Muay Thai!!

After 2 trips to Thailand, spending around 40 days in this country, I finally caught sight of some Muay Thai Boxing!!

It starts off with a small spiritual kind of dance and then, much like the Spanish, in a Muay Thai stadium, all the locals shout after every blow… it’s not the Spanish “Olé” that we hear, but more something like the nasal Thai “Ohh!”…

A little preview of the start ceremony -

23.04 “Oh my Buddha!”

Wonderful wanderlust … you take a chance. And life can you to some odd places, but most times, it will take you to absolutely incredible places.

I find myself in a “penthouse” on the top floor of the TEFL school, with wooden floors, a perpendicular shaped balcony - the first place I visit every morning. And, I’m greeted by a tropical wind, lush green hills, small roads and the red tiles of my roof.

When I first reached Phuket, I met an ex-TEFL student in her balcony and as she pointed towards Phuket, she told me “How could you not like that?”
Everyday I wake up, I look outside my balcony and I smile very very wide.

But, I do have just about the right amount of drama to keep me on my toes…
It takes 3 minutes for the water to start spraying after I turn on the knob of the shower, and 5 minutes for it to stop after I turn it off. And yesterday, as I took a crap, the water suddenly sprayed from the shower although the knob was turned off. Of course, there is no curtain separating the shower from the toilet, and so I got drenched! Here’s something I never thought I would experience! Mmm…maybe there’s a ghost in my room.

Today I rented a small scooter for the whole 4 weeks of the course, and got my first experience riding around Phuket. Phuket is a pretty big island west off the peninsula of Thailand. There are 3 main beaches infested with tourists that I would not recommend to anyone, and there are many secluded beaches, and today I visited my first one as I went to meet Chand and Harsh who just reached. A lagoon of turquoise blue water overlooking 3 islands, and small hills on the sides and at the back… As I rode, I had the wind on my face, greenery on my side, and beautiful roads all leading to the sea.
I felt A…l…i…v…e…

We are 21 different students in the course, a mix from England, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Wales, South Africa, U.S. and a single Indian… I haven’t found one student that isn’t interesting. There’s an Irish guy who described how he once rode a donkey in his introduction speech and not a single person understood what he was talking about because of his strong Irish accent, but he got us all laughing just looking at him slapping his imaginary donkey. A Welsh guy bought me my first beer when I reached Phuket as a welcome to TEFL and another Irish woman told the teacher “Why don’t you sit down and teach instead of standing up? You’re sweating all over the place!”;

The course is challenging, it is mainly concentrated on standing in front of a class and teaching, which is completely understandable. Yesterday, I had my first class teaching Thai kids. The nerves automatically calmed down after the first 2 minutes, and the class went well on the whole except at the end when I didn’t get the answers back from a question sheet I had distributed and played hangman instead! That left my teacher scratching his head…

Chris, one of my teachers, had this experience to tell us about Thailand. He once went to a village and spent sometime with a Thai family, and after sometime, he heard a Thai exclaiming in aghast “Oh, my Buddha!!” copying his repeated exclamation of “Oh my god!”

I also played Basketball with the local Thais of the neighborhood, and whenever I got a shot, they would shout at me “Nice shoot! Nice shoot!”
:) :) :)

Melaka - an uncomfortable walk...

Melaka through the viewfinder

It was a bustling trade city. Until, the Portuguese, the Dutch and then, the British came, conquered it, and then, kind of fucked it. The Chinese were supposed to protect this city, but my guess, is that they failed. Now, one of the first things I saw when I reached Melaka, was two funeral homes in the small China Town area. I thought, how appropriate, because I get the feeling that this city is dead. Its silence hit me when I reached, I walked around the small lanes of Chinatown and the Dutch square, with an uncanny feeling; I felt a kind of emptiness surrounding this old town, where its people are just living, going about their daily lives in silence, waiting for death.

Of course, this was just on reaching. The next morning, I got out on the street, I heard the sound of automobiles, and a bit of that creepy feeling went away. Melaka is a charming little port town, but my sentiments are that it is lacking soul. A bit of music on these small streets filled with small houses connected one after the other would go a long way into giving this town a bit of soul. This is just me talking.

Melaka seems to be famous with Asian tourists. It’s filled with them, I think mostly Chinese, and they keep clicking picture after picture after picture of themselves. I got to experience what every white tourist experiences in India, when I was asked 3 times by Asian women, to pose with them for pictures. I was completely puzzled, but flattered.

Good luck finding a place to eat here before 11am and after 7pm, everything is closed beyond these times. But when the “restorans” (Malay word for restaurant) are opened, they are filled with people. I found out what it’s like to eat at the original “Malaka Spice”.

Capitol Satay is a small restoran, made with steel tables and stools, where there’s a hole in the middle of each of these tables, with a gas stove underneath the table. As you sit, they put a big casserole of satay sauce and it starts bubbling and boiling. You help yourself to a self service range of satay sticks (tofu, okra, other greens for me… a big range for non veggies) in a steel buffet and then go back to your seat, and insert the satay stick in the boiling sauce… one word… YUM!

I also had an overpriced experience of drinking Chinese tea, but it was worth it. In a Chinese tea museum, the owner sits down with you, helps you select the tea, prepares it for you and then pours it for you in a small tea pot and then in a small cup, and explains to you the story of the tea. Phoenix tea is a tea from South China, it is good for your blood circulation and it is a semi-fermented green tea.

Amidst giant concrete

Links to KL pics

I entered the bus to get into town from the Kuala Lumpur airport and the driver spoke Tamil with the bus company escort. I told myself this is probably another Dubai.

It's not. Kuala Lumpur reminds me a lot of Singapore.

The Petronas twin towers along with the KL telecommunication tower overlook many other skyscrapers. I feel small when I walk around here. The people are a mix of Chinese, Malays, Indians and Muslims, and I find it hard to tell what a pure Malay looks like.

My hostel host sang me the entire song of Kuch Kuch hota hai… An Indian on the street stopped, looked at me and told me I’m a very lucky person. Then he asked me “you want to know why?”… I smiled, and said “Thank you” and continued walking. A hotel here is called Bollywood hotel…then again, there’s also Hollywood hotel…

There’s malls after shopping malls and food, food, food everywhere. It’s a city where you can walk in big boulevards, and you see many people on the streets, walking. I like such big cities. I like Kuala Lumpur.

Professional Association of Diving Instructors

They prepare you with the written stuff. They take you to the pool, introduce you to all the equipments you will be using and teach you how to use them. They’ve told you repeatedly the dangers you might be facing and what you need to do to avoid them.

And then, you’re standing at the edge of the boat, with a 10kg air cylinder on your back and added weights around your waist, and they tell you take a big step with your clown fins feet and jump into the water. “I’m going to sink down to the bottom!”

You muster the courage, take the step and then you inhale your first breath under water, and you hear your breath through the mouth piece. It works. And slowly you emerge back to the surface and you’re floating – positive buoyancy.

And slowly, you release the air from your buoyancy control device, and you start to go down and you find yourself under water. All you hear is your breath and as you exhale the bubbles coming out of your mouth. And you get your first sight of this amazing world underneath which was totally unknown to you before. Everything happens in slow motion, you’re surprised at how well you can see. The plants, the fish, the corals, the sand, you find yourself within a huge natural aquarium.

Some fish come to inspect you. And as I would find out in my last dive, some fish are not happy that you’re here. But mostly, they all go about ignoring you. The octopus moves with grace, the morays have faces like turtles and like to hide beneath corals, and the sting ray is a privilege sighting. The scorpion fish are extremely dangerous and very common here, but they don’t harm you if you don’t harm them. The trigger fish, on the other hand, is not happy about us invading its space, particularly when it is nesting. I was attacked by a big bright yellow and blue trigger fish. It came for my fins; my instructor came in front of me and started pushing it away with his fins. It followed us for 5 minutes and bit the fins of my instructor. All I did was hide behind him until we swam across the danger area!

As we dove, I had to complete various skills tests to finish my course. And as I completed my last skill set, my instructor kneeled on the sand at the bottom of the sea, marked a spot in front of him and called me. And as kneeled in front of him, he drew his hand out and shook my hand. At that spot, at the bottom of the Andaman Sea, 18 meters below sea level, near Racha Yai Island, I successfully completed my PADI open waters diver certificate.

“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks, his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.” – Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance).

Oops... i did it again!

Back in Thailand...

Amidst the tall buildings, is a cluster of people… I am back in Bangkok!

Links to the pics

Us, the people

People are fascinating. If I were to consider a grain of sand or a drop of water, I would probably find these as fascinating, but, I like observing people. And there is such diversity here in Thailand. From the street hawkers enticing the pedestrians with the aroma of food, to the transvestites (called “lady-man” in English by the locals), the prostitutes, the tourists – bag packers, hippies, divers, rich tourists, and single men who come here looking for some sexual company, I can sit for hours in a coffee shop, just observing.



The man with his twin kids enters a coffee shop and speaks on his mobile and leaves his children to linger in the airport. He comes out of the coffee shop, and they have disappeared. He spends 10 minutes looking for them, finally finds them.

The Brit checks out the legs of a Thai woman, works his eyes upwards from the legs to the face, and then exclaims “Oh shit, that’s a man!”

The Tuk Tuk driver in Bangkok, keeps looking in his rearview mirror and smiles at us, and then speeds away in zig zag as he overtakes every other vehicle on the street. And then, he laughs as he overtakes them and then looks at us again.

The woman Tuk Tuk driver in Chang Mai tells us, “yes, I’m a lady and I ride a Tuk Tuk. But I’m no lady-man!!” When I ask her if she can drop us at 7am to the airport the next day, she exclaims “7am???? I sleep! I start work at 11am and finish at 5 or 6pm”.

The tourist looks at his transvestite partner and indicates by gesturing with his mouth that he wants a blow job.

The pissed waiters and waitresses, the wonderful hosts of the 3 sis Bed and Breakfast in Chang Mai, the weirdly nice host of Alis hotel in Krabi, the horrible hosts in Phi Phi Paradise hotel, the nice boatmen and their kids, one of whom was sleeping in a hammock inside the long-tail boat, the nice waiters and waitresses, the transvestite waiters, the sellers with their nasal “Chip Chip fa youu” (Cheap Cheap for you!)…. I love people.

If it ain’t kitschy, it ain’t holy!

The Thais must love their gold on temples. But, it’s not just that. I think they love their temples to be gaudy, even if no gold is used. They managed to make a completely white temple extravagant by adding mirror work to it and using a loud architecture.

I contemplated on the carvings in their temples - the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, a man sucking the breast of a woman, star war planes destroying cities next to the Buddha. I told myself it has probably got something to do with the basic human desires… but I’m not sure. I found it a bit weird.

Drowsiness in Bangkok

No need to drink, no need for drugs. A couple of hours in the Chatuchak market in Bangkok is enough to make your head go round and round!

We in Thailand use 5 chilies in our curry, how many you want?

The Irish woman said half a chilly would be enough. I took one. We went for a cooking class in Chang Mai. I made my first pad Thai! I liked the way it tasted. Perfect for me, not too spicy. No sweat, no tears.

30 minutes in Laos

We crossed the river, and stepped in a visa free Laos market for 30 minutes. I will go back there.

Caressing a tiger

There’s something wrong in the sight of a beautiful tiger within caged walls.

Finally, being wowed by Thailand

To be wowed by Thailand, I had to go within… within the water. A magnificient world exists inside the sea. The electric sound of small yellow and black fish, as they come near you to inspect you, brush you, and try to feed off your skin, the blue and pink colored fish moving in the water effortlessly as I try to follow it. And then, it farts! Some bubbles come out from its rear…I don’t know what it is, but I call it the fish fart! The mushroomed shaped corals. It’s beautiful.

And as you emerge from the water, the scenery that greets you is big limestone rock formations, the sun, turquoise blue clear sea water… silence, appreciation…. joy, elation.

Vikings bay is absolutely out of this world.