We started out our morning with a boxing workout and this particular day I got my hiney whooped. Most of you know how competitive I am and since I was
the only girl in the class today there was no way I was going to let on how tired I was. I was paired up with Nico most of the time and he kept egging me on "is that as hard as you can kick?" "oh come on, you're punching like a girl" "you call that power?", etc, etc. Needless to say I can't walk today, everything is sore, and I'm sure I'm going to have some bruises from being kicked and kneed. (Is that how you spell that??)Nicolas had to head over to Ko Samui to catch a flight to Bangkok (to go back to London) and Emile and Justine were also on their way over from a different island, so i decided last minute (20 mins beforehand) to join Nico on the ferry over to Samui. (takes about an hour). We needed to rent a motorbike to get us to the other side of the island to meet the girls and Nico convinced me we should only rent one. .... but he gets nervous if I had my arms wrapped around his waist, so I had to hang on for dear life to the back of the bike. sheesh.
The girls told us where they were staying... but, unfortunately... or fortunately because it was rather funny if you want to look at it in a positive light... we must have driven around for well over an hour trying to find Emile and Justine's hotel.
We rented the scooter and since Koh Samui is pretty big and populated we decided to wear helmets.
I'm kind of glad I did to go with the oh-so-attractive helmet look because I don't think Nico had ever driven a motorbike before. hehe (sorry Nic!) I think we drove in 2nd gear until 30 mph and didn't switch until the motorbike was about to blow up. haha. It wasn't that bad. Nic was actually a very safe driver and we only crashed once. No, no, just kidding we didn't crash at all.But seriously, how ridiculous do we look in these helmets??!!!!
Luckily we all had our mobile phones so we FINALLY found one another and reunited on the beach to watch the sunset.The first couple nights all of us hung out we seemed to find ourselves in random chairs lined up facing the water.. so we decided to do the same on our final night together.
You can see the sand is darker at the bottom of the picture because that's where the tide was and that's where I was standing to take the picture. To refresh your memory, I met the three of these guys on the curb, they were tired and couldn't find a place to go... and since I had just gone through the same thing an hour prior I dragged 'em along to my hotel. Then Em & Just went
off diving to the same place I went and Nico joined me on Bottle Beach one day... anyhoo, they call me their travel agent. The next time they travel I should be waiting on a random sidewalk ready with their next adventure in hand. too funny. I hope I see all these guys again - they were exceptionally good people. Anyhoo, we all part ways (girls to one beach, Nico and I on motorbike back to our beach) and before hitting the hotel Nico says, hey let's grab a drink at one of the dodgy bars. I'm thinking dodgy as in... kind of crappy looking, run down, etc.
We end up at "Jade's: An Intimate Experience". umm... It wasn't until we were sitting down and several of these Thai girls started eyeing us and smiling that i realized what kind of "dodgy" he meant.
Needless to say, we only had one beer and hit the road. Nico went off to airport and I back to my temporary hotel room on Koh Samui for the night (the ferry doesn't run past 6p to get me back to Koh Phangan). The next morning I took the motorbike and drove around Samui. I happened to find this great handmade furniture shop and bought a teak wood table and
matching chairs that I absolutely LOVE. I love Thai decor! It's going by boat and won't get it for a few months, but that's probably a good thing since I have nowhere to live anyway! I just finished another two hour session of thai boxing session. holy frikkin cow.
I just want to give you guys an idea of what hell I am putting myself through. There is an intense warm up that consists of way too many jumps, kicks, hops and whatever else you can think of. We then spar with one another or kick, knee, elbow, or punch the shield that our partner is holding. Just because there is a shield doesn't mean you don't get hurt. My right upper leg is nicely bruised from Nic yesterday kneeing me quite hard (I don't want the guys to take it easy on me because then they wouldn't get a good workout).
Today the little shit I had for a partner was not trained in thai boxing and basically instead of sparring, he was street fighting me. He was only a wee bit taller than me, but punched and kicked like he was trying to beat up a guy who stole his girlfriend. After a while I made the instructor be his partner cause I was starting to get hurt. I got punched in the nose three times, surprisingly no blood.. but I had had enough of that guy.
At one hour and 45 mins of non-stop boxing, we then have push ups on our knuckles, sit ups, and power squats (frog jumps waaay off the ground)... we do those for about ten minutes. Today I did jump rope for about ten minutes while the guys were all sparring with one another because i was so whooped.
I think I'm going to try and find some thai boxing in Chicago cause it's such a good workout!
Here's a short video clip of me giving the instructor a bunch of knees.. the battery ran out before we could get any good vids or pictures.
