Was I beaten with a sack of potatoes in the night? I’m sore in places I didn’t know muscles exist.
I awake around 8 AM and crawl out of bed like a drunk, grab my black and orange Tiger boxing gloves and hand wraps, struggle onto the bicycle I ended up renting from Tony for ten bucks a week the night before, and pedal to camp.
For the first half hour, Chokchai shows me how to move my feet correctly and syncopate them with my arms when I punch and kick. The power behind a Muay Thai kick comes from a wide rotation of the hip. Hips need to be flexible and loose—my hips are not. When done correctly, the lower shin and forefoot snap against the bag like a taut piece of metal pulled back, then released. The resulting sound is something like a whip or a massive rubber band hitting the bag. My kicks don’t replicate this movement or sound. Instead, I hear a soft and inconsistent pat, tssst, pat, tssst, when my foot strikes the bag. And my shins, which are not accustomed to being used as weapons, feel tender and sore.
“Like dancing,” Chokchai says with heavy accent and boyish smile, and I think perhaps I should leave Thailand and go learn to dance. Stepping on the toes of a beautiful dancing partner while an orange-sorbet sun melts into the crystal-blue Caribbean Sea seems a whole lot better than pounding away at this god-forsaken heavy bag in the thick Thai tropical jungle heat.
Before my trip, I read that before heavy bags were introduced in Thailand, Muay Thai fighters trained by kicking banana trees to build calluses on their shins. If you search youtube today, you’ll find an endless stream of videos depicting the assault on some helpless tropical tree by a steel-shinned Muay Thai fighter. In every video I’ve seen, the tree loses. Fortunately for my sake, Tiger training camp sticks to bags and pads. I wouldn’t want to be the first person to lose to a plant.
If on this second day of self-induced torture I manage to throw an accurate, powerful kick, it is by sheer luck. The bags, no doubt, are winning the war. They remain swinging tranquilly, tauntingly, as I hobble off to the side for a much-needed drink—all the while reminding, or rather, persuading myself that There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Nowhere else.
In truth, there are plenty of places I’d rather be—the beach, the bar, the bed—just to name a few. But the morning session is over for now and I have the whole afternoon to eat, rest and mope.
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Read Intro, Part 1
Read Intro, Part 2
Read Intro, Part 3
Read Intro, Part 4
Read Ch 1, Part 1
Read Ch 1, Part 2
Read Ch 1, Part 3
Read Ch 1, Part4
Read Ch 1, Part 5