Berry's SEAJ trip Day 33: Back to reality (7/8/15)

Woke up early (5am) to do some individual mediation and learn about offering food to monks before breaking for breakfast. During individual practice we break into 3 groups to do monk chat where we get to ask KK anything we want (which is a pretty cool idea if you ask me) for about an hour. It is pretty impressive to hear a man of the cloth, if you will, be candid about things that people want to know about; granted I remember thinking some of the questions were politiciany – seemed to dodge answering the actual question. After lunch we have some more free meditation practice were I work on many of the counting exercises either in standing or laying pose as my knees/hips are having none of the cross-legged sitting anymore. After that, we head back to the real world. We scheduled a massage for later that evening so we went back to the hostel to get things together. When its time for our appointment, we go to the place with (female) ex-prisoners who give massages; this would wind up being a bad idea for me as my neck hasn't been the same from this massage to the day I am writing this  (almost 2 months later). They do all kinds of contortion of the body and cracking you left and right, at one point twisting your neck (did not like that), before being reversed stretched and overall just being manhandled. They have a really good reputation and I do believe my complications are a one off. After the massage, we stop by a random food place on the way over to see a muy Thai boxing match and had one of the best meals of the trip, Kao Soi, which is a curry noodle soup dish with fried noodles on top. The dish has everything; flavor, contrasting textures, noodles :). Really was a great dish. Meet Michele at the Muy Thai match where Rosa Li joins up as well and we enjoy the nights matches; one of which was the mystery match that pitted 4 dudes of various sizes, blindfolded, against each other for a couple minutes.

Berry excited for the muy thai matches that are about to get underway. New experiences all around.

Action shot. These guys are skinny. 

There was even a ladies match in the mix.

Among the fighting, they had this special match that they got 3-4 guys, blindfolded them, and had them go to town on the others. The refs kept getting punched as the fighters would find them and punch away. 

A video of the blindfold boxing match. Enjoy! :)

Was pretty hilarious as the ref was battling the biggest of the 4 dudes because the big dude kept punching the ref and then the ref would drop kick him and subsequently help him up. Was pretty awesome to watch, though I would hate to be one of them. The actual boxers are incredibly skinny (cannot stress how tiny they were – some weighed 110 lbs). After that, we say bye to them and get ready that night for our trip to Pai.