Get your grind on

How to Drive like a Thai (a step-by-step method):

1. At no times should you or your passenger wear a helmet
2. Blinkers are to be used only when not turning, keeping them on for show
3. The shoulder is to be used as a lane
4. The speed limit is observed only as a suggestion
5. When riding alone, you must exceed the speed limit by 30 km minimum
6. When not riding alone, you must have, at minimum, 3 passengers on 1 scooter and exceed the speed limit by 30km
7. Red lights are meaningless
8. It is permissible to drive at full speed, opposite to the flow of traffic if in the shoulder
9. Children as young as 4 can drive, so long as they do not wear a helmet
10. Side-view mirrors serve only as aids in make-up application

Driving here is nutty, but I love it. Here I am, a falang (or foreigner) without any form of license, never having driven before in my life, making 30 minute commutes to the beach on the freeway, without a care in the world. There is no danger of being stopped at any time by the police, so long as you wear a helmet; cops only look for white people without helmets so they can slap them with a fine a pocket a couple bucks (literally). Having no license, if I were to be stopped, I'd simply fork over my McGill university ID as no police officer speaks english and could just as easily mistake the thing for the genuine article.

Driving around is one of the few things you do to keep your mind off training in the little free time one has in between sessions. It's like as soon as you've finished one session the count-down timer begins for the next. Around 3:00 pm you're getting ready to get ready for training and before every single session you think, "maybe I should take this one off;" however no matter how many times this thought has occured and followed through, going to training, it still occurs every single day.

It's really coming to a severe grind here; training has lost any semblence of novelty that it may have once had and I can't seem to recall how I ever decided to make my trip 10 days longer, rather than opting to have a little more time at home, relaxing. I'm doing my best to not adopt the 'woe-is-me' attitude, as I still am in Thailand and this is a vacation, for what it's worth. This weekend I'll do some of the first actual vacationing I've done since I've gotten here, heading to the famous Phi Phi Island (of the movie 'The Beach'). They have a massive bar with 2 muay thai rings that takes on volunteer fights. I think I might just step in the ring and record some video, spice up this blog a little.