Thursday the 22nd into Friday afternoon......

Thursday I really kicked the training into high gear and visited the camp next door to Cocoville, Dragon Muay Thai. It was tough, but awesome. We had an amazing breakfast at Cocoville after training.....tofu with egg whites and brown rice! And of course Thai spices!! Yum! Then to add insult to injury I went to Tiger for my weight training PT with Peter The Hulk, and he completely kicked my butt. So needless to say I was exhausted on Thursday. We laid out by the pool for a bit, and then met friends for dinner to "celebrate" Thanksgiving. We have met some great people out here, including, but not limited to.....Ash, the New Zealand girl on a personal spiritual quest; Aaron, the Coloradan guy here to get inspiration for screenplays he intends to write; Va, the Australian mother of three looking to relax and recharge her batteries; and Zoe, the Canadian from Toronto who is lucky enough to be coming back to Thailand next year for a span of 6 months. Pretty cool. Everyone is here for such unique reasons, it really is a melting pot. And a nonjudgmental melting pot, at that.

Friday morning was rough! We woke up late and were totally exhausted. Sleep eludes us. Then it started to pour! But it was ok, we would not be discouraged. We decided to visit the Big Buddha statue, the one that sits high up on the mountaintop about 8km from our bungalow. The views from Big Buddha were absolutely stunning. (Pics) Not to mention the surrounding area of the statue. There is an actual Buddhist monastery there, and the statue is a work in progress, all being built from donations given to the monks. Pretty amazing. We made a donation and were able to leave our message on a nice piece of jade outside the statue. Bells adorn the trees as symbols of good luck, blessings, etc. I also really enjoyed the Thai cat sitting on the visitors book inside the statue, as if to say, Sign at your Own Risk!!!!! (Pics)

Just down the mountain were elephants that you could ride! It was too wet and rainy, but I at least wanted to get their pictures. (Pics) All in all, this trip has been everything and more that I had it made out to be in my mind. I return to the States in 9 days, with a different perspective on so many things.......from training, to the image that America carries in the minds of Southeast Asians, to food and portion sizes, to the value of taking time to categorize the important things in life on a daily basis, and not to let stress and the daily grind take over. Tonight, as long as we aren't zombies, we will be going to see some fights. And tomorrow brings more training and more fights at the camp Tiger Muay Thai. I will be taking a lot of pics of Muay Thai training life in the upcoming week, as I really want to capture the essence of what that is like here......