September 02, 2011

Days 27 - 29: "Number 1 Champion Fooood!"

I won't lie, I've been putting off blog entries intentionally. It helps the days go by slower if I don't blog haha. Anywhoooo...

Day 27: Got very little sleep the night before so I justified taking off morning training and sleeping in a tad bit. Pii A busted our chops and I made another joke about the rooster and the dogs. Pii A shot me a smile and said "Ok, Ok."

Afternoon training rolls around and I'm in the ring kicking pads with Kru Dam while Brendan is buzzing around attempting to film me when I hear Pii A call him into the kitchen area. Brendo comes back out the training area with the best 'wtf' face I've seen in a good long while...

"THEY KILLED IT. THEY KILLED THE FRIGGIN' ROOSTER. PII A TRIED TO GET ME TO CUT THE HEAD OFF."

Like. A. Pii. Boss.

Your customers being kept awake at night by a rooster? Give 'em a chance to deal the deathblow and then feed it to them.

A fitting solution. I can't say we didn't enjoy that dinner a little more than usual ;]

Aside from slaying that horrid creature, Pii A did make an effort to move P'neh's roosters further back into the backyard area making their cock-a-doodle-doos (Is there a word for that? Their crowing...or cawing...whatever.) substantially easier to deal with.

Day 28: Following the pattern last week, Doug, Brendo and myself did some morning training and Pii A took us to Wat Bang Phra for a little round 2. Of course, before the Wat, approximately 1 hour after eating a full blast Mama meal, Pii A stopped at his preferred noodle joint. Unreal how good this stuff is. He also got us some fried potatoes, fried bananas and some superbeast that resembled a grilled banana inside of a fried shell. Good heavens.

Doug and Brendo headed up to the third floor to get a tattoo of their choice done by a monk (and his apprentice) for varying prices. I went to the second floor to get my Hah Taew done by the monk who resides there. The monk on the first floor who did our Gao Yord had too many people waiting for him and waved us along. I was left all by my lonesome on this one so I kinda went with the flow. It just so happened I would be responsible for approaching the monk with the offering plate and would have no familiar Thai there to help translate if need be. Funny how not intimidating those tasks are when I type them out but I was spazzing a little while waiting. Deep breaths boy, deep breaths.

Turns out lurching forward on your knees, holding a tray full of flowers, money, cigarettes and candles isn't as hard as I made it out to be and neither is letting the monk physically move me to the appropriate position to being tattooing. The Yant Hah Taew was put on my right shoulderblade, not even remotely registering in the pain department...at least not compared to the legit spinal tapping we got last week.

I made my way outside to find the guys and Pii A as I knew they were looking for somethings to bring home. The Wat has a few booths and a bigger 'store' area to purchase amulets, bracelets, statues, charms, prayer scrolls, wooden penises of all sizes, so on and so forth.

Sign of fertility. Get ya mind outta the gutter. Next.


"I'm having such a
wonderful time!"

Doug enjoying every
second, haha.

Doug and Brendan wanted to head back to the third floor monk to get their tattoos done and after some haggling on Pii A's part (again, boss behavior...taking care of his people.), decisions were made. Doug found a Hanuman tattoo he liked and Brendan decided on Yant Paya Thao Luean (Yup, that turtle Yant he's been talking about). The third floor is a little different than the other two floors in that, well aside from the fact you have the choice of tattoo, an apprentice does the intial tattooing and the monk (who resides comfortably in a glass air conned room) finishes the Pali script and does the blessing.

There was a group of (4) Malaysian dudes (and their Thai...girlfriends...?) in there getting their Sak Yants done. In the 2 hours of being up there, I learned that:

A) Malaysian people looking nothing like what I thought they did.
B) Bullet wounds never heal quite right.
C) Grown men actually cry about things unrelated to their family and sports.

These guys looked of Pakistani decent and Brendan noticed the savage markings on a few of them. Overhearing some conversation and putting 2 and 2 together, it was determined one of the guys had 6 bullet wounds, another had a savage probably rifle-caliber bullet wound in his lower back and another had a pretty good stabbing scar in his right rib.

Do we have hard evidence? No. Does it matter? No. We also offered the idea of being attacked by a tiger...maybe a gun-toting, village ravaging tiger.