The third and forth day of my Muay Thai class - things got harder. I am getting the hang of skipping, another life skill partly acquired I suppose. The demands on me for "power, power" get more critical,

even as the training sessions in the ring get long enough that I can hear my breath switch to the rasping setting. A few times, if my instructor doesn't like my kick, he catches my leg and trips me to the ground... And the end of class sit ups requirement is now one hundred. But equally, I am improving, and perhaps my body is remembering the techniques I knew a few years ago.

Thai Boxing in Thailand is much more fluid than what I remember from England. Mu comes over to me as I send kicks against a punch bag. "No!", he points at how I stand rock still and swivel to kick. I should be constantly stepping, constantly moving around my opponent - otherwise my kicks will be obvious before I begin them. At one point, alone in the ring, Mu starts timing his steps to the terrible Euro Pop CD inflicted on us every lesson. Somehow it still looks deathly fearsome. I get the sense from him that this is the part of Muay Thai that westerners find hardest to learn - he says many have good punching, good boxing technique, but combining it with movement is another matter.

The end of the final session, Mu teaches me clinch techniques in the ring: we grab each other's necks and try to land short range knee strikes or trip the other to the floor. If he ever senses my concentration weaken, Mu pulls my head down forcibly and brings his knee up to meet my face - probably unsurvivable were this real. As a result, my neck was still aching a few days later. Another unsurvivable moment comes when, close to the ropes, he grabs my head, leaps on to the middle rope then bounces from it into a flying knee against my chest / head.
All the time we are grappling, we are both laughing. There is something very silly and fun about this, especially as I am utterly outclassed. We finish, my classes are over, Mu tells me to do ten press ups - kicking me in the stomach each "up", to make me lift myself higher.
At the end, he and another instructor seem sad to see me go - there is such high turnover among the foreigners at this gym I feel a bit of a veteran after four days. But I tell them I will be returning to Thailand at the end of August - Mu extracts a promise that I will come back and train then. However, for now at least, four days feels enough, especially as the oozing red open skin on my left knuckles and right elbow really needs time to heal.

It has been cool too, to mention (casually of course) what I've been doing to other travellers. There is this fairly constant reaction of impressed eyebrows - especially as I have the war wounds to prove it. I got chatting to a Belgian couple in a cafe, very relaxed, experienced travellers, the man pointed at the red marks on my knuckles and said with a smile, "Have you seen Kill Bill 2"? I laughed, "This was from hitting a punch bag, not wood"!

--

In Bangkok, I met up with Madhu, who was just starting her trip around Asia (I had read on her Bootsnall blog she was about to arrive in Bangkok and suggested we meet for a coffee). We went to the About Cafe, recommended on Nancy Chandler's map as a cool place where Thai artists and students hung out. A boat ride, a walk through China town: the About Cafe was indeed stylish and beautiful - it was also completely empty. We rang the bell, a waitress, looking confused, unlocked the door and quickly retreated to the kitchen. We had a look around, sat facing each other in very retro-cool red rocking armchairs, in total silence. It was a bizarre experience, but we clearly weren't going to be able to eat here, and Madhu suggested, I think accurately, that the two waitresses were hiding in the kitchen because they had no idea what to do with us. We left and ate street food sitting opposite a fountain.

Madhu told me lots of interesting things about India - she had grown up in Goa, and then had spent the last twelve years in California. Whenever she had worried to her San Franscisco friends her fears about getting sick from South East Asian food or whatever, they shouted at her, "But you're INDIAN"! She would try and explain: I've spent the last decade in America - I'm not used to all this...
We had a fun evening, and she headed south a couple of days later to a meditation centre, Chiaya.

--

If you want to meet Thai people, hang around in cake shops. Through eating yoghurts in the afternoons, I ended up giving an unexpected English lesson to five Thai women and relationship advice to a sixth.

I got chatting to two women one afternoon as I nursed down a banana yoghurt, and the older one decided I would give them an English lesson the next day - particularly for the girl behind the counter, Jum, who spoke only in that beautiful northern Thai slow singsong. Money was mentioned, and although I was bemused how this had come about, I told them, "No money, no money".

So, pouring some ice chunk floating water over myself at the end of the Muay Thai class, I went back to the cake shop and taught five women (three working, one student and one house wife) some English. Doing a section on, "Describing yourself and others" I invertently wandered into a minefield when I explained, "I am fat, I am thin" - all the women began uttering their worries of being fat... This was nothing to the problems of, "I am pale, I am dark". The Thais clearly didn't consider themselves dark - among the streams of their discussion I heard the word "Negro" swimming. And "brown" wasn't really acceptable either - I just ran on to the next topic.
As a thank you, the women gave me: a variety box of incense cones, a free bowl of yoghurt and a glass of ice tea during the class, an invitation to stay with one of their families in the northern town of Nan, a tuk tuk ride to a great restaurant on the river and my meal paid for. So it wasn't quite the free lesson I had initially envisaged.

The day after, I came back and there was only Jum (the one in the light blue top) in the shop. There was something quite tragic about Jum, she had come to Bangkok from Lampang, she didn't speak much English, she worked in the shop alone, lived alone - had few friends, she said. "Get another job, where there are lots of staff?", I suggested. She shook her head mournfully. "Go back to Lampang?" - No, there were no jobs in Lampang. "Learn English, get a better job?" - she muttered lots of sad things in Thai, she found English very hard. I felt two things: I felt sorry for her, atomised in the city, feeling alone among the huddled crowds - but equally I felt like she could do with something of a metaphorical slap, she seemed just to be sad with no idea on what to do with herself.

I came back to the shop on my last day in Bangkok, waiting for the night bus south. Jom gave me some fruits and cake, then her friend in the corner started chatting to me. She had a problem with her German (ex?) boyfriend, and wanted to know if there was some cultural misunderstanding between them that I could explain. She loved him, but he sounded an extremely emotionally closed person, and probably just not very happy with the way his job in Thailand was going. I couldn't really help - I proposed that maybe he was having a western style existentialist crisis: he loved her too but wasn't sure she was the ONE, that living in Thailand wasn't the RIGHT thing to be doing. But this might have been nonsense. We had a fun chat about Western - Thai values. She found it strange that Europeans seemed to see a relationship as beneath in importance to what they wanted to do with their life, eg if they wanted to go travelling they would split up with their boyfriend/girlfriend. In Thailand, she thought people would think: I have a relationship, so I can't go off travelling. We laughed about how stronger the connections were often between grown up children and parents in Asia - her mother apparently rang her all the time to check where she was and that she was alright, which drove the German guy crazy. And how parents in Asia often seem to me to be very critical of their children - and she agreed in that her mother kept telling her, "You're fat, you're fat"! She said that parents wanted the best for their child, and so worried if they didn't push them enough they would not be able to beat the competition. I replied that maybe most Western parents felt the best thing for their child was to be confident about themselves, to be happy about themselves. These kind of cultural comparisons are of course inevitably a lot of generalisations, but, I think, do reveal something.

I asked her if she had ever had another Farang boyfriend, she said she had once before, she didn't like most Thai guys. She thought lots of them wanted to play around with different women... I suggested her boyfriend talk to a German girl about the relationship, then the two women have a chat about what the problems were - I was really grasping at straws at this point. She complained, "Western women don't like talking to me".
She was studying a master's degree in Law and Women's Studies, the latter part of her degree her parents thought a strange decision. Although she felt it was important for her to study Women's Studies, as women in Thailand apparently often had a bad deal, she had doubts too. It was hard work to study, as all the textbooks were in English - there weren't any Thai authors on the subject. And beyond NGOs, few employers were after graduates from Womens' Studies. She commented that life was hard working in Bangkok, the best university places and jobs went to the beautiful girls, because all the people choosing applicants were men... I suggested, not serious, "Go to Issan (north east Thailand), start your own farm"? She shrieked, "No, I am a city girl, not farm girl"!

--

One really nice development of my time in Bangkok is that I now have a fairly good idea how I will be spending the next few months. I've sorted out with my brother where and how we will meet at the beginning of June - very eager to see him. Then in July, I am going to Borneo! I got a comment on this site a little while ago from Cayce, a "regular Sawarakian reader":

"Malaysia eh? Just Peninsular Malaysia or Sabah/Sarawak? It'd be interesting to visit the latter (Sarawak) around July when the World Rainforest Music Festival is on (see website: http://www.rainforestmusic-borneo.com)".

I said I was very interested in seeing Sawarak, we've been emailing back and forth and now I am planning to fly to Kuching in early July. Cayce works in one of the nature reserves, and it is possible I will be able come on one of the ten day surveys of Orangutan nests, with the rest of her team. Wow.
That is July, in August I will come back up to Thailand, do some more exploring, perhaps go to Cambodia.. but as the rainy season will be in full sway by then, I may leave Cambodia until early next year.
In September, I am going to fly to Delhi and meet my friend Gari. We are going to travel for a month - the provisional plan is to head north from Dehli into the highlands near Nepal, trying to escape the north Indian hasslingly touts and the heat which I've heard so much about. Perhaps we will get to Kathmandu, not sure, we have a month.
October, November, December: Travelling around India. I am going to head southwards slowly, I have this odd interest in learning some of the Gujarati language, so will stop somewhere in Gujarat for a little while. India excites and scares me, we will see what it is really like.

After December - depends how much money I have left. Ideally would travel for a couple more months, see a bit more of India, see Cambodia. Then... deep breath... I think I will either go back to Kunming or to work in Australia, depending on where Louise is (in China or at a University in Oz). I don't know what will happen with her and I... but I want to give it a try. So I envisage, at the moment, my current traveller existence shifting into a more fixed one come early next year.

Strangely, the idea of coming back to England has lost some of its unpleasantness. Part of me likes the idea of coming back, after another year or two, spending some more time with my parents and brother, seeing if I see the country differently. And it will be a nice place to try to save money up again... But who can say?

--

The process of sending money to Can has been arduous and ultimately very expensive. I got in touch with a couple of traveller related charity organizers: Brad Newsham, of www.backpacknation.org and Marc Gold of www.100friends.com. Through Marc I got a list of NGOs in Laos, hoping they would be able to act as recipient for a money transfer, emailed a few, none replied. Madhu was willing to take the money, but wasn't planning to get to Laos for a month or so. And Western Union didn't send money to Luang Prabang, only to the capital, Vientiene. Can's emails have been getting more frequent and somewhat more begging, as though he doesn't really believe anything will ever come. Although the tone annoys me a little, I have doubts about whether this is a good idea, I can understand his feelings - it must be awful to be in such limbo.

As there always are, there were various nebulous possibilities, but eventually I decided to go with the quickest and seemingly most likely to suceed one. I am sending fifty dollars inside a card by courier post to Luang Prabang, then the rest (120 pounds) by Western Union to Vientiene. Can should be able to buy some clothes and a bus ticket to the capital, then collect his money. I hope.
For the western union transfer, the letter sent by courier and Can's return bus ticket - the total transaction cost is about twenty pounds, which is enormous given we're only giving him 150. But I really couldn't see another good option.

And it almost didn't work. I got to the post office, ready to send off my letter, a 50 dollar bill inside, then confusion broke out as they said they weren't allowed to send cash by this express service. I slowly explained my situation to the manager... eventually, he looked at me, "You could just rewrite on the form that you are sending a document - I could say I know nothing about this", he even gave me a wink. The whole thing began to feel very dodgy, he added to the envelope another piece of paper to help hide the letter inside. This was starting to seem really dubious, part of me was questioning whether the fifty dollars would even leave this post office. He assured me, sensing my doubts, "Don't worry, you can trust us". I had little choice. Hopefully my next attempt at grass roots charity will be a bit more efficient. Now, I am going to foot the transaction costs and my share of the 150 pounds, send the whole lot off, and ask my friends Gari and Richard to send me their fifty pound "pledges". I hope this all works out for Can.

Daniel, 30 May 2004, a boat to Kho Pha Ngan