Bangkok

Some Thai culture earlier that day in Bangkok

So later that night in Bangkok… we went to a bar to have a few Chang and play some pool in preparation for the Muay Thai Fight. When it was finally fight time we made our way down to Khao San Road to find some tuk-tuks and stopped at one of the food stalls for a scorpion for Rob. He enjoyed it; said it tasted like pork crackling. The stall also had cockroaches, giant grasshoppers, crickets, grubs, and a few other insects. These things are all over Thailand.

Fried locusts

After that brief snack we found tuk-tuks and they took us to the Boxing Stadium- one of the biggest in Thailand where a lot of big fights happen- our fight was pretty sweet as well. There were actually 10 fights that night with the fighters getting older and sometimes heavier as they went on. The title fight was number 7.

Ring side seats at Muay Thai

We were there for a few hours and quickly figured out that beers were cheaper outside, so we were in and out quite a bit. Since we were ringside VIPs we got to go get photos with the winner (of the title fight, for the belt) afterwards. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) there were no knock outs that night.

The new Champion

The next morning we got up and Andy went to have his jacket fitting. As we waited inside the tailor shop for the fitting they offered us a drink, we got cokes in the glass bottles. Since the fitting only took about 5 minutes when we got up to leave we were going to take the cokes with us. The suit guy told us no way, those bottles are worth more than the coke inside them; you can’t take the bottles out of this shop. Weird. Back on Khao San Road we arranged with a taxi guy to get 2 taxis to take us to Pattaya (about 150km Southeast of Bangkok). Then we checked out and were on our way. There were 4 people and all our bags smooched into each taxi… it was an uncomfortable 90min drive to say the least.