Oh no, Dina, Jack can talk Thai. Jack talked Thai real well.

I'll get back to the title of this post in a minute (points if you get the movie reference without looking it up), but first, a little bit about our adventures over the last few days.

First, we saw a chick knock out another chick.  Like, blow to the temple, TKO, down on the ground, fight called, boom, bam, done.  And it was awesome.  There is free Muay Thai at the mall down the street (MBK) on Wednesday nights, so we decided to check it out.  It ended up being a pretty big deal - live music, judges, a huge ring, the whole nine. I was unprepared to witness the awesomeness of Muay Thai and all the associated rituals.  Example: the boxers do a cool spiritual dance before the match begins, which includes something called the "wai khru" - each boxer kneels and bows three times in a show of respect to his or her teacher (yes, I Googled that...so sue me...at least there's something educational in this blog. See, Mom and Dad?  I'm not just here to party).  Then, once the dance is done, they (pardon my French) kick the living shit out of each other.  And it is SWEET.  Muay Thai is pretty violent, with lots of really hard blows to the head and things of that nature, but you can also tell that the athletes LOVE what they do and really respect each other and the sport.  We watched three matches, with foreigners winning in all three.  Two American girls won (one, who Joe Delgado and I nicknamed "Honey Badger", actually won me some money on a bet), and a German guy also came out victorious.  Pretty awesome.  And then, of course, we had to follow it up with a requisite visit to a dive bar off Sukhumvit with live music and go-go dancers.  Where I got onstage with yet another cover band.  See below.

Germany vs. Thailand...getting heated

Me with the band (yes, the permanent lead singer is a white dude from Britain - and is amazing)

Last night we all went out to celebrate the lovely Dana Foster's twenty-somethingth birthday, which was a great excuse to dress up and spend $30 a head on dinner (which is practically unheard of here).  We were referred (by our new best friend Luis, who owns our favorite bar in Patpong - arguably the best area of the city, look it up) to a fabulous tapas place called OSKAR on Soi 11, a hopping nightlife street with lots of international bars and restaurants.  We ate pizza and drank wine, which I feel like I haven't done in YEARS.  And I'm not just being dramatic.  Years.  Then it was out to the club district, RCA, which is literally in the middle of nowhere.  You think you're being abducted by your tiny, friendly Thai cab driver and you find yourself wondering "how does one really stop, drop, and roll out of moving vehicles like in the movies?", until you pull up to a glittering oasis of flashy dance clubs for each and every taste.  Needless to say, we got our dance on.  Happy Birthday, D.

Delicious fancy gin cocktail with honey and some unidentifiable red gelee-type thing

Pizza OSKAR: Parma ham, arugula, fig, shaved parm & balsamic syrup

The celebration crew (minus Yours Truly, Kate, and Dan, who couldn't fit in the photo)

The taxi ride home last night inspired the title of this blog post, because it was an all-too-present reminder of the fact that none of us can speak Thai. We try.  We really do.  But it is SO DAMN HARD.  Thai is a tonal language, so the word for "water" is the same word as the word for "soup" and "soda" and "liquid" - you just have to use different vocal inflections.  Which is next to impossible for us farangs (white people).  Here is a list of Thai words/phrases I can say:
Hello
One
Two
Three
Five
Nine
Ten
I am going to MBK
Thank you
Left
Right
Straight
Here

...that's it.  We learned last night in our taxi home that practicing directional words while in a moving vehicle with someone else driving is probably not the best idea.  I thought our cab driver was having a seizure for a minute, but turns out he was just responding to us practicing our vocab from the back seat: "LEFT! STRAIGHT!  RIGHT!  HERE!  WHERE?  LEFT!  STRAIGHT!  RIGHT!".  Oops.

Come tomorrow, half of our group will be in Chiang Mai, in the North, while the other half (my half) is heading to the jungle in Kanchanaburi for a quiet weekend getaway at Erawan Falls National Park.  Looking forward to getting out and seeing some natural beauty, as the closest thing we get to "nature" here in Bangkok is cockroaches. Happy weekend to everyone at home.