last night i was wandering thru the streets of kho phi phi when i passed a huge bar called the reggae bar. someone out front was passing out flyers and the flyer said that they had thai kickboxing there for free every night at 10pm. i had read a bit about thai kickboxing in my guidebook so decided that i should check it out (heck, at 0$ the price was right) . around 10pm the bell rings and these 2 boxers get into the match. let me tell ya, thai boxing is some hardcore stuff. they can do pretty much whatever they please: kick to the head, elbow or knee each other in the face, grab each others legs and trip their opponent so he falls to the floor. it’s brutal. so for about 20 minutes, these guys beat the living crap out of each other. they keep doing this till one guy gets knocked to the floor so bad that he can barely get up after a long long time.
i dunno… watching this all was pretty depressing. i just felt so bad for these people. i couldnt believe that they had to make a living this way. so, i’ve never particularly been a fan of boxing in general (people getting beat up is not my thing)… but somehow i see regular boxing as a whole different thing altogether. see, in the US… at least boxing is a sport. the people who do the boxing train all the time of their own free will and box for the competitive aspect of it… hoping for some kind of glory, or a title, or maybe even millions of dollars. like the olympics, boxers want to be the top of their sport. here in thailand though, at the reggae bar… these guys were fighting for no reason other than to be a spectacle gawked at by tourists from around the world. like some kind of freakshow. i bet it’s the same two guys going up there everyday and just getting the crap beat out of them nightly. and why? to promote some more drink orders at the bar. i bet they get paid jack squat as well. i kept wondering (seeing as kho phi phi is a small island) if these 2 guys might be friends, and eat lunch with each other during the day, while hoping not to give the other a concussion at night. ugh.
so today i had to catch a ferry to phuket so i could fly to bangkok and then siem reap cambodia. on the ferry i got hit on by some thai girls. it’s pretty funny to get hit on by someone who speaks hardly any english… “we think you so handsome” heh.. and at some other point, someone called me “lovely”. lovely? not too often you hear of a guy being called lovely. too funny.
had a few hours to kill at the airport today. so i went to the mall. the mall was pretty crazy. it wa so weird to see a place so familiar and so much like home in so many ways… and yet so different. now, i thought it was hard to explain aloe to the thai people before… but try explaining “compact flash memory card”. somehow i managed to buy one though.
oh yeah, one thing i keep forgetting to post about. i got a haircut on kho phi phi. i went to the barber shop. this place was so ghetto: the floor was completely covered w/ hair (they dont bother sweeping) and they had barber chairs that looked like they were from the 1940’s. so i sit down, the girl asks me if i want it short, and when i say “yes”, before i can explain how i want it, she just starts cutting!! what?? are all haircuts here the same? short or long is the only choice? so i try to explain to her what i want, but i really dont think she paid attention. anyways, the cut turned out ok.
ok, that’s it for now..next post will be from cambodia.
-v