Terror in Mumbai

I'm having some great luck with my travels. I think I signed up for the spicy adventure edition. In less than a week, I've managed to find myself near another debacle, but luckily I wasn't too close to this one. Yesterday July 13, 2011, there was a string of three bombings here in Mumbai. Fortunately none were near me or my hotel. They were each in different parts of town targeting heavily trafficked areas at about 7pm (peak rush hour here in Mumbai). I learned of the bombings and have been staying safe and watching the news for travel advisories and so forth. I only have about 1 day left here in Mumbai before going to Goa for a few days. All signs point to an isolated incident so far, so wish me luck.

Leaving Kuala Lumpur brought tears to my eyes

Now, I'm not saying I fell in love with Kuala Lumpur during my 18 hour layover in the city from Vietnam to India, but I was definitely tearing up as I was leaving the city. I think it had something to do with all the tear gas in the air though... Gotta love a good political protest to liven up your travels right?

Vietnam was a rush of craziness, and I didn't get much chance to actually get down and blog about it, but I'll come back to that. Today was much more interesting anyways. For my final leg of my trip I will be traveling through India, and because there are no direct flights from Vietnam to India, I had to go through one of 3 southeast asian hubs: Singapore, Bangkok, or Kuala Lumpur. Well because I have already seen Singapore and Bangkok, I figured I'd stop over in Kuala Lumpur and sample some cool Malaysian cuisine while I was at it. Well little did I know that Southeast asia has some political rumblings going on.

Arriving at 1am at the airport, I hopped on a bus that would take me to a station near my hostel. After getting dropped off, the neighborhood seemed a little shady, but everyone I ran into seemed quite helpful at helping me get to where I needed to go. I finally settled into bed at 3:30am for a short nap before waking up for a half day of sightseeing.

I wake up the next day, and during breakfast I strike up a conversation with the desk clerk. We get to talking about my plans for the day, at which point they mention I shouldn't wear any Yellow, but for the most part what I was planning to do would be ok. Slightly confused, I asked what she meant, and she informed me of a non-violent political protest by the locals being staged today. While the protest is supposed to be non-violent, many locals fear a slightly more provocative response by the government military and police.

Well I made it to the Petronas towers without a hitch, at which point I grabbed a couple delicious dishes in the food court below and enjoyed some ice cream in the park. I hopped on the train again to go back to my hostel to pick up my bags. On the way back I wondered if I had accidentally hopped on an express train or something because the train completely skipped two stops, but looking at the stops as we passed, there were no people there either. This seemed odd because only two hours earlier, those stops were fully operational. As I neared my stop, I noticed some police cars gathered on a few street corners, but there was no action. I figured they were on standby in case somethings went down.

I made it back to my hostel, and stuck around for a few minutes to use their internet before taking off. Those 30 minutes made a HUGE difference in the rest of my day. I grabbed my bags and headed out from the hostel. Walking down the stairs of the hostel building, my eyes started tearing up and I could smell what seemed like chili powder. I thought somebody nearby dropped some spicy curry or something in the stairwell. I walked out towards where the buses were picking up, and I noticed more police cars stationed nearby. Then I realized one of them was a truck with a cage, and it had a few guys locked up in the back. I wanted to stick around, to see what was happening, but I had a plane to catch. I kept walking to the station and noticed that everyone coming in the opposite direction had the same teary red eyes and sniffling noses as I did.

Turns out they dropped some tear gas into the station, and this closed all transit moving through this hub. Now I'm screwed because I don't know how to get to the airport. Most of the taxis seemed taken, and the ones I stopped didn't want to take me. Finally I caught one of the airport shuttle buses as they were dropping off passengers and they pulled a handful of others onto the bus and ran out. It seems they didn't want to stay there for very long either.

In the end, I made it to check-in just 10 minutes before they closed it, and made it to the gate with time to spare. I even managed to spend all but 0.10 Malaysian Ringits that I had withdrawn. Now on to some new adventures in India.

Visiting Singapore

My travels outside Bangkok began with a short trip to Singapore, the city/country. Singapore's existance has always befuddled me a little bit. Why does a country exist that is the size of a single city? Why didn't the nearest country(Malaysia) just absorb them at some point in history? Well it turns out my visit to Singapore has enlightened me with an answer, which I will now share with the world.

Apparently Singapore was previously a city in Malaysia about 70 years ago. Upon forming the Modern Malaysian governement, which was a federation of states, the economic strength of Singapore would have given it too much power in the federation, and furthermore, the predominantly ethnic Chinese population compounded the Malaysian disdain for Singaporean influence. Thus they were exiled. I was told a few tales of the conflicts that followed. Essentially, Malaysia wanted Singapore to rejoin on their own terms, but Singapore instead reached out to other global powers and thus began the strong western and Chinese influence within Singaporean culture alongside an almost absent Malaysian heritage.

Walking around Singapore, you get a feeling of a new sparkling city with construction and new housing and business building developments around every corner. Coming from Bangkok, it was almost shocking to see everyone dressed as though they were walking the streets of New York City. In fact, because of their sense of fashion combined with the equatorial climate(read hot and occasionally rainy) of the city, Singapore architecture provides for plenty of shaded walkways at a minimum, and long stretches of connected indoor shopping complexes. In the evenings, the waterfront marinas are well developed with shopping areas, bars, restaurants, cafes, and open grassy spaces for enjoying the cool tropical breeze. The city has ethnic pockets housing their predominant ethnic populations, ie. Little India, Chinatown, etc. There is plenty of food from almost every part of asia represented in their food markets, and those with a taste for variety certainly won't ever be bored here.

However, don't let me paint too positive a picture here. The city has been completely sterilized of all its cultural heritage, and in its place is a city that only looks towards the future. It is a the epitome of modern planned urbanization. Outside of eating, sleeping, and working, the only real recreation is shopping and alchohol. However, the taxes on alchohol makes a budweiser or similarly classed beer cost $14(USD).

One highlight of my trip, and somewhat refreshing to see was my visit to "Evolve MMA" (http:www.evolvemma.com). Here was our "brother gym" in another country, so I had to visit and see how there were. If you follow the link, you'll see that their facilities are magnificent. Some parts even look like a nightclub. Looking at their wall of trainers, they have some living Muay Thai legends instructing at this gym under the Sityodtong name. Unfortunately, they couldn't squeeze me in for an introductory lesson while I was there, but I did get to sit in on one of their classes. Especially after coming from Thailand, it was refreshing to see some skill in the hobbiest/amateur arena even at a gym with such vetted instructors. It was defintely a cool visit and I'll have to keep an eye out for fighters coming out of Singapore in the future to see the quality of their training.

Time to move on

About 1 week ago, I spent my last day in Bangkok. It was quite the surprise for me to find out how much I had grown accustommed to my life there. However, in my last days of training I could feel my body at its limits and it certainly was time for a break. I will be taking some time off to travel around Asia now. I've already been through Singapore, and am currently making my way from North to South in Vietnam. I'll try to keep the updates coming. From now on, they will be a mix of updates on my current travels as well as some unfinished commentary from my training and other journeys in Bangkok.

MBK Fight Night

One of the great things about Thailand and Bangkok is the fact that there are fights taking place everywhere on every day of the week. On this past Wednesday, I had to venture down to downtown to drop off a visa application for my trip to India. Because Its a $10 round trip cost for transporation, and about 1 hour each way, I decided to make the trip worthwhile and drop by the famous Mah Boon Krung (called "MBK" by all tourists) for a little shopping/bargaining and more importantly, there were fights showing in front of the mall from 6-9pm. I'll save my perspectives on shopping for the next post.

Talking to some of the other Bangkok Muay Thai Veterans at the camp, I got the distinct impression that the fights at MBK were going to be low calibur and mostly Farang fighters. It turns out I wasn't disappointed. In fact, the action was quite encouraging. After 2 months of being schooled by even the lowest levels at Keatkhamtorn, It was encouraging to see how I compared to farang and even the low level Thais.

Watching high level Muay Thai is great because you get to see great clean technique thrown with knockout power and champion level defenses and counters. However, most of the people you run into in and out of the ring do not fight with such clean defense and offense, and they don't always have an answer for everything you can throw at them. This is why I love watching mid-level and low-level Muay Thai. You can really see where openings are, how various techniques work(or don't work) against different styles, and some strategies for handling an opponent whose level is significantly higher or lower than your own.

Keeping this in mind, here are some clips of the action from the fights. Unfortunately all the farang fights ended before round 3 (which in Thailand is when I expect all the REAL action to start), so I don't have any footage of this. However, I have samplings of the footage of the Thai girls fighting, which unfortunately got interrupted by rain. I also have 2 full rounds of the headlining fight, which turned out to be a lop-sided battle, evident after the first minute of the first round. Enjoy, and happy training.

Girls Round 1:


Girls Round 2:


Headliners Round 1:


Headliners Round 2: