THAILAND!

Take a look at Allison's blog for some pictures of us in THAILAND! We had an amazing time.
A snachet of memory for you from the Muay Thai gym in Chiang Mai where we were getting taught some basics of Thai kickboxing (ie, getting pummelled). Our guy Lek (yes, I know a man named Lek) had taught me how to knee Muay Thai style, and was giving me commands and commentary as he stood there with a pad on his body and I tried to knee him in the solar plexus for about twenty minutes. And the commentary went like this: "Right knee...THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, left knee--WHACK...bad! Man, come on! Balaance! Riilack! Powaa!" Oh Lek. He seriously was a big sweetheart, and really warm towards us from the very start when he came to pick us up at our guest house on his motorcycle.

On the way to the gym he craned his head around to half face me and asked, "How long you come to Chaing Mai," and I told him it was our first day, which was true enough. We'd arrived from Bangkok two days earlier, but had spent our time in the jungle, and not in the city at all yet. The morning we arrived and found our guest house, which we'd sort of made a reservation for from Bangkok, we waited till the office opened and first thing set ourselves up for a trek out to the jungle, departing about twenty minutes later. The office guy, a wiry-tall skinny guy named Coco with SUZUKI NAOKO tattooed across one shoulder in Sans Serif and cigarette burns across the other, spoke fluid English with the winy and not entirely trustworthy accent of Chinese dry cleaner's female shopkeeper, and tried to warn us off. Coco said, "yeah, you guys both really sure you want to go now? Sometimes people they come overnight and they think they don't need more sleep, but they been partying in Bankok and then they're out in the jungle in the hot and on the elephants and they're so too tired, so you need sleep, we give you room now, you tired, you sleep now today you go tomorrow is also ok, ok?" But bah! Time enough for sleep in the grave! So with only the time to stash our bags and grab a cup of coffee, off we went to the jungle.

But back to Lek and I on the bike. I told him it was our first day, and then I asked him how long he'd been boxing. He said, what? I said, "How long you been boxing? Long time?" And he looks back over his right shoulder at me with a little grin and puts out his left hand, holds it above the road with his palm down as we whiz along through the traffic, showing me the size of the little boy he must have been when he first started. Actually, I later found out that Lek means little, and that it's his Thai nickname; when Thai children are born they get given a nickname in about the same moment they get slapped on the tuchus, so as to beguile the evil spirits who would seek to take their fresh, vulnerable souls. And their nicknames seem to be fairly household words, which comes off as really sweet when you translate it. You get people named Apple, or Shrimp, or Peanut (thanks to Robin for all this culture stuff), or in our friend Lek's case, Small. Which, looking at the man, comes off as one of the better jokes anyone's ever pulled off. Cuz little, he ain't. He's a big dude. Not dopey big, not like Ohio born, corn-fed Grade A American football playing beef big; Lek's big like big pumas and tigers are big. It helps me feel safe while we're riding the motorcyle...which is good, because not only do we have no mirrors, but we're by far the fastest thing on the road (a theme for Al and my week there) in an unregulated melee of cars, trucks, pickups, buses, bikes, charis, tuk-tuks and pedestrians; and Lek keeps trying to talk to me while we're riding, which thanks to the noise of the bike and the difficulty of language and accents, involves him using a lot of hand signals. So here we are, our first day fresh out of the jungle, and at 9:00 in the morning I find myself on the back of a motorcycle--my first time ever on a motorcycle--bursting Kessel Run style through Chiang Mai's rush-hour traffic and holding down a conversation with a massively built and terrifically friendly lifetime Thai kickboxer, who is driving me with no hands on the wheel or handles or whatever it is we've got to steer with, on a bike with no apparent means of braking and no mirrors, which shouldn't really matter anyway since the dude's looking over his shoulder at me the whole time. This, let me tell you, this was a great way to start the day.

Hooray for amazing THAILAND. What an adventure.