Chiang Mai C'est Chuette Ca

Now, thanks to Ploi, a 25 year old Thai girl I met, who lives in France most of the year, I am speaking and thinking primarily in French. She speaks English too, but it is sometimes easier to parlez en francais. The problem is that now I associate speaking French with speaking to Thai people, so I find myself pointing to food and saying "et ca," "un petit peu." Essentially, in my tiny American brain it's one foreign language or another, I guess.
So I got my motorbike, which I immediately fell off of -- splayed out in front of some jerky British guy who kept asking me if the bike was alright. I'm better on it now, but if I can, I make Ploi drive me around. Yesterday, we went up into the mountains a bit to a waterfall where about a dozen tattooed Thai teenagers were jumping from a ledge into a pool of water beneath the falls. When we showed up, they immediately peer pressured us into jumping with them. We weren't going to but hey, peer pressure is a bitch -- and it doesn't end in middle school.

That night, Ploi accompanied me to a Muay Thai boxing match. The event always starts with the really low weight class, which also happens to be the youngest fighters -- 10-13 years old. They were the best fighters of the night. Very composed and intense, but something about Muay Thai makes it feel removed or above brutality, it is very professional, but viciously intense. For one: there are drums, cymbals and flutes playing during the fight. The boxers time their rhythm to the drums, which speed up as the rounds go on. I'm not going to say it's more like a dance than a fight, because it's not. It's a fight. An awesome bloody fight, which is fought mostly with knees and elbows, kicks to the side.

Later that night we went to a bar with Anh -- Will's landlord, who we've all become friend with and who has the filthiest mouth I've ever heard (If I have pussy I let you fuck me no problem. Will, your cock smell like pussy, I have banana for your ass .. .and so on, and so on.) Anyhow, we ended up at a club called Spicy which is whiteboy central. It is a rather upscale place (which means the drinks cost about a dollar) in a dark disco-gloom a thousand Thai girls flutter around every goofy white guy they can find. We happened to run in to one of the Thai boxers there, having a beer after his fight (which he won). His name is Apple, he is very very nice, so we did everything we could to find him a white girl for the night (as he expressed interest). But alas, we struck out. I'm considering doing an article on Muay Thai, and will try to find him again, to use him as a source. I may also be able to contact one of the major promoters.