Seeing the Rama VIII Bridge from the riverbank made the afternoon’s detour completely worthwhile. Hawaiian shirt guy didn’t do a bad job at all.

I didn’t realise, but it actually opened in September 2002. How I missed it on my previous visits I’ll never know. Considering that it’s 165 meters high, 2.45km long (including approaches) and 4 lanes wide – I must have been walking around with my eyes shut!

Anyway, after a giving a few approving nods and taking a couple of photos I turned on my heels and went off to look for more food (still hungry.)
After walking a good 20 yards, I stopped near the Thai Boxing training area for a Pepsi. Long story short, Boll, the guy from whom I bought the drink, spoke pretty good English and before long we got chatting.

I asked him how often they use the Muay Thai ring and, much to my excitement, he said every day between 5 and 7pm. Since it was almost 4:30 pm now, I thought I may hang around for a bit and check it out.

Boll was a real friendly chap, he couldn’t have been a better host. Recognising I was alone, he kindly invited me over to sit, and eat, with him and his extended family. Before long there must have been at least 10 of us cramped around their small, wooden table – and every one of his family were just as kind and accommodating as Boll. It was so good of them, I can’t begin to tell you how fortunate I felt.

We talked (with Boll being family interpreter for the day) for several hours, the conversation only being interrupted periodically by hoots and hollers from the groups of boxing fans when a particularly crisp punch or roundhouse kick got airmailed to a trainee whom no doubt wished his guard had been a little better. We took these cheers as our cue to crane around in unison and find out who did what to whom.

The early evening rain came and went, darkness fell and beers disappeared at quite a rate of knots. The company, the chatter and the food were the best – and all the while, behind us in the tent, the dedicated Muay Thai students continued to train and fight. It truly was the perfect evening.

When the training session would up, the hubbub quickly died down. For a while, we just had the background noise from kids in school uniforms playing in the street behind us, dogs barking as they charged up and down trying to catch mopeds, and the quickening revs from the mopeds as they tried to outrun these agitated sets of teeth on legs.

Things, however, were just about to get a whole lot louder.