I've decided that if I was a foot shorter, 100 pounds lighter and a hell of a lot tougher... I would be a Thai Kickboxer. After paying a took-took driver 20 Baht (US$0.50) to tool myself and a Swedish girl I met around Bangkok for 4 hours- I scored not only a look at the amazing Buddhist temples in the city, but also ringside tickets to the nights Muay Thai Boxing event.

Walking into the cement and chain link fenced arena (probably seats 1,000-1,500 people), I wasn't sure I'd be walking out with all my belongings. I paid the extra few Baht to get ringside so not to be intwined in the monster gambling ring going on elsewhere in the arena behind the chain link fences. Stray cats were running through the seats chasing eachother while little Thai kids did the same thing.

I have never seen ass-whooping's like I witnessed last night (O.K.- maybe the time K.P. blind-sided Leddy with the aluminum folding chair out front of the Delt house). The fight consists of 5 Rounds, each 3 minutes long under the bright neon lights above the ring. The fighters wear lightweight boxing gloves, brightly colored pieces of fabric around their biceps and either blue or red shorts. The crowd erupts between rounds as the betting gets more intense and thousands of Baht are being passed around between different promoters. Fingers are pointing and displaying odds against each fighter followed by shouts and chaos.

As soon as the bell rings to begin the round, the arena is filled with an eery live performance of some mixture of drums, flutes and cymbals. It acts as a spooky soundtrack to the beating that is about to take place. Before the fight, the fighters also do graceful stretches that look like dances to the same music. They say a prayer in each corner of the ring and nibbly twirl around the arena.

The fighters seemed to use the first round to feel eachother out and come up with a gameplan. They rock up and down with their hands up like their giving a mini-high-ten. Their looking for weaknesses and mistakes by the opponent. One wrong move and a fighter will have his opponent doubled over kneeing the hell out of his obliques. Each fighter has his coaches, family and friends in his corner just outside the ring. With each knee to the stomach, the corners will erupt in a "Huahhh!!" You could imagine the excitment when a fighter has landed 7 or 8 knees in a row to a stunned opponent. More cash floats around with fingers pointing and men yelling.

The training regime for Thai Boxing is apparently brutal. Most Western fighters don't make it past a few weeks of training. These guys have abs and obliques popping-up from everywhere on their stomach. Their shins look like rolling hills from catching an elbow or two while kicking. They beat the living crap out of eachother and don't seem to be phased. There was only one (out of ten fights) knockout where the guy was out cold after catching a big right hook. They brought the stretcher out, but the fighter refused and stumbled on his own out of the ring.

I was in the second row, and with nobody sitting in front of me I was as close to the action as I could get. I was "Huaahhh"-ing with the families of the fighters that were right next to me. Thai boxing is a very respectful sport and after trying to kill eachother for 15 minutes, the fighters always hug after the fight and pay homage to the others coach and team. The winner gets his share of the cash from bets in his favor- paid not in the form of an oversized check, but a tightly rolled wad of 500 and 100 dollar notes.

I hopped back in a took-took (took-tooks are the 3 wheeled oil burning machines you see in the movies that are the easiest way to get around the city. Some of them have blinking lights and speakers, but all of them are loud and pour smoke out of the rusted exhaust) after making it out safely from the arena and came back to the guesthouse where I am staying. I have a nice clean room to myself with a ceiling fan and a queen-sized bed for 140 Baht a night (about US$3.56).

Today's adventure is to find somebody that can get Hobb's and I visas for Vietnam quickly. In a town like Bangkok- with the right price it shouldn't be too difficult. Just have to sniff out the old Vietnemese guy with hairs growing everywhere with all the right connections. The plan was to take the train up to Chaing Mai just a few hours after Hobb's gets into Bangkok, but without visas for Vietnam we can't leave. Bangkok is the only city in the region where "business" can be taken care of. I'm going to meet Hobb's at the Bangkok airport tomorrow afternoon.

I'm going to go breathe a little more smog for the time being- I feel like I might have gotten some fresh air in my room last night....