Generally I keep track of my training. I’ve got a little creme coloured imported Thai day planner I picked up at a Dollar Store in Canada I reference. I do this to keep tabs on the coin I owe the gym (I pay by the day) and to take note of my health. I’m sick often out here. Ninety percent of it is due to msg poisonings and other allergy and / or (dirty) food related issues. For example, when reviewing the last eight weeks of my life, I realized I was sick for five of the past eight Mondays. If I don’t take this all down on paper, my brain efficiently washes it way. I don’t see the patterns, I just live in the present and push forward. Keeping tabs on my health has helped keep me in check and possibly a little bit saner. On those days I beat myself up over my lack of performance at the gym, sometimes all it takes is a peep into my calendar and a, O right, I was ill with msg poisoning for three out of the past seven days.
It’s rainy season here in Thailand and Buriram has seen a lot of wet this year. Nothing like I’ve experienced in this country to date. Some days it’ll rain hard, meaning rain so hard you can’t leave your room for eight to twelve hours straight. Some days are dark. Dark meaning it’s as though the sun has abandoned all of Isaan and we’re just catching the fumes left behind. The only reference point I can draw are the light absent, soul draining deep winter hours of Toronto, accompanied by chest heaving humidity and pummeling rain. Sort of cool in the Biblical sense. I remember the first day I experienced this. I opened my window, got a feel of the day and thought, Wow, is this what Hell’s like? It sort of looked like a Dio album cover out there. I then closed the glass pane and let it act as a barrier between my watering eyes, my itchy ears and the oppression of the elements outside.
Aside from the food related passed-out-in-my-bed-and-cursing-humanity days, I’ve been hit with a number of back from the grave like hangovers coming straight out of nowhere. Six weeks of each day feeling just a tiny bit worse and each day feeling just a little bit more complacent, exhausted and broken, until at about midnight one evening it came to me…….it’s under my bed. My eczema littered face was buried in my pillow, I was drained and miserable and my body itched but I indulged in my inkling. I stepped out of my bed, lifted the mattress as high as I could and found my boogie man festering underneath. The vinyl covered double mattress / solid wood bed frame combo had produced and was completely dancing in a bright green forest of bacteria. I had no idea the frame was solid and had no airflow. The mold allergy which helped propel me from the autumns and springs of the Northern Hemisphere to the other side of the world in search of healthier days, decided to pay me a visit and bitchslap me while I was sleeping.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not only me that’s getting steamrolled by life out here lately. My entire gym came down with a fever the first week of August. It lasted approximately one week for us all. Approximately ten days following that, one of the nak muays from China landed in the hospital with another fever and if I understand it correctly, he was hooked up to an IV. That was a little over a week ago. I saw him for a minute yesterday, looking pretty pasty and thin, but he was able to stand and give a polite smile. I have no idea when he’ll be in training condition again.
For those of you planning to visit Thailand at any time, particularly during rainy season, I suggest two things:
Pack some Oil of Oregano to boost your immunity.
You can pick it up at your local health food store or online. I’ve always benefited from using it here.
Listen to the Thais.
If they warn against hanging out in the rain because later you’ll be rocked by a fever, I’d take their word for it. So many of the Westerners I’ve met here have ignored such warnings. Some of the arrogance, definitely mine, came from….I come from a cold country, I’ve never been sick from the rain. Yeah, it’s not the same here. Loads of people have been getting rocked by fevers in Buriram (and other parts of Thailand) for the last few months. And every Thai national I’ve spoken to blames it on the rain.
What’s the status today? A steroid cream, Amoxicillin, two different types of antihistamines, and Omniprazole for treating my msg ripped open gut. Hands of pills I’ve resisted but have eventually complied to taking. They’re working and I’m happy with my performance at the gym the past few days…..
As a result of the above, the Lookchaomaesaitong Sit Namkabuan Gym review is on hold until I get some consistent hardcore training.
I look forward to it.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Read the next memoir, KO’d At Sitmonchai, here.
Read the last memoir, A Moment of Gratitude – Buakaw Por Pramuk vs Sataban Tor Rationakiet, here.
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