Today was a little more laid back than yesterday. I woke up a little late after my fabulous massage last night and a deep, well-deserved sleep. Mike had more travel details to sort out for his trip back to LA in mid-Jan. so I went and did some stuff online and checked into a place to stay in Cambodia. We met up after everything was taken care of and went to have a veggie thai lunch. It was a cute little place off the Kho San Road area where we had to take off our shoes before we entered, and sat on the floor on cushions at our table. I had the Pad Thai ONLY because I hadn’t had any REAL Pad Thai since being in the country. My meal cost me about $3, and that included dessert! Afterwards we walked the streets a little more on our way over to the river area to check on taking a river cruise. We thought it would be neat to go up and down the river to see the other areas. We ended up taking a speed boat up and back, which also served as a water taxi for the Thai people and stopped at about 15 docks along the way up and back. It was pretty squished in the boat, standing room only really, so we hung out by the railing so we could see everything. The houses were pretty run down, mainly shacks along the riverbanks, their floors resting on beams that slightly raised them above the river water. Clothes hang drying on lines outside and sheets of tin or metal were being used as a roof. As poor as they lived, oddly enough quite a few had satellite dishes, some like DirectTV and others had dishes that were bigger than their entire house. Talk about priorities!
We spent about an hour going up and down the river, taking lots of great pictures of the temples along the way, but also of the dwellings of the Thai people. While heading back to the hotel to change for our upcoming evening, I couldn’t help but be more open-eyed about how the street people lived. Their lifestyle so very basic, or maybe just limited. Here you have a culture of people who appear to be very uneducated and living in poverty, yet they are buisness people, making a living and taking care of their family by selling goods or food services. Are they really that uneducated then? No… they are street smart and they know how to get by because it’s been something probably passed down generation to generation. Could they do more and make more with an education? Of course! But maybe they don’t have that opportunity.
The craziest sites are the motorbikes riding along the streets at all speeds – carrying up to 4 maybe 5 people at the most! You see a baby on the handlebars, dad & mother on the seats but also another child in between them – all the while they are carrying groceries too and weaving in and out of the traffic, avoiding taxi’s and pedestrians that get in the way. Mike said he’s seen it even crazier, with a guy riding his motorbike and 3 live pigs on the back!
I was really looking forward to the evening ahead of us; we were going to see a Muay Thai match! We arrived at the stadium and got VIP front row seats (I think all the tourists got those seats to make them feel special!). The evening was set to have 9 fights, with #7 being the “Main Event”. We headed out to the street to get some food while we waited for the first few matches to get going. I got a rice and beef with green beans dish and sat down with Mike to eat. Casually we’re just talking and eating and commenting about all the people that were attending the fight. It wasn’t any one particular fight they were there to see, it was just a basic thing for the men to do – like going to horseraces. I took 2 bites of my food and just about ran out of there with my mouth on fire! Whoa… What the heck? All I ordered was beef and green beans! Well, looking a bit further, that wasn’t a whole green bean I had eaten, but instead a WHOLE green chile pepper! Oddly enough, as hot as it was and after I got over the initial shock of what I ate, waited 10 min for my mouth to get feeling again and dreading it sitting in my stomach, I have to say it was pretty good. But not good enough to do it again 
The fight was awesome. The first two seemed to be really young boys, around age 13/14 maybe. As they continued on, the boys seemed to look older. The best fights ended up being #5 & #6. The crowd really was getting into it with their betting and shouting of what they felt the fighter needed to do to win. At the beginning of each fight, both fighters do a traditional dance which also helps serve a little as a warm up. Then the fight begins. Both #5 & #6 ended up being unexpected knock out fights (I took a lot of video on this!) The kicks were good, the blows were hard and the crowd was amp’d up! The main event was a disappointment unfortunately, especially since the two fights before were so exciting! After the fight, we called it a night…. We had to get up SUPER early in the AM on Xmas day to head over to the Kho Samui beaches where we were planning to stay until Jan 1st.
