Boxing Clever

The owner of Sara's school also happens to own the main Thai Boxing stadium in Bangkok, so a group of us are treated to the full corporate ring-side experience. Not really being that much of a boxing man, I'm equally entertained by the frenzied activity in the crowd, who seem to spend the entire time involved in a mass game of charades. It's when you see thousands of Baht changing hands at the end of each bout that the purpose becomes clear. The boxing itself is pretty much all-in, with favoured moves including the roundhouse kick to the jaw and the upward knee thrust to the ribs. Happily, my enjoyment of the sport is very much enhanced by the fact that I'm sitting next to my friend's Dad who's visiting, and just so happens to be Ian Darke, Sky Sports' chief boxing commentator.

Out of Africa

Andy comes all the way from Nairobi just for the weekend. He's got a job interview on Monday, and our task is to show him what life would be like in Bangkok; we've got 48 hours to do it. In a city this size, that's a bit of a challenge, so it's an action-packed few days.

Anybody in the house?

In Bangkok, it's hip-hop that the 'kidz' are into, and so last night we joined some Thai friends at one of the city's premiere hip-hop clubs. It's very much the beautiful people; everyone's spent a lot of time in the salon and in the Dolce & Gabbana mall. Apart from me of course. But they do have a live band, which always gets points. I grudgingly admit that I rather enjoy the music, despite the baseball-capped frontman's repeated injunctions that 'everybody in the house' should 'say eh-oh'.
This morning, I'm woken by a very different musical experience; the enchanting sound of the harp, courtesy of our next-door neighbour Luis, a Costa-Rican harp player.

Now that's what I call fresh

Eat me

Someone mentioned that there's a Sainsbury's advert in the UK that features a shopper returning home with fish swimming in their shopping bags; a take on the freshness of Sainsbury's product. Maybe they got the idea from Thailand - in Tesco's here, the fish counter constists of giant tanks teeming with fish and all manner of weird sea creatures swimming around. Check out these crazy guys that I picked up. Not too sure what they were, but they certainly tasted good on the BBQ.