ong-bak, the terror of muai thai! and ladies with abnormally long necks

the highlights of my week in thailand waiting for my indian visa to come through:

#1 - muai thai boxing! yummy!
while i was waiting to buy tickets, the national anthem started to play. everyone, and i mean everyone, dropped what they were doing, stood up, took off their hats and stood in absolute silent reverence until it was over. i had the same experience at a market in chaing mai later in the week. it's odd for the foreigners because we're just walking around, doing our own thing, buying tickets, eating strawberries, whatever, and suddenly, it's like we're in saved by the bell and zach morris has just yelled "freeze!" so he can run off and sneak into mr. belding's office or something. but i shouldn't compare it to something so juvenile. it was awesome.
the muai thai started off with some youngersters and a bit of puking. there was blood in the middle, and as soon as the guys face started to bleed, they rushed him off the stage and it was over. the "main event" so to speak, was pretty crap. for the last round they just stood there. no punches or anything. but i loved it. i've never seen live boxing. i may have to get season tickets. how does one do that in iowa? hmm. . . muai thai has 5 rounds of 3 minutes each with a 2 minute break in the middle of each round. you can do anything except head-butting. anything. it's brutal. you can check out videos at my www.dropshots.com/eeking site. before they fight, they do a ceremonial dance wearing flowering garlands. after they fight, they hug. aww. that is, if one of them hasn't been drug out of the ring unconscious or bleeding. but the whole atmosphere was very friendly. they would smile at each other and congratulate each other. "thank you, that was a right good blow to my groin, friend." "jolly good! thanks for busting my jaw with your foot. i haven't felt that in months!" "cheers mate!" they have british accents in my head, i suppose. plus, most of these guys weigh in at less than 120 lbs. yeah. not exactly heavy-weights. but they could kick my butt. there was a demonstration fight where guys in traditional dress came out and showed off the traditional moves of muai thai. looked like wwf to me. there's video of that too. the one thing that made me kind of uncomfortable about the whole experience, besides the fact that i was close enough to get hit by a flying tooth, was that no thai person was that close. all the ring side seats are expensive, even by western standards. so all the ring side seats were filled with westerners.
imagine you're at an iowa football game. or a laker's basketball game. or a leafs hockey game. or whatever. and the front five rows and only good seats are taken up by a bunch of frenchies. or japanese. or senegalese. and they all have way, way more money than you, which is why you can't sit in the good seats, and some of the women are dressed in an extremely culturally inappropriate, pseudo-slutty manner, and they arrive late. and they leave early. and they take photos of you while you place your bets and cheer on the team. and there is an explanation not in english every 30 minutes to explain what the heck is going on with the game. i felt really awkward.

#2 - long-necked ladies of burma
when i was little, i was reading a national geographic magazine, or something, and i saw a photo of some ladies with brass rings on their necks to make their necks longer. for my whole life i thought those ladies lived in africa. and i thought they were pretty interesting. turns out they are interesting, and they live in northern thailand, as burmese refugees. and they spend their days weaving pretty scarves to sell to tourists. and they still wear their brass rings. our tour guide told us that they wear those rings to protect themselves from tiger bites. yeah, right. in the (sort of) words of wayne, monkeys might fly out of my butt to protect me from tiger bites. i asked why men don't wear them. "because men are strong." not that strong, buddy. and what about small boys? "and if you follow me over here . . . i will avoid this question." who knows why they started wearing them. or why they still do. the little girls looked uncomfortable. but they were all proud of their long necks. and the ladies were surreal. i wanted to touch them. but instead, i took pictures.
also living at the camp with the long-necked burma ladies were the akha tribes women of northern thailand and lao. these ladies like to chew leaves all the time. this process turns their teeth black. it looks like their teeth are rotting out of their heads. the first time i saw this, i was seated next to one of these women on a bus. for 8 hours. she had a plastic bag and she kept picking her black teeth with a tooth pick, spitting red puss spit into a clear plastic bag she was holding, and smiling at me. i thought i would be sick. i thought she was picking out the remains of her teeth. now i know she was just chewing the leaves. still though. it's quite the sight.

#3 - getting my passport back from the embassy and getting out of thailand
lao kicks thailand's butt. coming from southern lao into bangkok was a loud, noisy, smelly, unhappy, grumpy-thai-people-who-hate-tourists shock. i'll be glad to get out of here for a bit, then come back into thailand, better mentally prepared, in june or july. off to india i go.