Muay Thai

 Here's Anita yesterday morning at breakfast.

 The hotel restaurant is right on the beach. At night they have candles on the tables on the sand for dinners. The breakfast buffet here is quite good. We're very satisfied with the hotel.

Last night we went back to the same restaurant across the street from the hotel for dinner. We picked a table  facing the street for the entertainment value. We were not disappointed. We could hear "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna..." and bells and then who should come walking down the street chanting but this older white dude and maybe his Thai family. Haven't seen this in a while.

 On Saturday, we discovered that there's a muay thai (thai kickboxing) training centre about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. This morning I paid my 250 baht (about $8) and joined the 7 am class. At that time of day it's already about 28 or 30C. This training centre has a big padded area at the front for the classes, another area the same size at the back where the serious fighters train by themselves or with partners, 2 rings, a weight training centre across the street and rooms at the back where people stay who are here for weeks of training as a holiday.
I was the only one who had never had any muay thai training before and I had no training partner so one of the assistant trainers worked with me and showed me all the basics.

Everyone wears full shin and foot protection and big boxing gloves. A lot of people tape their hands first. It's very tiring, especially for an old tourist who's been wandering around southeast Asia drinking beer for the last 5 weeks.

My trainer was really good. He showed me a lot of basic moves and corrected my form (which I needed). The formal part of the class went on for an hour and a quarter, then people worked on their own, striking the heavy bags or sparring with partners. The instructors wore heavy pads and blockers and went around helping everyone. After the formal part, my trainer said I could work on the heavy bag or call it a day so I stopped before I hurt myself. Anita was proud of me for having enough sense to know my limitations. I did enjoy it though and learned a few new techniques.

 This is our hotel looking from the beach. Koh Samui has big hills through the middle and sand beaches all around. There's a lot of tourist development but there's just so many hotels and so many beaches that it never seems really crowded.

 This is the beach looking the other way. There are rocks about a kilometre south of us and the beach extends about 3 kilometres to the north of our hotel so there's lots of beach to walk. These pictures were taken about 10:30 this morning so it's obviously not really crowded.

 Here are some nice palms along the beach.

 These are the rocks at the south end of the beach.

Anita is cooling off between the rocks before we walk back to the hotel. It's hot and sunny every day. There was a rainstorm this morning for about an hour between 8 and 9 and then it cleared up.

 Anita is cooling off in the pool. Our room is right behind the unopened umbrella. The pool is just above the beach.

This is our private terrace in front of our room. Very nice.
This evening we went to a different restaurant a little further up the street to the north. It was quite good so we'll probably go back sometime. Then we went for a walk along the beach and watched some guy in front of a bar put on a show with some flaming twirling things. They're supposed to have fireworks tonight too. Anita has gone out to look so I better go find her.
Tomorrow, we have no solid plans. Beach, maybe massage up the street for 250 baht for an hour. We'll see.