No fight

"Grasshopper- You fight, 1 week!" Deday tells me one night after training. This will be his first of three goes during my stay.

I look down at my reduced beer belly. Carefully developed over nearly 2 years of not training, eating and drinking too much, by gut is now mercilessly mocked by Deday and Ot as it slowly flattens.

"No, not yet fit for fighting." I say, patting my stomach. "Maybe in 4 weeks" I reply.

"Nooo! You fight Pansak, friday ok?, No problem!" Deday persists.

"No, gimmi 4 weeks Deday. Ask again then-ok?".

He screws up his face and pulls hard on his bamboo-wrapped cigarette. "Jakwaar!" He finally replies.

That's Thai for wanker.

A week later I can't walk properly, injuring my foot and hip in sparring. Before long I can train again, at first avoiding kicking, and then slowly back into full muay Thai training.

Then it goes again after a particularly good training session, to the point that I struggle even using the squat toilet.

Not fit to fight.

I'm gutted.

But then realistically, I wouldn't have been all that up for fighting Pansak, a local fighter who I have had the pleasure of watching fight three times now during my stay here. Not because he's intimidating or scary- in fact he's one of the best personalities to fight, being a caring family man, the most honourable of sportsmen I've ever met and always keen to share a beer with his opponants after a fight and introduce his family.

But the fact he's just over 5 foot tall, and about 10 stone puts us on very different footings- I'm over 6 foot tall and over 13 stone.

Not a good match.

But then finding thai guys my size was always going to be a problem, so I knew I would be fighting a fellow farang. Deday was finally able to match me up with another farang, training at a gym across the island. After I leave.

Some things just weren't meant to happen.

I'm not surprised- My training in India was not possible for over a month due to a flu-like virus, and I was too easily drawn to socialising with colleagues and fellow volunteers in Goa. I knew that, and I knew I had little time to get back to full fighting fitness here in Thailand.

But I gave it a go. I've had an amazing time. I've trained, lived and really got to know the thai and Burmese trainers, fighters and staff here at the camp. Getting to know "Real Thailand" is not easy in a country so saturated, funded, and often overwhelmed with foreign tourists. I had "Bloggers block" when I got here- I had so little to say about such a tourist-spoilt country. I could see little culture that wasn't forced for the tourist Baht.

There was no challange like in India, where you were a westener getting by in a strange land. Here in Thailand, you were catered for, yet another tourist who will drink too much, waste too much, take too much, and go back home "travelled", paying anyone and everyone who has made it thier life making your travelling easy.

It was "easy" to travel around here, and so difficult to see the "true country".

But I feel I finally have. It took a while. The guys and girls here, Deday, Ot, Pon, Moo, Ek and the rest "bring you in". After so long, with the right attitude, your no longer another Farang, but a member of the camp, one of the family. You see the difference in their spirituality, faith, thinking, justifying, living. A culture so buried beneath the tourist Baht, beyond the sights, I thought I would never see it. But I got a glimps.

Suddenly, I realised I was in Thailand. Real thailand. I shake scorpions out of my shorts without a second thought, I eat salty fried grasshoppers with my beer, and share my lao cow with my thai friends using one glass, and never eat alone. The conversation, the banter, the fun- it never stops, despite our language differences.

I now have too much to write about. So I wont. And too much more to see. But I wont.
I could stay here indefinitly. Train, relax, work in the camp and maybe fight every few weeks- an idylic existance I would love. But then there is the north of the country. The boarder regions. Even the mainland. So much more to see, so many fellow tourists to share it with, so many thai's selling it, making it accessable.

So I'm not upset about not seeing it. I have had an amazing, unique time here. I got to train in a martial art I love, to a level higher than I have ever achieved, in the country it originates, with amazing people who's life and culture revolve around Muay Thai. I didn't get to fight during my time here. But I got to know a bit of Thailand. A real bit. A gem.

I'll never be the same again.