Learning Muay Thai and visiting the dam.

So it was the weekend (4th -6th October) and we were all geared up to visit the dam, we had been putting it off as the weather had not been the best , but it hadn't rained in a few days now and from the looks of it, it seemed like we were out of the wet season and it was blue skies and an average of 32-35 degree's ahead for the foreseeable future... it's a tough life I suppose.

We set off on the 50 km journey, and along the way we inadvertently ended up riding in a bike gang of Thai teenagers. Once they seen us they decided it was time to show off, with two of them on each bike they began to pop wheelies and drove for easily 100 meters, still on one wheel.

At this stage we have gotten use to seeing unusual sights on the roads in Thailand most of all the things they stack up on each vehicle ranging from 6 people on a moped to 10 large crates filled with pigs on a truck or large amounts of chopped wood,one man and his dog :) We arrived at the dam which was a huge water duct surrounded by islands covered in forest that forced me to hum the Jurassic park theme tune every few minutes.

In the area we could see on top of one of the mountains a large Buddha statue and decided to go explore. We got to the entrance of the temple and were greeted by 1500 steps leading up a mountain to the massive Buddha. Cue sighs of disbelief and we stretched and joked about sprinting up the steps rocky style. We prepared for the journey and i popped the music scene of rocky running up the steps on you tube and surprised every one when the music started but it set me and Aaron off sprinting. 

We got 1/4 of the way and then the 32 degree heat took its toll and we were out of breath and covered in sweat, the two girls strolled up and caught up with us as we wheezed out of breath, proper case of the tortoise and the hare. So we agreed to walk the rest of the way.

When we got to the top we found a car park beside the temple and realised we could have driven up “doh” moment, but the view on the way up was amazing. Once at the peak we were greeted by a huge Buddha statue on top of the temple and some monks in full gear strolling around with i phones and tablets which was a bit of a surprise to us but turns out they can have electronic devices for studying on-line.. “go the future”.

Up there the view was serene and the temple was filled with religious icons and areas were you could bang gongs and hit symbols so we tried our hand at a few rock songs, future band in the making...

They had 3 smaller Buddha statues which were possibly  stone a piece and the idea is you kneel before them and bow 3 times and then try to pick them, if you cant pick it up on the first try then you bow 3 more times and Buddha himself gives you the strength to lift it and good luck if you couldn't the first time which is what happened to me. 

The area surrounding the temple was also beautiful and full of nice views of the ocean. There we seen what we now learnt is Thai humor were large over hanging rocks which look like they are close to falling are held up by hundreds of small twigs holding it up.

We also got to make the cover for our next album as below :) 

On Friday we went to our first Muay Thai training session and loved it so much that we signed up for the whole month. Our trainer is a fun loving guy names Id and he has trained Muay Thai champions from the Issan region and Bangkok and people from around the world come to train with him to improve fighting style in the aptly named “Art of 8 Limbs”. Muay Thai is a combat sport from Muay Martial Arts from Thailand that uses stand up striking along with various clinching techniques. It's a physical and mental discipline which includes combat on foot. It is characterised by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees shins and feet. That makes a full contact fight very efficient and also very painful to learn.☺

Before each session he plays the traditional Thai music which is always played before a fight and we are asked to do the pre-fight ritual which is like a dance which limbers up the whole body using stretches and bows to each corner and the ring called Wai Kru Muay Boran. Every one is slightly different and some fighters will throw in funny moves such as shooting and opponent with a few arrow, usually met by the opponent pretending to catch it and break it over his knee. Here is one version of the dance. Wai Kru Muay Boran (click link)

We have now gone to 5 sessions and its usually 2 hours at a time. We are hoping to go 5-6 times a week so should be pretty proficient by the end of the first month in kicking ass.. well at least a punching bag!! After the first few sessions both of us have bruised ankles legs and elbows but its an amazing experience. 

On our off day we found a swimming pool in town were you pay 50 baht (just over a euro) for the whole day and beside the stadium.  We said the next time Khon Kaen are playing football we will be going to watch a game. 

On our third day training an older gentleman got in to the ring, maybe in his 60's. He put on the pads and kept asking me to hit them as he held them up in broken English  A bit weary of hurting him i agreed. He would shout 1-6 and ask for different moves (punches and elbows) I had learned but on every six count he would pull away and i would miss and lose balance and he would laugh his arse off in my face which forced a smile to my face every time. After a while i tried to stretch to hit it and keep my balance at the same time and once i did he said in almost perfect English  “very good”, "Better better".

This frail old man then walked over to the bag and unleashed a flurry of punches the likes of which would have winded me 10 times over and walked back and pointed to a poster on the wall from the 70's and said i was the champion of Bangkok when i was younger. Once again I learnt “don't judge a book by its cover” that and be weary of old men in Thailand as they may have been a Muay Thai champions :)

The trainer has been immensely impressed with both of our progress in short space of time regarding our stance and guard , Kristine took a sneaky video of me training and has no made me put it in so you can see for yourself.  -  

(Video link) Stephen doing Muay Thai training 

“Teaching Bad”

Week 3 of the course, our second assessment was only a few days ahead and we found ourselves just as nervous as the first time around. This week we would be teaching the “Restaurant lesson” which brings into play the use of the verbs; would, can and like, as well as a lot of foods from western countries and they were not allowed to ask for Thai dishes. Not a good lesson to have skipped lunch for, as we were talking about pizza, burgers, fried chicken and steaks when we hadn't eaten western food in over a month, which was really tough. The lesson was based on a waiter taking orders and a customer ordering food, it would be a bit harder than the first week, as now we were introducing amounts and quantities i.e. (a piece of…, a slice of… and how many scoops of ice cream, or how many cookies they wanted for dessert. 

So all week we ran through role-plays and got our pictures to explain the types of food, drinks and desserts we were using. We found out that colour pictures were 10 baht a sheet to print and black and white were only 2 baht so we decided to have a “colouring party” to save money, as we were printing off up to 50 sheets. 

It turned out to be fun and there is a surprising therapeutic affect to reverting back to a 5 year old by spending your evening colouring in pictures while listening to the pulp fiction soundtrack… well the first part anyway. 

Once we had all our work done and realised that soon we would be paid to do this, we went to our friends bar where they were having a Breaking Bad finale night *Relax No Spoilers* ☺They had a big projector set up and had an offer for all you could consume blue cocktails (baby blue meth colour) while it was airing for a good price to get us into the mood. 

We all sat and watched Walter White for one last time, if you haven’t seen breaking bad I highly suggest you go start it now… 

like right now… ...go... I’ll wait………………………….. .....……… 

Amazing right?

On Thursday we got ready again and prepared our classrooms, this time we had an extra kid or 2 and I (Stephen), got lumped with what I swear could only be described as a 30 year old kid, he was sporting a mustache and was about 6’5" tall. 

We put up 3 pictures from each section of food, drink and dessert and we had created a lot of extra pictures of food/drinks types for the section were we asked “OK so what other western foods would I have in my restaurant” and anything they said I just happened to have a picture ready to add to the board, making them think I was some sort of a psychic magician, shouting “BAM” every time I  had a picture ready to go, only to get amazed laughs back.

The only one that caught me out was, when one kid said “milk” for, what other drinks would I have. I checked my pre-made pics and cursed myself for not thinking of milk, but then it dawned on me and I said “What type of milk would I have” and one kid shouted “Chocolate milk”. And what did I happen to have purchased prior to the class and had in my drawer... you guessed it!... and with moves that would make David Copperfield jealous, I acted upset that I didn't have a picture to show and the kids laughed and clapped that they had finally caught me, until “BAM” the desk flew open and I proudly held my chocolate milk into the air… Cue amazed gasps and I’m pretty sure one of the kids heads actually exploded with astonishment. ☺

Kristine’s class went just as well, she was happy with all the kids being able to say “like” by the end of the class rather than “lile”, as most Thais have issues with R’s and L’s. But by using repetition and getting them to shout answers and have fun they were all able to walk out with a better understanding and pronunciation and I’m pretty sure one of them is now teaching advanced English literature in the university, so she was chuffed as well. Also this week she took on 5 kids, 2 more than her first weeks so stepping up her game already. 

After spending the day talking about western food we had a craving for fried chicken. 

Knowing there was a KFC only 5 minutes from the school we set off to try out the Thai technique of eating a Zinga box meal with only a knife and fork. The KFC was beside the arcade so myself and Kenny got our street fighter fix. Kristine and i rocked out on guitar hero also. I think it was "act like a kid week".

Roll on the 3 day weekend, don’t think we will get tired of that….

French Cheese,Crepes and King Cobras....

So after a night of celebrating our first teaching experience in the local: Supan's house, we used Friday as a rest day to nurse our hangovers and decided to take it easy. 

Stephens new toy!!

When Saturday came we went shopping for an early birthday present for Stephen, as it was something we had discussed buying for a while now. We had just gotten our last paycheck and feeling flush, we purchased the new Samsung S4 Zoom, as this solved the issue of not having a second phone and not having a decent camera for travel pics. The Samsung Zoom, which if you aren't aware of what it is, it's probably because it hasn't arrived in Europe yet. Instead of giving you a run down of how amazing this piece of technology is, have a look for yourself in this link: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. All I can say, after playing with this for a while is, it's a beast and will now allow us to take much better pics for this blog and for ourselves.

Saturday night we headed back to the local as they were having a themed party: French cheese,wine and crepes, cooked by a french girl that is friends with the bar owner, and attended by all the local Thai and farangs who frequent the bar. We had a great night and capped it off by taking on the challenge of "crepe face" The idea is you place a crepe on your face for fun then try to eat the whole thing without using your hands, I (Stephen) was the only one to complete it in one go, nearly choking in the process, but totally worth it as I announced my joy with a mouth full of Crepe☺.

Kristine was also extremely happy as they had a special on french cheese and bread, and as she had been craving real cheese as she called it for a while and because it's soooo expensive here as is all imported foods she was delighted, and easy singles weren't going to cut it. I know there's a "cut the cheese" joke in there some where...

Aaron and Pim

On Sunday we had our day planned and with new camera in hand, we set off on the road again with Aaron and his other half Pim, who was visiting from Bangkok. We planned to head to the King Cobra Village only 1 hours drive by moped from Khon Kaen, we made a quick pit stop in the local shopping center to get some food and found ourselves drawn to the arcade for Stephen to get his gaming fix. We found ourselves playing mainly guitar hero and Stephen and Aaron showing off their moves on the dance machine.There is a video but he has requested it not be shown... we'll see!!

On the road again and after what seemed like forever after passing some unusual sights such as a woman/ninja taking a few water buffalo for a walk down the main street and a cow that looked like it hadn't eaten a meal in weeks. I tried to help out by shouting "Your surrounded by grass cow, tuck in", but I think it's the language barrier here ☺.  Better brush up on my Thai!

And finally  some healthier  looking cows who had a bit more "cop on" and looked a lot healthier against the serene Thailand country side which we will never tire of seeing.



We arrived at the main attraction and took our seats for the snake show. The show itself was free and they only asked for donations after each act which consisted of a range of Thais coming on stage and trying their best to be killed by antagonizing some of the biggest cobras we've ever seen face to face.


They allowed us to take photos of the show and we witnessed some crazy things ranging from a woman putting huge live pythons heads into their mouths and men doing the same, only down their trousers to which every man in the audience winced slightly. 

Also a 70 year old man being chased by a 10 foot python and swinging him around, so he was only a meter from where we sat. Next they had a boy come on who was six years old and he danced with a snake, as it launched itself towards him only for him to move at the last second reminiscent to bull fighting only with with a cobra that looked pretty mean.

Aaron smooching

After the show we were allowed to take pics with some of the snakes ourselves and they placed some of the heavy pythons around our necks, which we all gave a go some braver then others. ☺ 
One woman offered to put a King Cobra around my neck but after seeing the show and how angry they could be I declined. I was happy to pose for some pics for some curious Thais, who were amazed by the falang with the snake on his neck.

We had a brilliant day and after another hour on the bikes to get home, we went for a well deserved Thai massage.The 1 hour Thai massage with herbal tea and a foot bath in rose petals and lime before hand that only set us back 8 Euro.. don't mind if we do ☺

Teacher Stephen and Teacher Kristine

Ready to rumble

So the day had finally arrived, we had our first teaching experience with real students and an assessor who would be sitting in the corner grading our performance and making sure we followed the structure. 

Needless to say we were both bricking it. So our school week finished at 4pm on Thursday and the class was timed in for 5pm.

We had been given an hour to prepare our class room and ourselves. So we got "suited and booted" and began preparing the board. 

The class started off with us telling a story of a police man and a driver. We played both parts the policeman and the driver. The policeman stopping the driver for driving to fast (doing our best motorbike impressions ☺)  and asking him questions from an ID card such as “What is your first name?” and answering “My first name is___.” and so on...

We tried to get them to use proper sentences structure and also work on pronunciation, but also trying to make them laugh in the process which they happily obliged, as Thais love nothing more than joking and smiling.
For this lesson we had to teach 4 students ranging in age. The premise is to write 4 sentences using present tense, asking the students questions about what’s on an ID card.




What is your _________?
My ________ is ______.
Is your ______ ________?
Yes, it is. / No, it isn’t.

Comparing answers from the Exercise

We would have to explain nationality as opposed to country, gender, height, weight etc. Which when I asked, "What is your weight?" they would answer fat or skinny ☺. Having to explain it, was where it got interesting and fun.

Roleplay

We both walked out after an hour with huge smiles on our faces.It is an amazing feeling, having kids come into your class room with next to no English and before the end of the class they are able to answer all the questions even when we had removed all the information on the board and they also were able to complete some exercises and test sheets. We both got a 9/10 from our evaluators, and they said it was close to perfect for a first try and that we would only get better with time.

The relief of having the first teaching experience under our belts has given us a lot more confidence and we are looking forward to next Thursdays class. This time we will be doing a restaurant lesson, and the aim is to teach them the verbs: would, can and may, using similar structure.

We got home that night, still on a high and celebrated with a well deserved drink ☺ It was then we had fully realized that we had made the right decision to quit our jobs and head off to Thailand to start this new experience in the "land of smiles".

Absinthe cocktail 

Saturday at the market and bad luck Sunday

So Saturday night came and we were all set to head into town to find this market we have been told so much about. The walking market, from what we have read, is open from 5.30 till 10.30 and takes roughly 3 hours to navigate. 

We headed into town on the "Rocket" and after searching for nearly an hour to no avail, we stood on a corner and were waiting to meet Aaron who was out on a date. 

While waiting, a Thai approached us in the usual friendly manner, announced he could speak English and asked where we were heading, as they also tend to do. After telling us the market we wanted was miles away he sent us to the Tontann Market, the second biggest market, which was only 10 minutes’ drive.  

We parked up and began to explore, the market itself was a midst 100’s of lit up palm trees, beautiful ponds and Thais running around full of excitement. We were unsure what all the commotion was about and followed them to a stage where we had to push through to see the spectacle which at first shocked us as we were greeted with 200 men standing in line greased up, wearing only a banana hammock and a smile. We read the sign and seen it was a body building competition.

Next group waiting to flex their muskles

The Thai people were cheering and whooping as they brought each group on stage.  Myself and Aaron covered the girls eyes and expressed that there is nothing to see here we should move on quickly ☺ Nudies!!

The market was huge and at every stand the sellers were more interested in watching their screens and cheering then trying to sell us anything, turns out Thailand was playing Japan in a final of a volleyball tournament which seems to be one of the national sports here, so we cheered when they did too, many a returned smile and it lifted the spirit of the night as they won. We spent a few hours walking around taking the usual tourist pics and viewing all the art pieces set around the perimeter of the grounds.

Koi-Pond

We purchased a few items and forgot to haggle, as it seemed cheap enough and had some food from the stands... not the bug stand though, as the stomach wasn't ready to be eating cockroaches and crickets like last time we were here. 

The Thais seem to love them but to us they just taste like burnt popcorn and it was just the issue of knowing what you were putting in your mouth.

A good night was had by all and I even got back in time to watch some of the footie with Kenny in the local with a large outdoor screen!!

Then came Sunday…. SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY!!!

We were told about a large Shopping center around the corner from us and said we would check it out… this place was crazy, they had all manner of Thai restaurants and even a few American one’s. We've seen places with 4 course meals for 3.50 and even a KFC... 

Here’s one for you, the Thais eat KFC with a knife and fork, probably the first time I've seen them use a knife as its all fork and spoon here… oh yes they’ll happily shove a few cockroaches or spiders down their throats with their hands but they ain't picking up no KFC chicken leg.. Yuck ☺

They also had an arcades there and I was very happy to see they had Pro evolution soccer, as I have been getting PlayStation envy with all these FIFA 14 and GTA 5 Facebook posts...

And then I saw they had booths where you could sit in for the day and order a few beers while singing karaoke in a sound proof room.. We have penciled it in for next week and hopefully I’ll put up a video of me and Kristine singing some Thai songs, oh and of course I’ll get Kristine to sing some Jolene… Feck off she is shouting at me as I write this.. Too late it’s in ☺

As we were leaving the bad luck began, Kristine slipped and her knee popped a way it shouldn't have, leaving her in agony on the ground, turns out she sprained it after slipping on a surface outside of the Tesco Lotus here.. Unfortunately suing is out of the question, so it was a trip to the pharmacy.. 

We came home first and I put her into bed while she screamed in agony. I ran to the freezer hoping to find something to put on her knee to bring down the swelling but we go out for every meal, as it’s cheaper and all I could find was a bag of sweet chili sauce from our last take out. Popped it in the freezer and it worked just as well ☺☺

I was nurse Stephen for the day…

Later that day I went out to try hunt down somewhere to watch the Dublin v Mayo final (not easy in Thailand) and with the help of some friends back home found some sites I could stream it on, so big thanks to everyone that tried to help me. And here is were my luck ran out, 10 minutes before the game started while in a bar the WiFi went down and the Man United game started. 

My super sister sent me 10 minute updates of the scores as they happened in the GAA Final and I realised I was missing a great game. All the while, Manchester United the football team I support, began to get a spanking from a rival, Manchester City, ending 4-1. I had raced home at half time to try get the end of the Dublin game on our WiFi at home, only to arrive as it finished, damn time difference turned me around.. oh well the win is the important part.. g'won the Dub's.

Tuesday now and Kristine's leg is much better, she is taking pain killers, anti inflammatory tablets and wearing a bandage and is alot more mobile now, so it doesn't seem as bad as we had feared. Roll on our first teaching class on Thursday :)