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.