Celebrating Birthdays and Kicking Butts

*Note - post updated to include hilarious video of Katie beating the crap out of her instructor - see bottom*

It's hard to believe it has already been three full weeks since we arrived in Thailand... time flies!



Jen's birthday "cake" - boxes of brownies from this amazing
French café/bakery we found called Vanilla Industry

A few fun things going on this week... Wednesday was Jen's birthday, so we did a group dinner at an awesome restaurant called "Soul Food" (some of the best Thai food we have had yet). We then went to a very strange, but very awesome, jazz bar called "Iron Fairies". Super dark inside, random stuff hanging everywhere, mult-level and an incredible band playing. Oh, and wooden jewelry boxes full of peanuts on all the tables - score! Great find.



The highlight of the week, however, was Muy Thai class Thursday night! Holy smokes... might have been one of the best work-outs I've ever had. We didn't really know what to expect, and probably all assumed it would be an hour of doing thai-bo Billy Blanks style... but were pleasantly surprised by the overall ass-whooping we each received.

One of the Thai students in our class, Pimpan, had asked us a couple of weeks ago if we would like to try a Muy Thai class. She set it all up (and came with us which was a blast). The class was legit... and sweat was flying everywhere.

The class began with stretching, and then 5 straight minutes of jump rope to warm up. (My calves are still sore.) Then, our instructor (one of many!) walked us all through the fundamentals of punching, elbows, knees and kicks, making sure we all knew how to do them in proper form and got in lots of practice. I sorta thought this would be the gist of the class... flailing around, punching the air, similar to kick-boxing classes at my gym back home. But boy was I wrong... after that, the real fun started. They wrapped all of our hands, gave us boxing gloves, and threw us in the ring. Each of us was paired with an instructor (who was wearing pads) and basically was just instructed to beat the crap out of them. It was awesome! We did 6 or 8 rotations in total, each time rotating between sparring with the instructor in the ring, and then practicing on the punching bags. In between each rotation we all had to do the requisite set of sit-ups and/or push-ups. Totally whooped by the end, but it was an incredibly fun couple of hours.  



Getting the form down in the beginning of class



Getting our hands wrapped

Pimpan, our thai classmate who set
this whole lesson up 

Mandatory sit-ups in between each round of sparring...
 these guys weren't letting us slack off!

I must say, I think the highlight (for me) was watching Ms. Pyle scream like a banchee every time she threw a punch at her instructor. That girl is fierce. Please see video below... (Don't worry, I have her permission to post this.)