Monsoon Lightning Rod

Saturday I drove a motorcycle to Burma. I wrote my friend Sarah an email about it and rather than try to one-up myself with an even better telling, I'll repeat it here. I'll warn that because this was a personal email to a good friend, and I was still amped up from the trip, I drop the F-bomb about a million fucking times.

Good story. Here's one for you:

So I had to renew my visa eh? Right, time to go to Burma. I buy a bus ticket, and a few hours later my hostel running buddy Noom says, hey, why not rent a motorbike and just ride up there? He knows I love bikes and figures it'll be a good time. This is Saturday and I have to get to the border on Sunday or pay a late fee. Trouble is I already have the bus ticket for Sunday morning. SO I head into town on Saturday night with the idea of renting a motorbike and refunding the bus ticket. I was sort of successful.
Met a lovely American bird, name of Katie, and ended up drinking all night with her, and making out next to the old fortified moat at 7am. Walked her to her place, decided that I was going to wait for motorbike place to open up rather than go home to my hostel.
Walk into Starbuck's. Order mocha. Sleep for one hour. Rent large-ish motorcycle for 2 days for the princely sum of 1600 baht (about 40 bucks.) Back to hostel, 4 hours sleep, then ON THE ROAD TO BURMA. WHAT THE HELL?
North from Chiang Mai the roads are curvy as hell which = huge fun on motorcycle. The bike is big, but fast, and wallows through turns like a well placed brick. I take my time due to the insanely uncomfortable seat, which causes me to need to get off it and awaken my ass muscles periodically.
Evening finds me taking pictures of an ancient white temple just out of Chiang Rai (not Chiang Mai. Chiang Rai is farther north, on the road to Burma. Stay with me now.) An hour of puttering around this city with no apparent center or tourist ghetto finds me in a 12 dollar a night hotel with all thais, free internet and free breakfast. Chicken fried rice, sleep, awake. Read news. Read Barack Obama's convention speech and actually cry with love for country. Can't wait to get home. Have to go to Burma.
Up the road to Burma. Border crossing is confusing but not too worrying. Burma side of the border is like Thailand's dark side. Dirtier, poorer. Drab. A bit dingy. I am befriended by a man who slurrs his speech and calls himself Danny. He walks with me 5km down a dirt road surrounded by beautiful tropical countryside. I buy him lunch which, as far as I can tell, is fried pork intestines. Danny is really affable. We discuss our mutual love for martial arts, and his various stories of being arrested in the united states. At the border, before I go back, he asks for money and I give him 20 baht. (90 cents.) He's actually a decent guy, I think.
A brief and terrifying dip into a Burmese street market shows me what it's like to be a piece of meat thrown into a room of starving wolves. After denying at least 50 different brands of cigarettes ("MAYBE HE LIKES MARLBORO LIGHTS WE DIDN'T ASK HIM THAT YET) and who knows how many brands of nudie playing cards ("YOU LIKE YOU GO BOOM BOOM?") ("no boom boom. thanks.") I escape back into Thailand. Back on my bike and off to the Golden Triangle, the meeting point of Burma, Thailand and Laos. The road there is beautiful but about the same consistency as the Grand Canyon. I finally rumble into town which consists mostly of hotels, restaurants, t-shirt stalls, and a 40 foot high golden Buddha in sitting position, placed right on the bank of the Mekong River. This is absolutely just as fantastic as it sounds. But I'm bleeding daylight and I have 6 hours drive (I thought, haha fucking ha) to get back to Chiang Mai. Snap snap snap photographs go! And back on the bike! I slam the throttle and scream manically into my ill fitting helmet as I zoom over man-sized potholes at light speed. Hey, I was running out of time.
By the time I get to Chiang Rai, still 190km from Chiang Mai, it's total night. This is fine except for two things:
1) It starts to rain.
2) The headlight on my motorcycle is rivaled for brightness by things like fireflies, and the first lightbulb ever invented.

Needless to say the idea that I can continue blithely along at 80km/hour is done for. My speed and body temperature are cut drastically. Roads that were really fun in the daytime, perfectly dry and illuminated by golden sunshine wrapped around beautifullly rugged, green jungle and coffee farm covered mountains, are now FUCKING DEADLY in the rain, thunder, lightning, and candle-powered headlight from hell. A 3 hour drive turns into 4, then 5, then 6. I hit a bat on the road. He gets caught in my shirt and I flick him away. At this point I have one of those moments, when you just laugh your head off and go

WHAT THE FUCK COULD I POSSIBLY BE THINKING THAT I AM DOING HERE??????

Needless to say that after absolutely losing my mental luggage I finally made it into Chiang Mai around midnight. I am now safe and sane at my home piece hostel run by my home piece Noom, who by the way wants to go to bed, which means he shuts down internet, which means this story is OVER.

Hope you loved it. I miss you! Africa sounds great. Keep loving everything.



So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. There's more news to be had here in Thailand (state of emergency anyone?) but I'll leave that for later. I hope everyone is fantastic. Register to vote if you haven't already!

Bang.

Last night, I fought my first Muay Thai bout. Here's the play by play.

Last week I asked one of the trainers, who is also the camp's fight promoter, to set me up with a fight for the last week of August. That would've been pretty close to 3 months here, so I figured it would be good timing for my first fight. For those of you who don't know, I've had a few years of experience in other martial arts and a couple black belts to show for it, so I'm not totally new to the idea of punching and kicking, but I've never had a real fight in a ring before last night. In any case, Den agreed to get me a fight at the end of August. A short while later that day, I heard him approach one of our more experienced falang (foreign) fighters, Josh, and ask if he would be willing to fight the following tuesday. (This was wednesday last week.) A few minutes after that, Josh came up to me and asked if I would like to fight the following tuesday. I was a little bit surprised, since Josh and I are not on the same level at all, and are in no way interchangeable as fighters. Josh made a good case for taking the fight though.

It was going to be at Loi Kroh, which, out of the three boxing stadiums in Chiang Mai, is not the one that hosts the toughest fights or toughest fighters. (That honor goes to Gawilla, the largest stadium in northern Thailand.) So my opponent would be, in Josh's words, "someone you can beat." Also, it's one thing to train and it's another to fight. You learn a lot through training, but a fight teaches you what you REALLY need to work on to get better. And since I'm going to be here for another month or two, fighting sooner would give me a chance to learn more, and apply it in another fight or two before I leave Thailand. So, I decided, what the hell. I'll do it. (That was also my response when Noom, who runs my hostel, challenged me to go bungy jumping with him a few weeks ago, but that's another story.)

So I agreed to do the fight, and I was actually much more excited than I was scared. After all, having a real fight in the ring in Thailand was what I had wanted to do for almost ten years. It's the main event, the focus of all my training. It's where I would find out if I had the guts and the heart stand toe to toe with a Thai boxer and put what I'd learned into play. Did I have what it takes? The years of wondering were over. I was going to find out. Even if I got my ass kicked, I'd still find out. So I can't say I was too scared, but I was burning to find out what it was really like.

The rest of the week passed without incident. I trained hard and focused on technique, especially my leg blocks. In Muay Thai kicks are allowed to pretty much every area of the body except the back and the groin, and like many inexperienced falang, I'm not the quickest or most consistent about protecting my legs from from low kicks. Not coincidentally, low kicks to the legs are a favorite weapon of most Thais who fight falang boxers. I was reminded by my head trainer, Andy, that I needed to work on that area of defense and I took it to heart. As it turned out, Andy wouldn't be able to see my fight, as he was taking one of our other fighters down to Bangkok for her fight (no, not a typo. HER fight. Yes, she's very good. Yes, she can probably kick your ass.) However, he turned out to be spot on with this assessment of my upcoming fight. After doing some padwork with him on Sunday, he told me to work on guarding leg kicks, since I would get them a lot. (True.) He also told me that my punches were strong and accurate, and that I should use them often. (I followed that advice to good effect later on.)

So the night of the fight arrived. I bought a big bottle of Jonnie Walker Black as a reward for after the fight. I jumped into the pickup with my Thai contingent from the gym and headed to the fight venue. Normally a bunch of falang who also train at my gym would come and watch, but I was the only one fighting tonight and it was kind of last minute, so I didn't have a lot of people from my gym there. Fine by me, since I just wanted to focus on the fight, which was at Loi Kroh stadium. Loi Kroh is not actually a stadium, in fact. It's an official boxing ring surrounded by bars. In between fights ladyboys (transvestites) step into the ring to do burlesque shows, and there's plenty of Thais and foreigners watching fights, playing pool, and drinking. It's not exactly a hyper-competitive fighting arena of herculean warriors obliterating each other with blows powerful enough to shake the pillars of the cosmos. But the fights are the real deal. And the fact that it was Mother's Day here in Thailand meant that most of the baars were closed and shut, which gave the whole thing a sort of dark feel to it. Or maybe I just thought that since I was about to possibly get the beating of my life.

I was not aware that mine was the last (and heaviest, by weight category) fight of the night. I was aware that on the fight flyer, my name was "Czech" and also the fellow whose picture they used to represent me, is not, in fact, me. Apparently I was also fighting for some sort of international title. What you should take away from this is that fight promoters will put just about anything on these flyers to get falang to come and watch/bet on/get drunk at Muay Thai fights, short of "free beer and backrubs!" I went through the whole pre-fight process, full rubdown with boxing liniment and other magic potions while laying on a mat on the concrete at the back of the crowd, incredible tape job on my hands that basically turned them into clubs, and a little warm-up to get the blood flowing. Then there was nothing to do but wait. I was torn between watching the fight before me or just looking away and trying to relax. In the end I did a bit of both.

Finally, it was my time. My trainer, Den, put the mongkon (ceremonial head-piece) on me and said a small prayer. I stepped to the ring with Den and my cornermen and stepped inside. This was it. I was in the ring. It was at this time that I finally got to see who my opponent was. My heart sank to see that while he was a good deal shorter, he was also a good deal stouter, with thickly muscled legs. I knew immediately that my legs were toast and I was going to have to throw plenty of punches. My idea of throwing lots of kicks, thus proving that I am not the the typical falang punch crazy fighter, took a back seat. I took a walk around the ring and bowed to the judges (no "Ram Muay," or ceremonial pre-fight dance, for this beginner thanks very much,) and went back to my corner. Den took off my mongkon and told me to do my best. In went my mouthguard, and into the center of the ring I went to face my opponent and have the ref give us the schpeal. The bell went, the Thai smiled at me, we touched gloves, and the fight was on.

Muay Thai fights are five rounds each, unless the fight is stopped due to knockout, injury, invading space aliens, or whatever. The rounds are three minutes long, with a two minute break in between. The first round is usually fought at a slower pace, as the two fighters feel each other out for strengths and weaknesses. As predicted, he started with leg kicks, which I managed to block most of. The block basically consists of me raising the leg he's trying to hit, so that I get it in the shin and not the thigh. If you think getting hit in the shin hurts (and it does,) go ahead and have someone swing the lower part of their shin as hard as they can into the area of your thigh just north of your kneecap. Let me know how that turns out for you. Anyways, I threw a few punches but he didn't want to box very much. Lots of teeps, which are sort of like straight jabs with the leading leg, to keep me away. Then he'd throw in leg kicks.

I was told by Den during the first break to throw more combinations, and hit him a lot harder in general. This guy doesn't have the heart to really fight, Den said. More power. So the second round started with me walking right into him and throwing lots of leather, much to the delight of the crowd. (Lots of falang, even a few guys from Virginia. Shout out to Virginia, way to cheer me on guys!) My shins were already killing me from the kicks I'd thrown so I tried to get more into punch combos in the second round, though I did have a nice fake that ended in me slamming my left shin into his left side. My kicks were not extraordinarily powerful but they were pretty quick. I was already starting to get a little winded, however, and his constant teep kicks were keeping me from closing in and hammering him with punches. Eventually I decided his teep kick was softer than hot butter and just started walking into him. It was clear the man did not want to box - his punches didn't have any power and he couldn't keep his hands up to defend against mine. I threw in some kicks now and then but the old one-two/jab-cross combo was becoming my bread and butter fast.

After round 2 Den pointed out that the guy didn't have the heart to really beat me. More combos, and not just jab-cross. Use my hooks, uppercuts, longer combos, not just one two. Protect your legs and throw those combos. I went into round 3 in some pain, but determined to step in and do some damage. He kept going for low kicks but I'd had enough of that and started nailing him with hooks to the jaw. He still couldn't get his hands up and paid for it. The crowd got pretty noisy as I staggered him with a left right punch, high kick to the head combo and after that I pretty much had to chase him. He was starting to get a little woozy, I could tell, as he clearly was just moving away as much as he could, and not in a very straight line either. I chased him for a bit, then stepped in with a big left hook that turned him around and had him leaning on the ropes. The ref stepped over to him to give him a standing 8-count and I stepped to the center of the ring. "Raise your hands!" Den yelled from my corner. I did, and was rewarded with a wave of approval from the smallish but highly vocal crowd. A few moments later the ref called the fight, came over and raised my arms in victory. I had won the fight!

I bowed to the judges and had some water. My cornerman, a young boxer from my camp, asked me how I felt. "Good," was all I could think to say. As I stepped out I got lots of congratulations and requests for pictures from all the falang who'd seen the fight. I even posed for a photo with some guy and my opponent together. (I'd like to point out that the guy I fought was a tremendously good sport and was almost always smiling between rounds when we tapped gloves.) All the attention was actually a little bit weird. Though I'd won, I hadn't exactly done it with style or grace, but I guess that wasn't so apparent to people who don't know the sport that well. Anyways, I thanked Sheryl and Noom from my hostel, Spicythai, for taking pictures (thanks guys!) and at that point I started to feel the incredible pain beginning to break through from the subsiding adrenaline. I had hurt myself kicking him, as well as taking kicks, and it was all starting to roll in. Tape off, shirt on, back in the pickup truck.

Later, back at the hostel, folks were very kind in bringing me food, ice, a glass for my scotch, and assorted sundries. I have to say that despite the muscle relaxants, ibuprofen, and 5-6 shots of whiskey, the pain was absolutely immense. It felt as if portions of my bones had been indented, or rounded off. Walking was complete agony. Just sitting there hurt so bad I had to laugh, the other alternative being sobbing. So I chatted with the other hostel folks who'd seen the fight and tried to be a tough guy about it. It worked ok. I was able to fall sleep in any case. I recalled a funny quote I read in a book somewhere that "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." If that's true then whiskey is the most satisfying theological argument out there right now.

So did I get what I came for? Did I, like, find out what lurks in the depths of my soul, or some junk like that? I don't really know. I know what I need to work on to get better at this, and I know that I have the heart to do it. I also know that I'm only going to do it for a short while longer, maybe a month or two. And I'll have one more fight before I go. I do look forward to finally seeing the states again, but I think another fight is in order to sort of seal the deal with this mission. I want to see if I can really improve and do a better job than the first time. I guess that's about all I can say right now, except that I am now finally ready to pick a date and BUY A PLANE TICKET TO COME HOME.

And when I know that date, I'll post it here. Thanks for reading! I hope you're all doing swimmingly.

Of bicycles and boxing

If you travel enough, your thoughts on entering a new country are often reduced to the bare practicalities. You consider how you will handle currency and budget your money, you book places to stay and research how you will get around, and what you will try to see and do. It's easy to lose sight of the real substance of traveling, which is not in all these sundry details, but rather in the interactions that you have with real people in a foreign land, and in the alchemy that takes place in your soul as you become a part of something that previously you knew nothing of. As they say, you can't see the forest for the trees.

In my case, traveling to Thailand has been no exception, but I had good reasons for focusing on the nuts and bolts kind of details. I came here not with sightseeing or culture-absorption in mind, but something a bit different. For almost ten years now, it's been my plan to travel here and train in Muay Thai, otherwise known as Thai boxing. With that as my central focus, I've had little time for seeing temples and cultural landmarks -yet I've learned a lot already in my time here. First, I should describe where "here" is and how I got here.

Right now I'm living in Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand, and the second largest city in the country. Chiang Mai is an old city located on a historical trade route between China and points further south, and Thais are proud of their quaint old capitol, with its ancient walls and moat surrounding the city. Upon arriving in Bangkok at the beginning of June, I knew I could just hop a train/bus/plane up here, but I had a desire for a more adventurous (read: stupid) way of getting north. So after a few days in the insanity that is Bangkok, I bought a brand new bicycle with the intention of riding it 700km north, all the way to Chiang Mai. As you may have guessed/known, I did not end up biking the whole way.

I started off by taking a train 90km north to Ayutthaya. Being a former capitol of the young Thai nation, as well as a Unesco world heritage site, I figured it would be a good way to get a look at some really authentic and ancient Thai architecture. An added bonus was cutting some distance off my trip and avoiding the traffic coming out of Bangkok. After a couple days touring and photographing the various temples and ruins of the old city, I decided to start my biking trek north. Having a decent map and a route planned that avoided major highways, as well as a kitted out Trek mountain bike with all the bells and whistles, I felt pretty prepared for what lay ahead. And I was. Sort of.

The first day was only an 80km ride. I kept a great pace in the morning and had stunning weather. There really isn't much in rural central Thailand but rice paddies, a few factories, and small towns every 30km or so. Things were going so well I took a nice long lunch at a roadside restaurant. Waiting out the heat of the day with ice cold water and smoking hot pad thai turned out to be a great idea. The thing about tropical weather is that, well, it's hot. You know it, and I know it, but now I know it in a way that you don't. Bicycling on a blazing hot black tarmac in the heat of the day, roasting in the blazing midday sun, is enough to cook the brains of the most seasoned bad-idea-havers. So, I took my time at the restaurant and got back on the road in the mid-afternoon, making the crucial and highly regrettable mistake of failing to reapply my sunscreen, which I had done a good job of sweating off over the course of the morning's ride. Needless to say, as I pulled into the town at the end of the first day's ride, I was pretty fried. My knees were screaming with pain, and so was every inch of exposed skin, which had turned a sort of vicious candy apple red. As I pulled into town, I had to get off the bike for a few minutes and recuperate in the shade before trying to find a place to stay the night. Maybe it was the heat, or the dehydration, or the sunburn, or some combination, but I remember feeling about one minute from passing out on the side of the road. Staying hydrated was a huge challenge - drink too much and cramp up, don't drink enough and pass out. Anyways, I found a hotel in town after some miserably poor efforts on my part to speak Thai using my Lonely Planet book. My own room with A/C and a hot shower for 300 baht, which is about 10-12 dollars depending on exchange rates. I took stock of the damage that evening and realized that I needed to cover up most of my skin the next day if I was to make the journey without serious damage.

As luck would have it, down the street from my hotel was a massive night market. I bought a long-sleeve shirt for 100 baht and filled up on fried chicken, rice and fruit. I felt pretty prepared for the next day's trip as far as provisions and practicalities were concerned, but that was a pretty miserable night in all other respects. Taking on that kind of trip alone calls for a kind of fortitude that was difficult to summon when I was sunburned, exhausted, sore, and maybe for the first time since I left the states, a bit homesick. My thoughts often turned to the people I miss back in my country, and I kept asking myself: what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Not just biking, but why am I in Thailand? Why have I wanted to come here for so long and train in Muay Thai, probably one of the most violent sanctioned sports existing in the world today? Not coming up with any solid answers made it really hard to find the motivation to want to continue the next day, especially since day 2 would be 100km, which is about 62 miles. However, having discovered that the only way to get on a bus or train north was to backtrack all the way to Bangkok, I was determined to make it to Nakhon Sawan or bust.

Needless to say, make it I did, though the experience was in no way enjoyable, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. The heat that day was absolutely ferocious. I felt like the sun was trying to rend my flesh from my bones, though it was having to penetrate long pants and sleeves in order to do so. Surprisingly, having my skin covered didn't make me any warmer when I was on the bike, traveling at speed. I finally understood why many indigenous peoples from desert areas keep their skin covered - clothes really do protect from the sun. However, the incredible heat and associated fatigue slowed me down quite a bit that day, and it being a longer ride anyways, I fell behind on my pace and nightfall caught me 20km from the town I intended to stop in, and it was raining cats and dogs to boot. Also, I'd managed to get off my quaint small road and onto the main highway. Sharing the road with 18 wheelers in the pitch black and pouring rain for the last two hours, with every muscle in my body cursing my stupid brain for thinking this idea up, was a tough time. At least I had a little light on the front of my bike. It threw off about as much light as a candle but at least I could say something of the road ahead. Finally pulling into town somewhere around 8-9pm was an incredible feeling. I found a great hotel right away, with a huge room for only 400 baht. After the last two days of cycling, that room was probably the greatest hotel room of my entire life. Granted, I haven't stayed in many hotels, but this one represented an accomplishment, something I'd never done before.

That night some things came together for me. Sitting in the room, I realized that the electrical sockets would actually allow me to plug in my laptop. All the hardship and introspection got my brain working overtime, and I randomly came across an online conversation with an old girlfriend that I'd saved to my computer. I decided then and there to write her a letter explaining what I was doing in Thailand, among other things. That letter is a whole other story, but writing it helped me clarify what I'm doing here, and why I want to train in Muay Thai. Briefly, for those who don't know about Muay Thai: it's a martial art and the de facto national sport of Thailand. It resembles kickboxing, but includes knee and elbow strikes, as well as clinches and throws. It's legendary for being incredibly difficult, with intense conditioning of the sort normally undertaken only by professional athletes. Two three hour training sessions a day, six days a week. The fights are often brutal and punishing. This ain't your weeknight Karate class with Master Bob. I realized that I wanted to train in this largely because of how difficult and punishing it would be. I wanted to throw myself on the fire, dedicate myself completely to something insanely difficult, but mentally and physically, and see what would happen. What would I become?

The answer to that question still lies ahead. One thing I knew in that hotel room that night, however, was that I wanted to get started training and cut the bike trip short. So the next day, I caught a bus the rest of the way north to Chiang Mai. I threw my bike in the belly of the beast, took a seat in the back next to a monk, and tried to sleep most of the way. Upon arrival around 8 in the evening, I intended to find my training camp and stay in a nearby guesthouse. I hopped in a songtaow (red pickup truck taxi) with my bike and pack, and an English girl who was going to some hostel called Spicy Thai. After repeated attempts by the cabbie to drop me off at various Muay Thai fight venues, and repeated (useless) attempts to explain that I was looking for Lanna Camp, not trying to see a fight, I gave up and tagged along with my fellow traveler to the hostel, figuring I would sort things out in the morning. Well, Spicy Thai turned out to be one of my favorite hostels of all time, and due to the fairly low price and various other factors, I'm still here.

So, for the past few weeks I've been training Muay Thai at Lanna Muay Thai. I had dreamed of the place for so long that actually seeing the camp was a surreal experience. Jumping right into training and living in Thailand has been pretty interesting. Obviously, my level of fitness, while pretty good for most people, was not up to par for training twice a day for three hours. So I've worked into it slowly, trying to concentrate on getting the technique down. I intend to stay here a few months at least, so I have plenty of time to build fitness and stamina before I have my first fight. In between bouts of food related sickness other random body failures due to training, I've gotten to most of the training sessions since I've gotten here, and I've noticed my stamina and technique have started to improve. I did skip practice today, but that's due to injury.

Last saturday, one of the trainers in the camp decided it was my turn to do some sparring with him in the ring. It was kicks only, and we were wearing pads on our shins and feet, which sounds pretty light and controlled. This was my first time doing any kicking sparring at the camp so I was pretty unsure of how to handle myself. Fully power? 90%? 50%? The trainer answered those questions for me by pummeling me with kicks to the legs. I'm sure he was taking it easy, but suffice it to say that I stayed in the ring until he got bored with it (I only found out later I could've stopped the session at any time) and I was in a lot of (very obvious and vocal) pain for most of my time in the ring. He then added insult to injury after the session by telling me that my kicks were weak, and top of that, he thinks I look gay. Well, well well. Far cry from the environment and attitudes of other places I've trained in martial arts. Pedaling home after practice, barely able to move, I was pretty furious. The lesson I was supposed to learn, I think, was to protect my legs better and hit harder in retaliation. However, the beating I took was a bit more than was necessary to teach those lessons. In any case, I didn't come here to get my hand held and make best buddies, so I've put my frustration aside, and I'm determined to go twice as hard when I start training again later this week. In a way, getting hit and learning to deal with pain is part of why I came. And I certainly can't afford to waste any time or energy taking offense to anything anyone wants to say to me. So, the only thing to do is heal up and get back to it twice as hard.

In other news, a friend from English teaching in Korea is coming to Chiang Mai tomorrow. Mitch and I had originally planned to do some traveling in Laos for a few days, but injury on my part and passport shenanigans on his will keep us in Thailand, I think. That's fine since I'm still having trouble walking correctly. I guess now I'll take the time to really check out Chiang Mai proper - training a lot keeps me too tired to do much of that most of the time, and my vows of abstinence from sex and alcohol while I'm in Thailand reduce my desire to check out the nightlife very much.

On a final note, I know I always say that I'm updating the photos section soon, but I really am this week. Not being able to train properly or move around too much means I have lots of time to get the site together and updated. Look for a huge photos section being reborn in the next week.

I hope you're all happy and healthy. Things are tough here in some ways, but I am getting plenty of R&R as well, no worries.

Roll Out

The time is fast approaching. I leave Korea on June first. The last 6 weeks has been pretty eventful, what with the wedding, all the socializing, and preparations to leave. Seems like I'm pulling all nighters all over the place trying to get my stuff ready to go (it's not) and my website updated (it isn't.) I have managed to do a minor facelift and finally get up Ryan and Helen's wedding photos! So take a gander at those. Ok, better get my nose back to the grindstone, or finally hit the hay...

Changes are afoot

Changes in both my life and my website are forthcoming. First, life:

I decided to take advantage of a long weekend to travel to Tibet. Whilst there, I protested the Chinese crackdown on protesters, which in effect made me a protester. I was placed in a burlap sack and beaten, and I now write this from the slimy muck at the bottom of a jail cell in Sichuan province. My captors have agreed to update my blog for me, and have even given me pen and paper. All I had to do was promise to quit singing Kenny Loggins at the top of my lungs at all hours. Chinese prison guards HATE Kenny Loggins. Yup, my constant threat of singing KL has made me big man on campus around here. All the other inmates are forced to relinquish their gruel'n'guts eggrolls to me at mealtimes, and my guards give me a footrub on the hour, every hour. I'm thinking about staying here and starting a traveling band of inmate musicians. We will cover Abba, and only Abba, for every tiny podunk Chinese village for a thousand miles. If that all sounds pretty ridiculous to you, I suggest you take a look at the date on this blog entry. April second for me is April first for you USA types...

And now for something completely different... (reality or something like it)

I'm contracted to teach through the end of May here in Korea, at which point I will go ahead on to Thailand. I am midly considering extending for another month or two in order to obtain a faster laptop for my continued travels. In any case, at some point in the summer I'm going to Thailand, where I will remain for at least the rest of the year. How long I stay after that depends on how things work out. I will be training in Muay Thai full time, so I guess we'll see how I jive with that lifestyle.

Coming past the one year mark in Korea is a good time to look back. I've had a pretty excellent time here with few complaints of any sort. Or regrets for that matter, save one - I wish I'd spent the time to learn Korean and get truly immersed in Korean culture. This whole ex-pat scene has been a huge wake-up call for me. You come here and there is a friend group of english speakers pretty much ready to go. That plus high speed internet in your apartment can really kill your momentum on learning the local language and making local friends. It's taken me a long time to see how the habits and patterns form here, but I'm glad that I've learned how this works, because this will definitely not be the last foreign country that I live in for an extended period of time. In the meantime, it's never too late to learn - I intend to spend the rest of my time here hanging out with Koreans as often as possible and making a stab at speaking as much of the language as I can.

Martial arts wise, I continue to grow in capability and mental strength. Physically, flexibility remains my number one issue. But practice and exercise have become part of my mental and spiritual landscape to the point where I cannot imagine a life without training 4-5 times a week. There's a feel to it, a constant energy that is with you all the time. I've been getting more sleep lately too and that's always beneficial.

As far as the website goes, I'm basically reworking the entire thing. I've been using a Mac-based program to build and maintain the site, which has had pros and cons. The program is incredibly easy to use and enables me to do slick things (like those pop up menus on the photos page) without actually knowing what I'm doing. The downside is that it ties me to the Mac platform. I've been a Mac user for years, but lately speed and power have become most important to me as far as computers are concerned. Speed and power carry a hefty premium in the world of Mac, unfortunately. Also, I'd like to migrate my website activities to something that's more platform independent. As in, learn how to write html myself so I can build/maintain the site no matter what kind of computer I'm on. That's the end goal. This also ties in with my photography - I've stopped using iPhoto (which ships with all Macs) due to the fact that it cannot handle massive picture libraries like mine, on old/slow machines like mine. I've transferred all my photos to an old-fashioned regular old files and folders set up, once again with platform independence in mind. Ideally, I get a new laptop, run Linux on it, and do things the geekier/harder/ultimately more rewarding way.

To that end, the site is going to look really, really basic in the coming months. Also, I'm going with a new approach with the photos. Rather than having hundreds and hundreds of photos on the site, I'm going to pare it down to the shots I'm really, really proud of. I'll still try to keep things in chronological/geographical order, but I'm going to be a lot pickier about what I put up. Or maybe I'll just say screw it and put up a bunch of picasa web albums and call it a day. Only time will tell!

Real quick to my theatre friends: I miss you guys like crazy. Not living around a bunch of weirdo artists and doing theatre all the time is what's going to get me back to the states. For anyone who's wondering, yes I'm definitely coming back, and yes I'm going to work in theatre.

For those of you who have followed my Asian adventures and kept up with me via the website, email, chat, and what have you, thanks. As I look back on this past year I've realized the importance of community, and it's nice to feel that there is one/several that I can jump back into when I'm stateside again. I hope you're all doing fantastically well.