point of view any small expense should be preferable to having your customers telling their friends “Yeah, training’s great but remember to bring your own private security firm”.

My new shorts!

They’re ready at last and I’ll be kicking ass in them in round about five hours from now. There was a slight language problem initially (god knows how, seeing as I wrote out what I wanted them to print) but it’s all fixed and ready to rock and/or roll…

Front...

...and back

Pretty cool, eh? Bit too political? Aah, fuck it. Fascists are cunts, they can fuck off…

Mozzies, hospitals and anti-fascist shorts

Y’know how much I hate frogs? How I want to obliterate every last one of those loud-mouthed, insomnia-inducing, amphibian fucknuggets from the face the earth? It’s nothing compared to how I feel about mosquitoes. For the first week here I was feeling pretty smug, having remained more or less bite-free despite wandering around camp all blasé in my shorts and bugger all else.

Not any more. Bitten. Tae. Fuck. Not just little red blotches either, I swear these things have evolved actual jaws rather than the piercing proboscis of old. I’ve had chunks taken out of me by the fuckers and every morning I expect to wake up missing a limb a la the old Monty Python sketch. Some of the bloodthirsty bastards must have inveigled their way into my room last night and spent a good five or six hours feasting on my dozing flesh.

Motherfuckers. They must die. Nay, they SHALL die. Where’s Mr Miyagi with his chopsticks when you need him?

On a brighter note I just had my first experience of Thai healthcare and it’s pretty damn swish. Since a few days after arriving I’ve had a bit of a blocked ear, nothing too serious but last night I woke up unable to hear a peep through it for short time it so this morning I hopped into a cab to the local hospital.

For starters the place was gleaming and the staff were friendly as all hell, taking my details and vital stats (my blood pressure fucking rocks these days by the way) before guiding me through the place to the EENT department. I must have been waiting there a whopping ten minutes before the doctor saw me, had a probe around inside the lugs, sucked out the offending nasty gunk (less pleasant than it sounds) and sent me on my merry, satisfied and aurally intact way. Obviously I had to pay for all this but it was such a pittance that I can’t even claim it on my insurance. Time from leaving the hostel until my return, incorporating two twenty-minute cab rides? Ninety minutes.

Suck it NHS.

Last thing, I finally decided to buy a proper pair of Muay Thai shorts so I can really look the part. They let you add your own wee snippets of texts so I couldn’t resist a little customisation, Cannonball-style. For starters I had to get Kiltreiser in there, it’s going to be standing proudly just under the waistband on the back of the shorts. I also wanted to get something on the bottoms of the legs, maybe a wee slogan or something, and trying to think of something was the main reason it took me so long to buy them.

Last night I was listening to Woody Guthrie, American folk music hero, champion of the common people (cf. This Land Is Our Land) and enemy of bigots and Nazis everywhere. I always loved his guitar, into which he’d carved the magnificent slogan “This machine kills fascists”. One of my main peeves about Muay Thai in the UK is that it does have a bit of a right-wing, neo-Nazi following, albeit an exceedingly small one. So, as of Tuesday, I’ll be the proud owner of a bear of shorts proclaiming “These fists kill fascists”. I’m also heading back to the market in Bangkok to pick up an iron-on anti-Nazi patch from the utterly bizarre and incongruous Communist memorabilia stand.

I think Woody would approve.

Old dog, new tricks

Been learning how to do some ball-sweatingly cool moves this past week seeing as my right fist is out of action while the bruising goes down. The triple-elbow combo was pretty cool for starters – left uppercut elbow (‘tak’), left elbow, right elbow. I can do all three parts pretty smoothly one after the other, a rarity for me, so it feels pretty damn satisfying to pull it off and even better when you hear the hearty thwacks on the pad.

Learned another one today though which is even better. It starts off with a left jab, swiftly followed by a sort of spinning reverse right elbow (dunno what it’s called, language barrier and all that), then back to normal stance for a normal right elbow. When I do it right I feel like I’m in a kung-fu movie

(Even better, I’ve seen myself do it in the mirrors by the bag area and I manage not to look like an epileptic quadrospazz)

On a random note, just finished dinner here and it was, erm, a bit baffling to be honest. As I posted previously, the meals here are right tasty and perfectly nutritious, it’s just that sometimes the chef’s seem to have mild brainfarts and decide that the best option for an evening meal is rice with raisins (good start in my book) accompanied by a chicken drumstick, three mini hot dogs and a fried egg. This isn’t an eight-year  old from Kirkcaldy being left to his own devices while his folks are out, this is an actual Thai chef. In Thailand.

‘Twas right tasty though.

Photo time

I’ve uploaded a fair few photos to Facebook over the past week (www.facebook.com/CannonballJones) but for anyone who ain’t connected here are a few highlights of the trip so far…

This is where I'm training, not too shabby eh?

Where I bide. Now that Marty's gone I have it all to myself, will see how long that lasts...

Where we chill after training. Clockwise from bottom left - Nick, Marty, Dennis, Eric, Gabriel, JP, Alex

Bangkok baby! Actually it's about 45 mins away and a bit of a hole but at least you can eat fried bugs and buy iguanas there.

One of the owner's pets. Seriously. The guy has a fucking zoo in his garden.

Kicking back in Mellows, best pub in the world - Josh, JP and Marty

Nick (a US Marine believe it or not) chilling a bit much with the hookah pipe in Mellows

And that’s your lot for now. At some point I’ll figure out how to do this more effectively, with thumbnails and all that, but probably not till I get back home. Can’t be arsed figuring it out while I’m paying by the minute though…

Overdoing it?

The venerable Ehdee See left a comment earlier urging me to take care while at the camp and not to go too mental. In fact similar advice has been coming in from several corners, suggesting that my friends are either concerned and caring or just a bunch of big jessies. Anyway, I thought I may as well actually write down what I’m doing on a daily basis to see if it makes me look at it any differently – it’s just impossible to stop or even slow down when the blood is pumping…

The pre-training warm-up is actually pretty gentle, I’ll do maybe 10 of 15 minutes of weights followed by 20-25 mins of running. It’s usually a case of 10-15 mins at 10/11kph then 10 mins of intervals going from 6kph to 15kph, 1 minute each.

That’s followed up by a LOT of stretching. I noticed after the first couple of sessions that if you don’t get proper stretches in you’re going to seriously hurt. I know there were some recent studies carried out in Canada which cast serious doubt on the efficacy of stretching in preventing injury but it certainly reduces muscle tightness after a session.

Training itself is pretty hardcore. First off there’ll be a couple of rounds of shadow boxing (all rounds are 4 mins with a 1 min break in between) as a gentle way to ease you into it and to practice stance and balance. Then we kick into 6 or 7 rounds on the pads with your trainer, either doing combos or working on particular techniques – exhausting stuff in this heat, I’m always drenched with sweat after the first round. My arms are always dying by the end of it due to constantly holding my guard up and I’ve knacked my knuckles to the point where I’m having to give my right  hand a break for a couple of days*.

Once that’s out of the way I’ll move onto the bags  to practice techniques – 100 kicks, 100 foot jabs, 100 knees, various combinations of punches/elbows and a couple of rounds bouncing on a tyre to help with stance and balance. Your own trainer helps here to a certain extent but typically various trainers will rock up to you and offer hints and tips, it’s a great time for learning from other people.

Finally it’s time for freestyle workout. I’m trying to do a minimum of 150 sit-ups, 100 push-ups and 50 chin-ups at each session, adding in various other exercises depending on how I feel, how hot it is and how long I have till food is served! Current vogue in the camp is to have someone either punch you or hit you with a pad in your stomach as yhou lie back on your sit-ups – painful but effective and oh so very manly

After this comes the reward – a 20 minute dip in the pool (even if it’s pissing down rain), quick shower and then food.

All of the above happens twice a day, from 06:30 and 14:30 so that’s the minimum level. Of course I sometimes add in an extra weights session in the afternoon or evening to keep me ticking over.

Is that overdoing it?

* – If any fighters back home have tips for sore knuckles I’d love to hear ‘em…

Fucking frogs

(Written, well, pretty much every night since I arrived…)

I fucking hate them. Seriously want to kill every motherfucking last one of them.

Not the French, I love them. There’s the Auld Alliance, The Inspector Cluzo, Serge Gainsbourg and the fact that they eat horses. They rock. I’m talking about those slimy, hoppy, ribbity little bastards who are slowly chipping away at my sanity by keeping me awake from roughly ten at night till three in the morning.

You see I can handle the heat, it’s just a matter of acclimatising. I can handle the jet-lag, it wears off before you know it and my body clock is well and truly adjusted. I can handle the noise of the fan in my room, you just tune it out into the background thanks to its regular, rhythmic nature.

What I can’t handle is the motherfucking frogs and their motherfucking croaks right outside my motherfucking window.

Ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit. Non. Ribbit. Fucking. Ribbit. Stop.

You can’t tune it out; it’s too loud and too arrhythmic. You can’t silence it; the windows don’t close all the way. You can’t get rid of them; if you scare them they just return to the same spot in a couple of minutes. Nick the Marine tried chasing them with some kind of garden implement last night – several minutes of effort rewarded by maybe thirty seconds of silence before they returned to mock him.

Please, for the love of all that is decent and pure, send me tips on how to combat these evil bastards. Whisky and sexual favours for the best suggestion.

The dream is over…

Not for me but for Marty.

It was all his idea to come here, he’d already planned this as a stopover on his way to spending a year to Australia. He’s been doing Muay Thai much longer than me; two years or so to my three months. I’d never have even considered doing this if he hadn’t mentioned it during a Messenger conversation – something at that particular time just clicked into place, I’d just started a new job and finally had money again so I thought “Why not?”. I also had spare cash kicking about as a result of selling my entire DVD and CD collections (clutter bad, digital good), money which I had earmarked for a trip to Russia, a trip[ I’m now eternally grateful that I never booked.

With a case of classic bad timing, Marty managed to prick his wrist on a thorn bush in Belfast just a week or two before we left. It was nothing, literally the size of a pin prick. No bother – except that it got infected and his left arm swelled up like a balloon, leaving him in agony and pretty much unable to use it for anything, let alone fighting.

The doctors gave him antibiotics and the seemed to be working slowly but surely. However, a couple of training sessions soon put paid to that. Cue a visit to a Bangkok hospital and more pills, all to no avail. The arm remained, stubbornly, the wrong shape, size and colour.

On a normal holiday this wouldn’t be much of a problem: stay away from anything strenuous, keep it rested, keep popping the pills and enjoy your relaxation. This isn’t a normal holiday though, far from it. We came here to do two things, kick some ass and chew some gum – and we forgot to bring the gum.

Furthermore, this isn’t some tourist camp. Bangplee is a remote suburb of Bangkok with no attractions for westerners – the fighters here are the only farangs within a half-hour cab ride, so if you want entertainment outside training times you either spend cash getting there or you provide it yourself. For me this is ideal, I focus on training and in between sessions I can read, listen to tunes, swim, sleep or take the odd trip to Bangkok or Mellows. The camp ain’t cheap though so if you’re not getting the training then the costs seriously mount up.

So Marty has hit the road. Last night he packed up, signed out and headed up north for some adventures which don’t involve repeated use of arms, or any other limbs for that matter. I must admit that I’m absolutely gutted for him, I’d pictured him being the one going pedal-to-the-metal at the camp while I slacked off, maybe managing one session a day. Instead I’ve been at it twice a day while he managed maybe five sessions in total.

I’ve made a change to my own plans as well. Originally we intended to stay here for a fortnight before heading down to Koh Samui for a spot of relaxation on the beach. Right now I can’t imagine anything worse. Tourist central, sitting around doing nothing but ‘chilling’? Fuck that. I’m pushing myself harder in a physical and mental sense than I ever have and it feels amazing. Apart from some shoulder pain from constantly holding my guard up (yeah, I’m a wuss) my body feels great and now I can barely remember how I passed the time before this, it’s all coming so naturally. So I’m trading my week off for another week at Fairtex – after all I can check Koh Samui out any time once I move here, I’ll be living a mere two-hour ferry ride from the place.

Anyway, farewell Marto. I’m so fucking glad you mentioned coming here and owe you big-time for it. Hope you discover some fucking amazing stuff on your travels and we can hopefully grab a pint in Bangkok in a couple of weeks before we head our respective ways.

Improving slowly

(Written Wednesday 1st July)

The training is improving already despite the ever-increasing list of aches and pains. Right calf – tight as hell; right shin – bruised beyond recognition; injured shoulder – getting more injured; knuckles – raw and bruised from hours of constant punching.Still it’s not keeping me from going back again and again, I’m now four sessions in and can’t wait for this afternoon to get some more.

Neung is a wonderful trainer. It took me a while to get used to his mannerisms at first, having to figure out “is that his good scowl or his bad scowl?” and “is he shouting at me because I got it right or wrong?” but everything seems to be slotting into place. The broken English isn’t a problem any more and I’m used to, for example, his way of telling me that he’s not going to bullshit me about how I’m doing: “I teach, you pupil, I say good, no good, I tell you good, no good. You good!”.I still can’t help laughing when he says “shoop” each time I hit the pads though, can’t get that damn Cher song out of my head :p

Every now and again his dad will step in to offer some gems of advice. I’ll find a link to some info about the guy but he’s an absolute legend – still helping train at 69 years old he had a fight record of 150-odd wins and no defeats and was apparently named “most dangerous man in Muay Thai” by the King some decades ago (these may be myths but I don’t care, I’m buying into it wholesale). He’s a cheeky, mischievous old soul and will never miss an opportunity to teach you some dirty tricks – innumerable ways to sneak in an elbow to the face after you block an opponent’s attack. His continual reminders to “tell you friends home, Mr Wong come see them, he kill them all. Mr Wong kill YOU!” are guaranteed to lift the most flagging spirits.

So my punches, elbows, knees and kicks have already vastly improved, I just need to work on shaking the nickname “Robocop” – not because I’m a badass or the future of law enforcement, just because I move like a clanky tin-can around the ring. Must relax, relax, relax. Mind you that’s easier said than done when I’m still having to go through airline pilot-esque checklists for every single move – okay, right arm down here, left guarding face, knee up, toes down, up on toes of left foot, body back. Every second I’m losing my body weight in sweat (seriously, doing crunches the other day I had sweat pouring off my FEET!) and coming closer to total exhaustion and he expects me to be some kind of graceful ballerina? I think not sir.

Give it another week and a half and I’ll be rocking though, I guarantee it.

Update – during this morning’s training Neung was trying to explain something fairly complex to me but didn’t have the English for it at all so he beckoned to an elderly gent to come and translate for him. He let loose with a torrent of Thai, obviously imparting some priceless Muay Thai wisdom. The old fella nodded sagely, soaked it all in, thought for a second, looked me in the eye and said… “Don’t freak out. Yes, don’t freak out”.

So there it is, the ultimate secret of Muay Thai