Muay thai and the sights

On my way out of the hotel I happened to be behind a couple that were headed in the same direction hat I was headed. At some point I can't even really remember we started to talk. Marco and Amo were a cool couple from kazekstan. I can honestly say that I don't know anything about kazekstan other than the borat parody. These two couldn't have been further away from that. They were charming, cool and both really well educated. We were headed to the same place so we decided to go together. First stop, the palace. We hopped onto a river boat and went up river to the palace. As we hopped off the boat it was instantly swarming with people from every part of the planet come to take in the sights. At first it really put me off. Growing up in a tourist town, pretty much anything that says "shity trinket" makes me curl up like salt on a slug. But then we made our way inside the main palace area. Sure there were tons of people, but it was a pretty awesome sight. The amount of work and detail that went into the place is astounding. The three of us wandered a little aimlessly at first, sort of caught up in the scale of the place but after a whle we kind of got a pace going and sort of wandered with purpose. It was one of those places that I was really glad to have company with me.
As the afternoon started to turn to early evening Marco turned to me and said that they needed to get back because they didn't want to be late for the muay thai match ........ Uhhh what did you just say...... Holy shit can I still get a ticket? So we raced back to the hotel and I managed to pay way to much to get a ringside seat. ( that being $60 for fourth row ) in short.... It was awesome! First off it was being help at a big thai stadium so when we dashed off to get there we were looking for a big place. You know, the rose garden or something befitting the reputation of one of the two most important arenas in a city of 6 million people. I cracked up when we got there. It was cool in that sort of old rustic gym kind of way but it was no bigger than a grey hound bus station. That being said, it was a blast. Not only were the fights great but there was live music. A little section where 5 guys were playing traditional thai music as background for the fight. I managed to get up right next to the ring and shoot some video I will post later. Complete with music and shouting fans. At the end of the evening my new friends and I parted and I was bummed. They were charming and so much fun it wish I had a few more days to spend hanging out with them.