Perhaps the best part of China was that it is five hours from
Thailand, or at least Hong Kong
is five hours from Bangkok. My aunt looked at flight deals for me and
told me I would save money by driving a couple hours to Hefei,
then flying to Hong Kong
and on to Bangkok. Wouldn't that be complicated? I asked.
"Easy, easy," she said with a smile. Her husband,
"Uncle" Jiang, told me, "Nooo... No! Tell her no. Go
to Shanghai." Flying out of there would have been direct, but I was
not about to tell the woman who showed me the most care, "No."
After nervously questioning her many times and receiving the same
assurance, I told her to go ahead and book the ticket. I knew it was a
precarious gamble, but like I said, even if I had to suffer the consequences I
would follow her instead of taking Uncle Jiang's advice
and telling her no. Her plans were so often full of childlike enthusiasm
and zest; I always had to allay my apprehensions to her but nonetheless
followed along. Her plans did work when we were in town because she
could just walk up to whomever she wished and talk to them and get help.
But by myself, I would have to experience the misery of being stuck in a
bad situation.
That was later
though. At this point I was overjoyed to be going back to Thailand, my
promised land. It had been nearly five years since my first trip to
Thailand. I had saved some money after college to travel to a Muay Thai gym and train for four weeks.
It had been a long heartache in between, pining to return and make good
on my dream of training Muay Thai.
As soon as inspiration struck to use my winter school vacation for this
trip, I emailed my friend Andrew back in my hometown. Andrew and I trained together at the
same gym and had discussed making this Thai pilgrimage before. I told him
now was the opportune time, he managed to get leave time from work, and we
spent the next few weeks scouring websites for travel deals, Muay Thai gym reviews, and travel guide
recommendations.
We planned to meet
in the Bangkok airport after midnight, the time when the international flights
arrive, and take the car we reserved through Fairtex Gym
to the seaside city, Pattaya. Well, in Hong Kong they changed my departure gate
three times and I didn't even board until after midnight. Andrew told me
later that, after waiting in line through the passport check and collecting his
luggage, he was already running behind, and after making the driver wait even
longer to see if I would arrive, he rightly decided to go ahead to Pattaya and then checked into the gym in time
for the morning practice session. Luckily, we both had cell phone
service, and after I made it through airport purgatory to the exit doors, I
received Andrew's text letting me know he had made it. But my traveling
ordeal wasn't finished yet. I still needed ground transportation to Pattaya,
so I waited around four hours for the bus counter to open up. In the
meantime, I had to fend off the advances of a taxi driver who said he would
find me a lady as part of the deal, but I also met a gregarious college student
(coincidentally studying abroad in Beijing) and her brother from the Caribbean.
We ran into each other later in the city, but never joined up with her
group, which was fine by me, since she was mostly interested in partying at the
most sordid nightclubs there.
Yes, although Fairtex Gym was a great facility with plenty
of topnotch trainers, and there were amenities like beaches and islands, plus
the friendly people and relaxed ambiance of Thailand, Pattaya was a filthy, debauched city worthy of
a moral parable like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.
Its infamous Walking Street is something I regret seeing, but only
slightly worse than the rest of the bar and club-filled town. Girls would
sit at tables bordering the sidewalk in the many open-air bars, and they would
either shout at you or try and grab your shirt and pinch you. It was
funny at first when I saw it happen to Andrew and a girl told him he was cute,
but it was without end, and it turned severely depressing when I saw old men
walking with a limp and a young Thai girl on their arm, or sitting speechless
at a bar table as they "enjoyed" dinner together. I had had
enough when I saw lady-boys in miniskirts standing on the corner and trying to
latch on to passersby.
I did go out with
Andrew and a few Australians to have some beers at a bar where washed-up old
Thai guys would stage fake fights and then walk through the crowd collecting
tips. That was fun, cheap entertainment, but I had to call it a night
when the environment of Walking Street wore me out. Andrew stayed out a while
longer with the Australians, but they were eventually thrown out of the next
bar for a bogus reason. I'll let him tell the story if he cares to.
So I was ready to
move on from Pattaya. Fairtex was
a good gym to train at, and I did start to bond and get into rhythm with the
trainers there, but I think Andrew and I were both looking for a new place to
explore. We packed our bags and went back to Bangkok, where Andrew had
reserved a hotel room for the weekend. We toured the city went up the
river, walked through the shopping streets, saw the boxing stadiums, toured the
National Palace and its temple complex, and through it all baked in the sun
from morning till night. We would order drinks from shops throughout the
day, and Andrew got to try his Sprite the Thai way: poured into a plastic bag
with ice and a straw sticking out.
We also went to
watch the fights at world famous Lumpini Stadium.
Having seen fights our first night in Pattaya, we could compare the two. Of
course the atmosphere was better at Lumpini, being the mecca of Muay Thai and a favorite destination of
foreign tourists and gambling Thais, and the fights in general were of better
quality, though Pattaya did
have some very exciting, highly-skilled match-ups as well. I had a nice
surprise at Lumpini when
I saw the trainer and owner of the gym I trained at back in 2007, Por Pramuk,
and went over to greet them. Overall, I think I did enjoy the Lumpini fights better, but this is also due to
the downing effect of drowsiness at the Pattaya fights.
I was exhausted from traveling and going the previous night without
sleep, so when the time neared 11 and they were still bringing pairs of boys
out to the ring, I called out, "Come on, ref, this is a school
night!" I think I fell asleep twice, slumped over in one of those
white plastic lawn chairs that weigh a pound and bend in the legs whenever you
shift your weight. That last fight did provide the most amusement though.
Between rounds, when the boy from the red corner went back to his
trainer, instead of the trainer having him sit on a stool and stretching him
out, would just pick him up by the armpits so the boy could kick and shake his
little body out.
I asked Andrew
what he thought of these little boys fighting, how it would fare back in the
land of soccer moms, and he said he didn't think it would happen, the kids
would be covered in pads or end up crying and quit. Not that I, as my
whiny child self, wouldn't have, but the super-lean boys who grew up in the
gym, and looked like they hadn't been fed in a week, were clearly a special
breed.
Andrew had another
gem of an observation during the trip. I was so excited to be in Thailand
and so excited to talk to a friend from back home and, hey! speak fluent
English!, I kept pestering him with observations and questions about Thailand,
which he took graciously. I asked him about the many soap operas on TV,
or the light, airy pop music. "What do you think?"
"I think that the country that came up with Muay Thai has a lot of lame stuff."
I laughed. Thailand had Muay Thai,
charm, craziness and trouble, and exotic environments and cities, but yes, the
pop culture was well tamer than American tastes prefer.
More to come,
Mantis
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