Questionable Crotch Contents

Saturday night.  Time to see what Patong is all about.  I had two keen tour guides, including someone I'd recognised from back home and now officially met.  Located half an hour taxi ride away on the west coast, this is Phuket's debauchery district.  Getting there involves driving over a steep hill in the middle of the island.  Buses severely struggle when climbing this and they are a known cause of death to anyone behind them when the brakes fail.  Our taxi driver was quite eager to overtake the faltering bus in front, although that came with risks of its own.

Patong nightlife is mainly spread over Bangla road.  This is a wide street for pedestrians that was far removed from being pedestrian in the "dull" sense of the word.  A flood of people wandered along a smorgasbord of brightly lit neon disorientation.  Instead of sex being used to advertise everything, here it was direct marketing.  I'd say it was at least ten times more available than coffee.  Families kept a firm grip on each other as they navigated the outskirts of the zoo.  Budget party goers sipped their alcoholic beverages from straws in small buckets.  Middle aged men exchanged cash for charisma as Thai bar girls let them role-play high flyers.  Lady boys (and work-in-progress lady boys) made their presence know too.

Google provides the photos I didn't take

Being my first time here, the company I was with were treating it like it was my 18th birthday.  We sampled a variety of establishments.  There was only one place they didn't want to go, but sometime after midnight and vodka funnels, that's where we ended up - at Patong's main nightclub.  In the VIP area we met up with some of the Tiger staff.  Eddie Bravo had been there earlier, but left because of a seminar in Singapore that day.

On nights out like these, there comes a point in time where it seems that a futile chase is continuing for something that has long since fled the area, if it was ever there at all.  After 4-something in the morning, I decided to pull the pin.  In less than three hours I had to be at a meeting spot for an island tour by boat.  I exited the establishment, zigzagged past gender-unknown Thais selling their questionable crotch contents and found a taxi.  I first negotiated the fare then jumped in the back of an empty "songthaew" (I can type it, I can't pronounce it) which is basically two fixed bench seats on the back of a pick-up truck.  This allowed me to lean out the window and appreciate the night view of the island from the climb up the hill on the way back to base.

Sleepless, I prepared my gear for a trip to the Phi Phi islands and then rode to where a van was collecting the tour group.  The morning became a classic case of hurry-up-and-wait and by the time we were in the high-speed ferry, my head was noddy.  I would have caught some shuteye behind my sunglasses if it wasn't for the Russian bikini-clads sitting across from me.

Towards the front of the boat, a heavy-set guy with ill-fitting shorts was giving everyone a cringe-worthy display of bushy buttock cleavage.  His wife failed to address this mutant mohawk.  When the tour guide urged us to see something out the front of the boat, the Australian family sitting near me was the first to make comical remarks about "No thanks, I'll be right" and references to "furry crack".  I laughed and then joined in with comments about a full moon party and how it seemed to go up to the 7th vertebrae.  For the remainder of the journey, the persistent eye-sore allowed a fun trade of amusing remarks.  Childish humour is even better with a dose of sleep-deprived delirium. 

Part man, part stegosaurus.

The Phi Phi islands are beautiful.  The tourist experience of the Phi Phi islands is not beautiful.  I'm sure I've learned this lesson before.

"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten."  -- Marie Antoinette

In a horseshoe-shaped bay, short white-sand beaches are surrounded by vertical cliff walls.  Keeping the dinosaur theme, here's what it would look like to a pterodactyl in flight -

As far as I could tell, for all daylight hours a continuous tide of tourists battered the small coast.  The beach was subjected to the relentless unloading of boats, like a re-enactment of the Normandy landings.  Once emptied, each ferry would make way for the next expulsion of people.  As demand was high, the visit was brief, and our tour was soon herded back into our water craft.

Here's a much better picture found online, compared to the overpopulated ones I took from the same location -

Do hospital emergency rooms continuously update the types of grievous injuries for which they keep statistics?  If so, I suggest a new and soon to be increasing category - namely, "Impalement Upon Selfie-Stick".  Most likely administered by others, this penetrating wound is a questionable mix of malice and public service.

I'm sure there's some practical benefit, but holy shit, have you seen the trance people go into when they use this attachment to their mobile phone?  Held like a Hamlet prop, they swirl around taking dizzying footage as nearby people lean out of the way, lest they be clouted.  But there's also a strange stupor cast upon onlookers, as they can't help but stare at the use of this extension to vanity.

I try not to rant on this blog.  It's too easy to fall into the self-indulgence.  This has been an exception.  A recent podcast on my traveling playlist referred to the cleansing effect of getting annoying thoughts out into written form just to clear the way.  The expression was something to the effect of "I'm just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day."

Speaking of monkeys, there was an island with them scheduled on the tour itinerary.  This ended up being our boat watching people from another boat throw pieces of banana at them.  The primates climbed out on branches that overhung the water and took turns trying to catch the flying fruit.  That was a quality encounter, like throwing chips to seagulls.

There was a prior drinking night smearing my judgement, but this tour reminded me that my preference for travel wasn't tourism based.  This experience put my penciled-in plans for the next few days into question.  I had intended on booking a flight to another island for tomorrow, but another option was to explore a jungle on the mainland.  Some research would be nice when I got back to a wifi connection, but priority alpha was sleep.

Where the Rubber meets the Road

It was a bit of overkill, having a moped for this week of training where everything I needed was on the one street.  Having a speedy transit from one place to the other and exploring back streets was still fun though.  Bike rides of less than 100 seconds weren't uncommon.  With a big emphasis this week on training and recovery, there wasn't much time for exploration.  Anyhow, chaotic adventure was next week's plan.

One day I did decide to ride up one of the main roads towards Phuket Town.  This was like launching a paper boat down a fast flowing river with unknown rapids upstream.  Traffic swarmed in different directions.  Three lanes were marked each way but the lines on the road apparently don't mean shit.  Merging was less about indication and right of way, instead following a "be like water" philosophy.  Demanded reverence came from trucks and other vehicles of heftier, roadkill-causing capacity.  Even the direction of travel seemed optional as several bikes chanced head-on collisions.  I'd only had a brief look at Google Maps beforehand, but that wasn't going to help.  The road signs were written in the Thai alphabet and obscured by complex nets of overhead power lines.

Back at training HQ, I tried a different type of yoga class by a lady named Ocean Bloom.  I figured it would be either really good or a bit too hippy.  It was really good.  Mental note to try a few more types of yoga back home. 

In the submission grappling class, I wrestled Stephan who I'd overheard was (Sweden's?) Heavyweight MMA champ.  He was all over me like a Rottweiler on a chew toy and I was glad there was no striking involved.  I kept escaping his submission attempts, only to be squashed in a new position as he setup the next finish.  Eventually he locked up a body triangle which uses the legs to control and squeeze the torso.  It's not usually a submission by itself, but with Dolph Lundgren strength he compressed my innards until I felt and heard multiple crunches like mangled cellophane.  This came from the nomadic section of my ribcage where I'd had previous relocations.  I tapped just to get him off me and assess the damage.  In something like an Arnie accent (although that could be my untrained ear) he said, "Your defence too good - I had to use my strength."

I sucked in a shallow breath to wheeze out a "Thanks".  I wasn't being sarcastic, I'll take that compliment.  There was one more wrestle to that class in which I did a Napoleon impression with a forearm protectively held across my body.  After that, there was one more sparring class I had been considering, but now decided to take a pass.

On my last training day, I began with a private lesson from James McSweeney.  Unlike the Muay Thai PT's, this was customised to my preferences and questions.  In his last fight, James had broken his hand, so he brought in another guy when my questions related to ground fighting technique.   Within seconds of meeting this person, I was being instructed on the finer points of grinding his head into the floor while setting up knees to the face.  Pleased to meet you.

Straight after that, I jogged to a nearby training area for the reason I'd timed this week of combat sports.  Eddie Bravo of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu had included Tiger on his worldwide seminar circuit.

I'd missed the opportunity back in Australia last year.  Eddie has a creative approach to No-Gi (ie. without a kimono/gi/uniform) Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, specifically in regards to its application to Mixed Martial Arts.  He questions the traditional grip-based approach and this has (disappointingly) drawn criticism from parts of the wider BJJ community.  The alternatives he offers are constructed with wicked logic and he encourages inventiveness. 

Part of the 10th Planet system is leveraged off having flexibility in the higher percentile.  Yoga's half lotus position (one foot folded up to the opposite hip) gives gateway access to the Rubber Guard.  The ability to do full lotus makes it dangerous.  Greater flexibility makes it deadly.

The Rubber Guard was the focus of this seminar.   This shuts down the striking ability of the opponent on top while still leaving one hand free to "take their phone out of their pocket and call their mom", or otherwise elbow strike while navigating to a range of submissions.  By naming a vaster degree of individual positions and the transitions between them, he has mapped out this part of the battlefield in fine detail.

During the seminar, he was animated in his explanations and inspired by the continuing rapid rate of evolution in both BJJ and MMA.  The 3 hours went quickly and was an excellent way to finish up this phase of my time in Thailand.

One more week in Thailand, and up to this point, no fixed plans or accommodation.  The feeling is a weird splice of complete freedom and indecision anxiety.