I may have been the only American in the small country hamlet of Fengyang, China (pop. 80,000, at least according to the only credible person who would give me an estimate), but I had the good fortune to be joined at the university by two other foreign English teachers from Australia, Grant and Sue Rogers. Grant and Sue had already taught at the university (Anhui Science and Technology University) in 2005 and 2009, so they had seen the town before it had a major intersection, a traffic light, and cars. Not that there weren't any cars then, but it was mostly the electric scooters that are still widely used throughout China. And whenever anything is widely used throughout China, that means you would encounter hundreds of them whenever you walked out your front door. Grant and Sue are world travelers, having been to the Andes Mountains, all across China and Tibet, and throughout Europe, even hiking the Carmino de Santiago de Compostela. They exuded friendliness and carried a spirit of adventure that I admired and appreciated whenever we talked or went to a university event, like the English speech competitions or dinners hosted by the English department.
Besides learning from their experience as foreign teachers, and admiring their friendly relationships with nearly all the Chinese we encountered ("Hey, there's my friend! Hello, mate! Ni hao, ni hao!"), I took away some enlightening and entertaining stories from the land down under. Poisonous snakes, mud crabs, vicious koalas, hazardous fishing trips, and more, yes, but Australians have pluck, so they take all that in stride and enjoy the good times driving up the beach and exploring the land and cities of their beautiful country. About one poisonous snake encounter, Grant told me that he and Sue were in their living room one evening when he spotted something and told his wife there was a snake under her chair. "It was an Eastern Brown," he told me, "They're not too dangerous, but I didn't want to muck around with him that night, so I went and clubbed him on the head and got rid of him." Could you imagine that story taking place in any other country? And the people just dealing with it coolly and the next moment back to acting cheery? 50 years ago in southern China they would have counted their blessings and ate the snake, but then they wouldn't necessarily go back to being cheery. In America, I'm sure there are wives who would have moved out and sold the property after hysterically running out the nearest exit.
Sue and Grant
Anyway, the story I want to share today is a topical one, being that the Presidential Election finally takes place tomorrow. Grant shared with me that, in Australia, they have Election Parties. I gathered that, after voting, friends would get together and watch the results and generally discuss politics. Gathering with politically-mixed company to watch election results: sounds like a great idea, right? Americans can't even remain friends on Facebook because of political posts, but apparently the Australians can take the arguing in good humor.
Case in point: Grant was hosting an Election Party and wound up arguing with his friend Biuw (Australian for "Bill." Just having a little fun with the Australian accent.) and it got so bad that he said, "Get out of here!" and threw him out of his house. The next day, Bill came over to Grant's house, stood in front of the open door, and tossed his hat into the living room. "Now," Bill asked, "am I as welcome in your house as my hat is?" Grant waved him in with a big gesture, "Aw, Biuw, get on in 'ere."
It's a shame you couldn't hear Grant tell it. I'll try and do his stories the best I can from here on out.
After our weekend touring the city, Andrew and I threw our bags into another taxi and headed to the eastern outskirts of Bangkok. We were about to meet the Man.
Our destination was 13 Coins Gym, most famous for being the training center of champion fighters Saenchai and Orono (their highlight videos are worth checking out on YouTube). The gym itself is a hodgepodge of boxing rings, heavy bags, framed Muay Thai magazine photos, collages of the gym's fighters training and competing, portraits painted on wooden panels, flags from countries from all over the world (they even had Wales' medieval dragon flag- is that a real flag?), and tables and stools so spectators could have a drink or smoke as they watched the fighters work the Thai pads. A wooden roof ran the entire length of the gym, and built into the underside were tiny rooms that some of the Thais accessed by ladders and slept in. Adding to this eclectic rainbow was the pastel pink and blue hotel connected to the gym on the left side, and the lonely sculpture garden decaying on the right.
When Andrew and I walked in, the gym was practically empty (at our first practice, only a couple foreigners and a few young Thais were training, noticeably absent was Saenchai) and our eyes scrambled to scan over every picture and color covering the gym. We noticed the pricing for training posted above the rings, but saw no one who looked like management, so we walked into the restaurant and up to the front desk. At that moment, the owner of 13 Coins Resort/Gym came in, smiling and chattering in rapid English. Mr. Coke strolled around in slacks, sandals, and a loose short sleeve dress shirt, usually with a drink, cigarette, or newspaper in hand. Though his hair had thinned into wispy strands around the sides of his head and he had gone bald on top, the creases curving out from his eyes and the corner of his mouth (formed from years of speaking while smiling) gave his face a very childlike appearance.
Mr. Coke greeted us with such enthusiasm that I felt a fraction like an American infantryman in liberated Normandy. I have never been in a situation where someone was thrilled to see me just because I was an American. True, in China I had minor celebrity status, or at least I was a public curiosity, but that was because I was a foreigner, not because the people knew I was American. Mr. Coke quickly settled the bills for our stay, asking us, "How many days you gonna stay? Five? Okay, that's 5,000 baht. And you the same? Twelve? Okay, that's 12,000 baht," which calculates to $33 per day for a room, two training sessions, and one meal covered at the hotel restaurant. Not bad by American standards, but according to my friends in China, it was too expensive. I had a big envelope of cash I had exchanged for at the airport, and so I paid him on the spot.
That first day, Mr. Coke waited for us in the gym as we dropped off our bags in our room. We came in to find him watching some old Muay Thai fights on the TV suspended in the far corner of the gym. One of the waitresses brought us iced tea as Andrew and I took a seat and talked to Mr. Coke about the gym and his time in America.
When Mr. Coke talked, he would repeat himself in the same narrative loops. And he was almost always talking, like an old single stroke farm motor popping along and filling in his pauses with pidgin English phrases or tags about different groups of Thai people being good or bad monkeys. I can't remember how many times I heard him tell it, but he spent eight years in America, mostly in Washington with a little time in Alaska, first as a student at the University of Washington, but earning his real education by working his way through every position in American restaurants. He named his chain of 13 Coins restaurants after the owner of the American original agreed to let Mr. Coke base the name of his restaurant after it. "Yeah I learned a lot from you I learned a lot in America," he told us (I mentioned that Mr. Coke often repeated himself, but he would sometimes speak without punctuation). He had restaurants throughout the area, making him one of the big name businessmen in Bangkok.
His restaurant and success story were fairly well-known in Thailand. In fact, I heard from a young Thai man living in Cedar Falls about how Mr. Coke grew up the second son of a rich father who didn't want to spend time minding to his non-eldest son, but was willing to give him the necessary start-up money for his first restaurant. When Mr. Coke debuted American steaks, pizza, pasta, and sandwiches near Bangkok's biggest malls, the smell and spectacle of it attracted lines stretching down the block (being in Thailand, the people in line probably had to do a lot of swerving to avoid sidewalk motorbike traffic, but seriously...). The novelty eventually wore off, but Mr. Coke built himself a small empire and his restaurants are still known for their blend of Thai and western food.
That afternoon, Mr. Coke took us to his favorite LEGIT massage parlor (I'm not saying he had other unsavory favorites, but whenever you mention Thailand and massages to a group of guys, you get a lot of filthy, cheeky jokes and ribbing, so I have to set things straight). Andrew complained that the Thai-style massage left him sore, but I took advantage of the incredibly cheap rates (1 hour for under $10) and widespread availability of the massage parlors and just went to my mental happy place when the lady dug in her elbows.
After that, Mr. Coke treated us to dinner back at his hotel restaurant. Andrew and I each chose something Thai; Andrew had a delicious concoction with shrimp and seafood, but we couldn't remember its name to order it again. During and after dinner, we talked with Mr. Coke more about life in America an his time there. Andrew and him got along really well and chatted quite a bit. I bet Andrew could move to Thailand and Mr. Coke would take him under his wing, managing one of his restaurants. Not such a bad idea, if you ask me. The biggest difficulty would be learning the language. I tried to teach Andrew how to say "thank you" and count to ten. We reached four and he stopped me by asking, "Wait, so you just repeat it over and over?" No, Andrew, you can write an essay about it and think it over until you get the hang of it.
The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to meet another American Andrew, this one a black guy from New York City, at 6 o'clock for the morning run. Mr. Coke had told Andrew to show us the standard route up the alley, along the main drive, and to the sports stadium complex, then back to the gym. Every day we would either take that route or run laps up and down the length of 13 Coins' incredibly long asphalt parking lot. Side note: the restaurant was almost never busy, but on the weekends the local police officer candidates rented out the upstairs meeting hall to prepare for the qualifying exam, and the parking lot looked like a makeshift used Isuzu truck dealership.
The Mantis uses no hyperbole.
Practice was pretty sparse. At Fairtex Gym, the square of four connecting rings was always filled with one or two trainers per ring, plus a rotating batch of professional fighters and foreign enthusiasts. At 13 Coins, a boxing trainer coached two fighters in western boxing, a veteran Muay Thai fighter (the eccentric Mr. Long, sporting a radical Zach Morris haircut) trained two young Thai amateurs in another ring, and in the middle ring, the trainer/waiter Soren rotated between Andrew, the other Andrew, and me. Soren didn't actually wait tables, but he worked for the hotel in between morning and afternoon practice. There was also an American MMA fighter, who went by B.K., with a cage setup wherein he taught a couple foreigners basic grappling later on in the morning.
While we were at 13 Coins, Mr. Long showed us his downward elbow-strike technique and boasted, "I have a plan! I will go around the world. People want to learn technique. I will show them. I will make some money. I have a plan!" Soren would meticulously correct our technique and works us out till we about fell over and had no "POWER! POW-AH!" He would have me front kick him over and over, he stepping forward and me slipping backward each kick, until I lost my balance or became trapped against the ropes. Then he would laugh at me with his metallic, wheezy laugh. Soren and black Andrew (that's the name he uses at Starbucks, too- "Tall coffee for Black Andrew?") would go after each other verbally every morning. Soren would tell Andrew that he was "cuh-razy, crazy" and he needed to "re-lak, re-lak" (relax) by seeing a lady boy, and also that he liked lady boys. Andrew would respond, angrily, "Man, why you always callin' me crazy? Why you pickin' on me? You crazy. You're crazy. I don't like lady boys! I think you do. You're crazy." While Andrew was going on, Soren would look at me, smiling, and giggle a little.
Soren training with (just for clarification) white Andrew.
One time they were at it again, and I didn't catch what Soren said, but Andrew came back with, "You're blacker than I am! Whatta you callin' me black for? He's darker than me!" Andrew wasn't light-skinned, but Soren was from the northeast region of Thailand, where the people are several shades darker than the rest of the Thai population. Andrew Dostal and I had to walk quite a way down the alley (Thai alleys are very long side streets, not out-of-bounds zones in garage basketball) and over the canal if we wanted to buy anything, eat somewhere else, or find something to do, and the hotel TV only had one channel in English (Discovery), so watching the other Andrew and Soren tease and taunt each other was the best entertainment available.
A video of Mr. Coke giving a tour of the gym. Looks a little like Oliver Stone's distant cousin. A most welcoming host. One contention: the water in the video is most definitely NOT clean.
