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Ok, I’ve finally made it here! It took us awhile, but when we landed we found Pak (he coordinates Mehdi’s training in Thailand) and we were whisked away to our accommodations. Before we got there though, we had to stop off at another hotel and grab Fred, one of Mehdi’s students on the way. We are staying at the President Park Ebony Wing. I attached a video showing my room:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akUZHMNnWCc]
After getting situated in our rooms we HAD to eat. Mehdi wanted a chicken sandwich. So we have travelled all this distance to eat chicken sandwiches! That’s ok, we will have traditional Thai food tonight. After we ate we went to check out the new site of Pak’s new training camp which was next door. It’s pretty exciting to see the camp start from bare bones.
We wanted to work out tonight, but we needed pads, so we decided to go to Lumpini stadium to do some shopping for gear. In order to beat the traffic Mehdi suggested that we hire motorcycle drivers. I was a little skeptical of the safety factor, but it was an awesome drive! There is nothing more exhilarating than speeding along the highway precariously between vehicles. There were times when my legs almost scrapped against the sides of idling vehicles! Shopping for gear was a blast and we eventually made our way back to camp.
Back at the camp we started Mehdi’s training. We are the 1st guys to work out at the camp. Mehdi did 10 rounds of 3 minutes, with 1 min rest. Pak was on hand to guide the training. That was pretty cool. I learned a lot from Pak in the few hours we were there. Check it out here:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MCI3_S0ZJM]
While we were training we drew a large crowd. It felt neat to train outside with spectators. Eventually some other fighters showed up, and soon we had good energy as the athletes banged away on pads and on each other.
A quick shower after the training and then we took the train to Center World for an actual Thai dinner. From there we jumped into a cab and made our way to the Patpong Bazaar. Here we continued with more shopping and browsing. We are going to finish our day by going back to the airport to pick up Ramin, one of my students and a good friend of Mehdi’s. Tomorrow we have to do more training, shop, watch movies and get an adapter for Mehdi’s XBOX. He actually packed his XBOX in his carry on! Mehdi and I have got about 6 to 8 hours sleep in the last 40 hours! It is time to sleep-Jd
