96 Penang

Yesterday was Sunday, which is rest day for most gyms, although Fighting Spirit does have a Sunday afternoon training. I decided not to train, and just did some exploring after watching the Channel 7 Muay Thai fights on TV. The main event featured Jomhod Eminent Air vs. Chiabkom Sitjagun. It is definitely worth watching as Jomhod put on a technical performance and used some great boxing all while smiling the whole fight.

Muay Thai on TV. So awesome.

As I was walking around exploring the Sathorn area of Bangkok, I scouted out one gym that I knew the street of and actually stumbled upon another that I wasn't looking for. I may try to get in a morning session at each of them this week.

The gym that I've decided to spend most of my time training at this week is 96 Penang. 96 Peneng is located underneath a highway overpass in the Klong Toei slums of Bangkok. It is only about 2km from where I am staying, so I walked the first km to the intersection of Rama IV road and Sunthorn Kosa Rd. I could have walked the whole way, but I didn't really know where it was and I heard the motorbike taxi drivers would know (the gym has no address as it is not on a road but under a bridge). So I stopped at the nearest motorbike taxi stand and using my perfect Thai said "kai muay gaao-sip-hok Penang." The guys all start shadow boxing, so I figure they must know where it's at, perfect. I get on the appointed motorbike, the driver goes about 50 feet, and stops to ask a songthaew driver for directions. He must have gotten it because soon we speed off. Nope. At the next stoplight he starts asking the guy on the motorbike next to us for directions. Why did he agree to take me somewhere that he didn't even know where it was? I guess he didn't want to lose the 20 baht (65 cents) I was going to pay him. Well the directions he got were good enough, and soon I recognized where to go from pictures I'd seen on the internet.

Despite being in the slums, the training I got here was some of the best I've had in Thailand. I was seriously impressed with the amount of effort and attention that the two trainers put in to me and correcting my technique seeing as it was only my first time there. Training consisted of Jumping rope, shadow boxing, pad rounds, and bag rounds. They don't have a round timer, but I think I got 2 x 10 minute rounds with one trainer and 1 x 5 minute round with Kaisuvit, the head trainer. No matter what I was doing (shadow, pads, bag) they would keep an eye on me and correct anything they saw wrong in my technique. Tomorrow I'll probably get some clinch work in as well; today I think they just wanted to see where I was at skill wise before sending me to clinch which they do first thing.

Here's the only picture I took of the gym. I'll get more this week and maybe some videos. I didn't want to look like a gym tourist taking a million pictures on my first time there.

After training I walked the 2km back to the hotel, it was a nice cool down. After showering I went out to get dinner and had my favorite Thai meal, Ko Moo Yang (grilled pork neck) with nam jim jaew (dried chili dipping sauce), khao niao (sticky rice), and fresh raw vegetables. I need to find some Isaan street food in this neighborhood though so I don't have to pay 170 baht (~$5) for this meal at a restaurant. I'll work on that tomorrow.

The rest of the plan for tomorrow is to get up at 6am and run about 10km in Lumphini Park, rest and then head to 96 Penang for afternoon training (they only train in the afternoon, just running in the am).

Fighting Spirit Gym, Cabbages & Condoms Restaurant

I arrived in Thailand Thursday night after a rather uneventful 20 some hours of flying. Friday I roamed Bangkok with a woman (Linda) from the gym I train at back in Raleigh who is also here. It was her first time here, so I showed her the ropes of the public transit in Bangkok. We rode the BTS skytrain and MRT subway to a number of places. The first place we went was this great little shop called Action Zone to pick up some Muay Thai supplies. I didn't get a whole lot, just some anklets and handwraps. In total we got 3 pairs of shorts, 4 pairs of anklets, 3 paris of wraps, a t-shirt, and jersey for about $78. Not bad. The shop is owned by a nice old lady who gave us free water, a towel, and a nice discount. It is packed floor to ceiling with gear.

Our next stop was Lumpinee park. It's a nice city park for walking (it is very uncrowded in the afternoon) and checking out the enormous monitor lizards.

Lake in Lumpinee Park

Pretty yellow-footed bird.

 After Lumpinee park we headed to Saphan Taksin to get a view of the Chao Praya river.

Finally, curiosity got the best of us and we ended with a visit to Soi Cowboy. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Friday was a buddhist holiday and it was dead because alcohol sales are restricted.

Soi Cowboy

 The only plan for Saturday was to head to the Boon shop (another Muay Thai gear company) around 11am so I could get gloves for training. We had some time to kill before 11 so we headed in to the Terminal 21 mall. Malls in Thailand are huge, and by the time I get to the seventh or so floor I fear riding the escalators due to my fear of heights. This mall had nine floors.

When we got to the Boon shop, it appeared closed even though their facebook page said they'd be open from 11-3. It appeared that someone was there, because the garage door entrance was partially open. After calling twice and being told they weren't going to open, two other groups of foreigners showed up to shop, so we finally poked our head in and yelled hello. The girl came to the front, looked at us like we were crazy (whoever posts to their facebook must not have told her they we supposed to be open), and said she'd open the store in 10 minutes. I ended up getting some sexy dark brown gloves, a jersey, t-shirt, and some custom shorts which I pick up in a week.

Boon Gear

More Boon Gear

Satin ready to be made into Muay Thai shorts

Sale bin. Gloves with slight defects for $20.

 After getting new gloves, I was ready to train, but first we had to eat. We had seen something about a restaurant called Cabbages & Condoms so we decided to go since it was near by. I'm glad we did. It is an awesome little place with great food. The best part though is that it is owned by a non-profit that supports contraception and family planning among other things like school building. They have a gift shop with some pretty great souvenirs. The restaurant also has some fantastic condom art. Instead of mints with your check, you get condoms. 

About Cabbages & Condoms from their menu.

Banner hanging at the entrance to the Cabbages & Condoms.

Memory Dicks. Who doesn't need one of those?

Outside dining on the terrace.

My meal. Fried Fish Cakes. Yes, that is sticky rice in the background.

There was about 4 or 5 other life size condom people.

  After eating, we rested a bit at the hotel and then took the BTS to Silom to get some training in at Fighting Spirit Gym. Fighting Spirit is a great little gym for drop in sessions. You can show up anytime between 7-9am or 3-7pm and you'll get 5 pad rounds after warming up. You are then pretty much left on your own to do bag rounds and conditioning if you want. There were not any Thais training there, but you could probably get some of the Thai trainer to spar or clinch with you if you wanted. I didn't ask because I had to gas left after my bag rounds. I didn't get many pictures, because I was exhausted after we started training and completely forgot. I skipped for about 10 minutes, did 1 round of shadow boxing, 1 bag round, 5 x 3 minute rounds on pads, and finished with 2 more bag rounds. After that I was DONE. I was a sweaty mess, and just decided to wear my training gear back to the hotel instead of putting my clean clothes on. I almost felt bad for my fellow passengers on the BTS. Almost.

Sign by the entrance. You have to walk through an old cemetery to get there.

The walk up to the gym.

First session since arriving and it was rough.

Muay Thai commuter.

Linda heads out on a tour of northern Thailand tomorrow so I'll be on my own. I'm staying in Bangkok for now and will be visiting some more gyms I haven't been to and just exploring the city.

Returning to Thailand

Next week I leave for my third trip to Thailand. I will be there for three weeks and hope to get in a bunch of training even though it's not that long of a trip. It's hard to believe it has been almost 3 years since I was last there. I know my technique has improved a lot since that time, and it will be great to further refine it with some quality training in the land of Muay Thai.

Now, I had every intention of returning to Sitmonchai and spending my three weeks there. However, this was sort of a last minute trip decision, and the gym is currently overbooked. I'm glad they are doing so well and that they limit the amount of foreigners at the gym which ensures quality training for everyone. It's just a bummer that I won't get to be there. But there are a million gyms in Thailand and I'll find some other great places to train. I do have a very loose plan, but I am going to treat this trip as more of an adventure and exploring some new gyms and areas. So stayed tuned for stories of street meat, slums, beaches, soi dogs, sexpats, and of course Muay Thai.*

*This is all contingent on my laptop not frying its motherboard 4 days into my trip like it did last time. Same laptop, new motherboard.

Saigon!

This post is not about the city of Saigon, which doesn't really even exist anymore, at least not in name. Actually neither does the Saigon Supermarket I'm about to write about. It's now called Total Oriental Foods, but I always refer to it as Saigon much the same way people eschew Ho Chi Minh City.  Total Oriental Foods (TOF) is one of the undiscovered gems of Raleigh. Unlike the other Asian markets in the area, it is Thai owned and has a large concentration of Thai goods with a touch of stuff from other Asian countries thrown in. It is also much smaller than the other Asian markets in town, but is packed floor to ceiling. I like going and just exploring every aisle and usually end up discovering something new each time.

The reason I love TOF is that I can find a lot of Thai items here that I can't anywhere else, including the other Asian markets in Raleigh. Some of the things I regularly buy include sticky rice (of course), holy basil, yard long beans, fish balls, fish sauce, Shark brand sriracha sauce, pad thai sauce, rice noodles, guava, solar dried finger bananas, thai sweet & spicy sauce, coconut milk, preserved radishes, green papayas, and coconut water. They even have some hard to find kitchen accessories like sticky rice baskets & steamers, julienne peelers good for making som tum, and ceramic/wood mortar and pestles.

TOF is located right near the Wal-mart on Falls of the Neuse and New Hope Church Rd. The address is 1629 Ronald Dr. Raleigh 27609. Check it our if you are in Raleigh!

View from the parking lot. Look for the Saigon sign!

Plenty of instant noodles to choose from.

Sauces!

Shrimp Snacks if that's your thing.

  More picture on their own blog page: http://totaloriental.blogspot.com/

Painting an old House

When we set out to paint our 77 year old house last year, we figured we'd probably finish over the memorial day weekend. Here we are over a year later and still at it. Our original intent was to just slap up a new coat of paint over the old. As soon as we started, we weren't really happy with how it looked, but we kept on until we had finished the back and east side. The problem was that there was at least 4 previous coats of paint, and likely even more than that. The oldest layers had the alligator skin look to them and it gave the house an ugly texture. Below you can see the original yellow and what our new blue looked like after a fresh topcoat.

Old Alligator skin Paint.

New blue painted over the old layers.

As you see, that looks like crap. When we started the west side of the house we decided to do things right and remove the previous layers of paint. Certainly not a task for the faint of heart. We began with the steel scrapers that we had been using to remove loose paint. These things are useless, and I recommend you avoid them for serious paint removal. You'll spend more time sharpening the blades then you will removing paint. We switched to carbide bladed scrapers which were much better at holding an edge and removing paint. It was still extremely slow going and it would have taken years to finish at this rate. We did some reading online debated between an infrared paint remover, chemical strippers, and the Paint Shaver Pro. It was probably my affinity for power tools which led us to choose the Paint Shaver. It also seemed to be sort of a wonder tool for flat wood siding, which is what we were dealing with. It is basically an angle grinder modified into a hand planer that also shaves the underside of a siding board. The tool hooks up to a shop-vac to suck up all the paint shavings. I also ran it through an Oneida Dust Deputy to keep the shop-vac filter from clogging. You can see a picture of the setup below.

Paint Shaving setup.

The Paint Shaver isn't cheap (around $600 and hard to find used) but it is worth every penny. Here's what it can do to multiple layers of paint:

 

It will leave behind a little bit paint and will leave some circular cut marks in the wood depending on the cutting depth (which can be adjusted) and how thick the paint is in a given area. The shaver has a couple other drawbacks as well. First it may not remove everything on boards that are cupped or not flat; this is not a huge problem though. The other is that you will still have a lot of cutting-in to do with your hand scraper. Due to the design of the tool, you can not get tight into the corners or around windows. The pictures below show the side and the front of the house shaved, but not scraped or sanded; you can see the areas that still need to be cut in.

We found that using a heat gun useful for getting the ends of the boards and around widows and doors. All that being said though, removing the bulk of the old paint is quick work with the shaver. The front of the house probably only took me 4-5 hours to shave including having to move a ladder. Shaving and scraping was followed by sanding. All boards were sanded with an orbital sander & 40 grit sandpaper to remove any leftover paint, remove the circular cut marks seen above, and to prep the wood for primer. Here is the front ready for primer:

Primer is followed by caulking. Then we would apply two coats of paint on the trim and finish off with the main color. Everything is painted by hand, and the main color is cut into the trim. Here is a picture of the final painted wood. Notice that unlike the picture above that didn't get scraped, it actually looks like wood under the paint and you can even see the grain.

The front of the house is still only primed, so I have no final picture yet, sorry. Here's a final one showing the finished west side and the partially shaved front.

Been a while!

In fact it has almost been a year since the last post. I guess the muay thai focus of this blog sort of kept me from posting any updates. That's not to say I haven't been training, just that's its not as interesting as doing it in Thailand. When I returned from Thailand, I started training at a gym that I really loved. August of last year it closed and I've since been training at another gym closer to home, but that I don't enjoy as much. It's resulted in me going from training 3-4 times a week to about 1-2. Regardless, I think I might start putting up some posts on other topics and maybe try to diversify this place a little.

I think the next post will be about painting the exterior of our house. Boring, I know, but I feel that we have learned a lot of valuable information and lessons along the way that would have been helpful had we known going in. So maybe it will be useful information for someone in the internet somewhere maybe looking for tips or ideas going into a similar project. 

Eating Is a Pain in the Ass

Title says it all really, but let me expand a little. Cooking sucks and takes too much time, grocery shopping is a chore, trying to eat healthy is tiresome and boring, eating out is expensive,  etc. etc. If I had the option, I would take a pill everyday that satisfies my hunger and meets all my nutritional needs.  Having to eat is a real drag.

So what has led me to this rant? A little over a month ago I was thinking about my diet and how about 80-90% of my daily caloric intake comes from grains, legumes and sugars. Pretty much a lot of carbs. This was due in large part to the fact that I had been vegan/vegetarian for around 12 years, and I had become accustomed to eating a lot of grains and soy based veggie products. So I decided to basically do a 180 with my diet. I decided to go on the Paleo diet for 5 weeks. For those unfamiliar, Paleo diet is a diet loosely based on what our Paleolithic ancestors ate. Pretty much a lot of vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts, seeds, and meat. No dairy, grains, legumes, sugars, or highly processed foods.
I wasn't really trying to lose weight with this diet, even though a lot of people do, but I wanted to see how my body would respond to a much lower carb intake (coming mostly from fuits & veggies) and also improve my daily incorporation of vegetables into every meal. This diet would also require meat consumption levels that I probably hadn't seen since I became a vegan/straightedge/hardcore warrior at age 16. Before going to Thailand last year, I had begun to eat some meat again, but not a lot.  Basically just re-testing the waters to see what I had been missing out on, if anything. While in Thailand, I pretty much ate everything, because most vegetarian food there is pretty insipid and they also use fish sauce in everything (it's their salt). I was, therefore, fairly prepared for 5 weeks of pretty heavy meat eating.

I'm now down to my last few days of my 5 week Paleo challenge and here's what I found:

• I ended up losing a whopping 0.6 pounds, which is fine as I wasn't hoping to lose weight as I'm 5'10" and around 150. I did, however, lose about 1.5-2% body fat, so I leaned up a little. (Disclaimer: my scale could be full of shit on that, but I've been using it for 3 years and try to make sure I take measurements consistently in terms of time, hydration, etc.)
• Eating Paleo is really expensive! This is especially true if you are trying to eat grass-fed & free range meat like a lot of Paleo advocates advocate. You also end up cooking with lots of coconut and almond products (oils, butters, flours, etc.) which aren't cheap like their grain/legume counterparts.
• My energy levels seemed fine even though I'm assuming I was taking in a lot less carbs. I could get through my 2 mile run followed by a 1-1.5 hour Muay Thai session just fine. Where I did notice a difference was in my Sunday long runs (6-8 miles). I can normally do these runs in the 7-7:30 minute/mile pace. While on paleo diet, these runs were a lot harder, and i was generally in the 7:40-8:00 range.
• Incorporating vegetables into breakfast is a real challenge. I mean, who the hell wants to eat spinach at 7:30 in the morning? I crave sweets badly in the morning. Sausage & kale scramble is really good though. Hat tip to Chow Bella.
• Making your own condiments is super easy and they are better for you. See links below pictures for the recipes I used.
• Eating out on the paleo diet is WAY harder than it is as a vegetarian or even vegan.
• Being off of refined sugars for 5 weeks did not do much to curb my sweet tooth. I was born to eat sugar and will crave it no matter what. ugh.
• This diet has forced me to think a lot about how much vegetable matter I consume and ways to incorporate vegetables into every meal. That is a good thing. I've also learned a lot about nutrition and food politics.

So am I going to continue eating Paleo? Probably not. I do agree with a lot of the tenets of the paleo diet. There is no doubt that eating a diet heavy in vegetables,eggs, lean meats, nuts, and seeds is a healthy choice.  I want to cut back on the amount of grains, sugars and legumes I eat as well. I seriously believe the reason we as Americans are so fat is the abundance of these foods (carbs) in our diet.

I'm still trying to figure out how to take the paleo diet and incorporate it into a more vegetarian-ish diet. I have serious reservations about eating factory farmed meat; not only is it terrible for the animals, but also the environment. However, it is probably more environmentally (and economically) responsible for me to buy grass fed meat from the local farmers market than it is to buy some shitty soy-based Morningstar Farms veggie burgers made by the Kellogg corporation. There's plenty of science to support the deleterious effect our massive soy production is having on the Earth's Nitrogen cycle (a lot of which is probably fed to factory farmed animals, another reason not to eat them). Of course the real problem behind all this is the Earth's immense human population. The need to feed so many people is what is ultimately killing our planet. STOP breeding people! Seriously.

I'm ranting again. Sorry. My plan from here is to set a weekly budget (I can't be spending over $400 dollars a month on food like i did this past one!) and use it to load up on fruits and veggies at the farmers market. Anything left over I will use to buy grass-fed meat. This will ensure that most of my food is responsibly and locally raised and grown. I will obviously have to supplement with some store bought things like oils, nuts and seeds. And cheat meals every once in a while of course.

I'll end this tome with some pics of some things I made while eating paleo for those who don't like to read.

Pork loins with sauted cabbage.

What I would often eat for lunch.

I ate this as an egg alternative breakfast. From Everyday Paleo.

Pork Basil Burgers & homemade garlic basil mayo with  sweet potato fries & homemade ketchup.

Double Chocolate Banana Nut Brownie Muffins

Burger on a Paleo Bun with a pile of steamed broccoli and green beans.

Also, I don't have a picture, but these were the best paleo pancakes I tried. Full fat coconut milk is a great idea not only in pancakes, but it is super delicious on top of them!