Friday Night's Adventures in Patong

Friday started out as such a quiet, peaceful day. The usual rituals of run, train, eat, beach, sleep, train, eat were adhered to then the wheels fell off. A fight night was on again at Bangla stadium in Patong and two fighters from Sinbi were participating. Chane, an American who had been training here for about a year, was in his seventh fight and Dee a the young Thai champion from Sinbi was in the main fight of the night. Despite plans to have a quiet night at eight o'clock a crew of us piled into the back of the camp hilux and wizzed off to Patong. It wasn't as cramped as last time as there was only seven of us in the tray and the majority of the tray sitters knew that this ordeal of cramping and not so delicate spinal adjustment would not have to be repeated on the way home. Five of us had already decided that Saturday morning training was canceled and that we were going to check out the Patong nightlife after the fight.

After a 'short cut' which wasn't appreciated by the punters in the tray we arrived at the boxing stadium. We got copies of the program for the fight and noted that Chane had become an Australian and had a new spelling of his name. Apparently the fight promoters changed the nationality of the foreign fighters to appeal to the nationalistic fervor of the holiday makers and boost ticket sales. Not really having an interest in the early bouts I had a chat with Chane about this and his previous fights. During this chat he was approached several times and asked not to knock out the opponent in the first or second round (as in six previous fights) to help the betting. This just confirmed to me how big of a role the betting played in these fights. For the record Chane had a single agenda to win the fight and win as quickly as possible.

Chane stepped into the ring and predictably the promoter mentioned Australia and started the chant Aussie, Aussie, Aussie........much to my amusement. All three rounds (of a possible five) of Chane's fight were awesome viewing, probably the best fight I've seen here. He was quiet evenly matched with his opponent and it was a close thing until Chane managed to knock out his opponent late in the third round but not before he had is lip opened by an elbow in the second round. Both him and his opponent received stitches after the fight.

The music at the fights I've mentioned before. I always thought it was recorded as it seemed very monotonous but where I sat on Friday night I could see it was actually live! Three musicians provided the tunes for the ceremony and fights, two playing drums and one playing what must be a local woodwind instrument. They didn't look very excited by the prospect of a 10 bout night!

Dee also won his fight, though on points and then we were off to sample the pleasures of Bangla road (conveniently located next to the boxing stadium)!

I thought I'd seen all.....then I walked down Bangla road and had an education. Bangla road doesn't look much during the day but at night it comes alive as the bars open and the road is flooded by foreigners looking for a good time and locals prepared to give it too them. It is Patong's main party area. The main commodities for sale were alcohol and sex. However using only 'sex' as a descriptive would be an understatement there was boys who looked like girls, girls who looked like boys, young girls old girls, drag queens, boys who liked girls and boys who liked boys the list was endless, basically if you had a perversion and had money you'd get what you wanted on Bangla road. It made for great people watching! Most of the bars fronted onto the road so we pulled up a stump got beers and watched the procession. Note to anyone wanting to people-watch on Bangla road do it with some subtly, if anyone (or thing) notices you noticing them you are liable to end up being mobbed by a group of gorgeous looking girls with silicon boobs who have suspiciously deep voices.

As the night progressed we decided to give in to one of the many salesmen in the street and attend one of Bangla's infamous 'cultural shows'. The performance was in a predictably 'atmospheric' sleezy bar, as for the show let's just say it involved ping-pong balls and there was no green tables, nets or paddles in sight! It was surprising that we were the only males in attendance with the remainder of the audience being Australian, English and German females. The most exciting bit was after the first act (and by act please don't mistakenly take it that I'm elevating this performance to great theater!) the army burst in, the lights came on and the bar was officially closed. This certainly added a bit of excitement but apparently was quiet a regular thing, we headed off in search of another bar. I guess they didn't pay their protection money.

Though there were a lot of bars closing down we soon found one, took a seat and ordered beers. No sooner had our backsides touched the seat cushions then five bar girls appeared and each latched onto one of us. After getting though the pleasantries in broken English the bar girl who assigned herself to me realised that I wasn't in the market to take her home for the night. She go the attention of the bar maid and excitedly babbled on in Thai, gesturing to her friend to get something from the back cupboard. I'll admit at this stage I was curious to see where this was going. A moment later a Connect Four holder and tokens appeared on the bar in front of me - this was the last thing I expected and is certainly the strangest thing that I had ever seen in a South East Asian bar! The bar girl, I think Kob was her name, and I started playing. I won the first couple of games then realised I was being hustled by a pro Connect Four player who went on to win around eight of the next ten games. In my defense I was drinking beer and each time the game got to a critical stage Kob started rubbing my ear or leg.

After a few more beers we decided to call it a night and all piled into a tuk-tuk for the half hour ride back to Nai Harn. By the time we got to Nai Harn we'd decided that we all wanted to go out again so trooped off to the local night club. We went inside got our first beers, hooked up with some of the trainers celebrating the fight win and the music stopped, lights went on and the army trooped in closing the place down. I suppose it was 3am but if everytime I want to go out the army turns up I'm going to get just a little paranoid.