Category: Asia

Training, Week 3

On By 1girl1bkpkIn Asia, Muay Thai, ThailandLeave a comment

After training for a while, everyone accumulates little injuries. My friends and I have developed a long list of aches and pains and innumerable bruises. For your physical safety (and mental capacity as well) you have to take a class or two off to recuperate. I had to take some time off training this week because my right wrist was bothering me. I really think you need to take care with injuries like this, so I wanted to give my wrist some time.

This morning, I had a great session. My wrist was starting to hurt again, but the trainer was being very nice and understanding, showing me different kinds of moves (hello spinning back elbow) and combos. He was also working on cheering me up,  which was much appreciated; time away from training can make you feel a bit dejected in terms of progress. My trainer did notice I was missing the last couple days, which helps for accountability.

I have a couple more days to train before my trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When I come back, I think I’m going to make some changes to the expectation of my trainings, maybe a set 3 days a week or so. It’ll give me time to focus on my other trainings and enough time to rest properly in between trainings, which I think will be great in the long-run. 🙂

Cultural Exchange

On By 1girl1bkpkIn Asia, ThailandLeave a comment

Night before last was one of those quintessential travel nights that comes to mind when you think of “international, independent travel” (well, what comes to most people’s minds, I would hope; Most of my family and friends envision a Hostel-type series of events). In any case, we were nearly a dozen people from all nationalities talking about life, about travels, just having a good time. There were Americans, Brits, Canadians,  Portguese, French, Dutch, Spanish… English was the most common language, spoken to various degrees of success by each of the non-native speakers.

I wish I had taken some pictures, but honestly, it sometimes just feels better to go with the flow of the evening and not really worry about documenting everything. Considering the amount of work I’d like to put into this blog though, I think a respectable amount of documentation still needs to occur. Traveling life just feels different here; even those individuals on vacation are here for at least 3 weeks. I think when you’re traveling for that long, staying in one place, etc, you tend to relax and go with the flow, not recollecting the event while you’re still living it. There is also the fact that most of us are strangers, meeting that night for the first time, some of us, the best of us maybe friends for a week or so.

I don’t know, I guess it just depends on the group and how things are going that night. A couple more nights on the road, and I might have a pretty good theory for you!