Last day on the island, and Thai Boxing

Last day on the island, and Thai Boxing

Lamai Beach, Thailand, Asia

With today being our last day on the island, we decided to do nothing and just take in the surroundings at the resort. We were awake by 8am and out by the pool by 8:05am. We hung out there all day with only short breaks for food or a pitcher of beer from the restaurant. We went out tonight into Lamai, and we were supposed to meet up with Dan and Francisca for dinner, but we knocked on their door and couldn’t find them, so headed into town just the two of us.

We got into Lamai town and found a nice little restaurant called Will Wait and enjoyed a typical Thai dinner before walking around the town. There were a lot of market stalls and stores selling the usual souvenir kind of crap, but Lynne found the place she was looking for. There was a small tattoo shop on a street corner, and she was sure she wanted a small tattoo to remember her first trip to Asia.

She knew she wanted a small one on her ring finger, so we looked through their portfolio to see some of their previous works. The artist was very good, and he had done thousands of tattoos. He must have had thirty photo albums filled with pictures of his work. Lynne found the Thai symbol for “Good luck” and the artist drew a rough sketch on her hand to see if she liked it. She did, and ten minutes and $30 later she had a tattoo! It is pretty cool looking, and very easily hidden, so that’s good too.

We walked around the town for a couple more hours and Lynne was buzzing about her new ink. We found the Lamai Boxing Stadium and had a few drinks in a bar just next to it. It is a very sketchy looking area. The boxing ring isn’t really inside a building, it is just under a large awning. All around the ring are sleazy looking bars with scantily clad “girls” working the bar. A lot of them were very obvious lady-boys, so I’m assuming there were a lot more of them than we knew.

The fights started at about 10:45pm and there were five fights through the night. It was a mixture of men and women’s matches, and it was very entertaining! We stuck around for all the fights, and it was very cool to see up close. I’ve been watching a lot of MMA over the last couple of years and Muay Thai has always been a part of that, but it was cool to see it as a discipline all by itself. They mostly use their thighs and elbows instead of fists, like normal boxing. It definitely makes for a much more intense style of fighting.

The fights finished at about midnight and we arrived back at the hostel at about 12:30am. Unfortunately we have an early wake-up tomorrow so we can catch the ferry over to the mainland so we can get our flight back up to Bangkok. I’m sure I’ll be tired tomorrow, but it’ll be well worth it. The fights were awesome to see!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *