The Bourne Experiment

Next week, I fly from Bangkok to India and then to Nepal, where I’ll spend the month of April.  Not too much has happened since my last post (over two months ago!).  In February I was occupied with work, finishing up testing with my students, and finalizing grades before they (and I) took off for the 3-½ month summer break.

Having so much time off is great.  However, these 3-½ months of freedom and fun are also 3-½ months of zero income.  Keeping that in mind, I did a good job of budgeting and saving from November to February and put away a decent chunk of change.  I was able to bank enough baht to live comfortably for two months without other income, plus pay for my month-long adventure in Nepal.

That being said, I knew that I had to stick to somewhat of a budget in March so that I could have plenty of funds to enjoy my time in Nepal to the max.  I don’t want to be the guy taking pictures of my friends bungee jumping from the highest bridge in Asia while I wait with empty pockets, safe and penniless on the ground below.  Traveling is all about having incredible experiences and the remarkable memories that stem from them.  Unfortunately, those experiences cost money.

Consequently, March has been pretty uneventful.  In an effort to save money I decided not to travel, but to stay in my fairly monotonous Thai town, where I don’t have to pay for accommodation and the cost of living is generally cheap.  To keep myself busy, I’ve spent most of the month working on a sort of self-improvement experiment.

My ultimate aim was to save money and to get in great shape for Nepal (I’ll be trekking up to 9 hours a day for 2-3 weeks to base camp of Mt. Everest at an altitude of 17,598 ft.).  I challenged myself to take just one month… just four weeks…. just 30 days, to make a real attempt to improve physically, mentally, and… become Jason Bourne… ok, not really.  (I recently saw the preview for the new Bourne Legacy movie coming out this summer and re-watched the entire trilogy, driving myself into a minor obsession with becoming a genius, multi-lingual, judo-chopping, badass specimen of a human being.)  Check out the trailer...

So, I made a list of goals to accomplish by the end of the month.  I kept the objectives challenging but not demanding.  For example, instead of trying to finish five books by the end of the month, I merely aimed to sit down and read for a minimum of 30 minutes a day; instead of attempting to race in a marathon by the end of the month, my goal was simply to improve my best 5k run time; instead of trying to become fluent in a new language, I tried to study and improve what little grasp of the Thai language I already had.

………………………………………………..

So did I do it?  Did I transform into Jason Bourne in just four weeks?  Well… No.  But I did obtain measurable improvements in almost all areas for which I set goals for myself.  I know this isn’t the most gripping blog post ever so I’ll spare you the details, but here’s what I did or did not achieve by the end of the month…

PHYSICAL GOALS:

            -Increase strength and muscle mass:  CHECK

            -Decrease body fat percentage:  CHECK

            -Improve 5k (3.1 mi.) run time:  CHECK

            -Train Muay Thai:  FAIL

            -Train for the EBC trek:  CHECK

            -Improve flexibility:  FAIL

I collected data everyday throughout the experiment so that any increases or decreases were measurable and so I could be sure of any physical improvements.  I recorded my weight every morning and every night, took measurements, documented every workout.  I also kept a food/supplement journal in my workout book, noting everything that I ate or drank.  I even took notes on how I slept each night.  

In the end, after 30 days, I increased my one-rep max in every lift that I tested.  I also improved my 5k time by over 2 minutes.  I added 1/3 inch to each bicep, ¼ inch to each thigh, lost an inch around my waist, and lost 2 inches in my hips (I got that bodonkadonk).   Using pictures as a reference, I probably went from around 12% body fat to around 10%.  My starting weight was 67.9 kg (149.7 lbs) and I finished at 64.7 kg (142.6 lbs).

I was in decent shape before starting this, so for exercise, I kept with my normal workouts, spending 1½-2 hours in the gym, 4 or 5 days a week (including both weight training and cardio).  Cardio was usually running or swimming.  On some days, I went on a hike to train a little more specifically for the upcoming Nepal trek. 

The real change was in what I ate (or didn’t eat).  I followed a slow-carb diet and some tips and tricks from entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss' new book, a scientific, “minimalist approach to becoming super human”.  This is a high protein “diet” that basically eliminates carbs and fructose, concentrating on foods with low-glycemic index and that don’t raise blood glucose. 

I thought this would be tough…  I can’t eat rice or noodles… in Thailand?  WTF?!... but it was actually easy.  I was never hungry and never once restricted or counted calories.  In fact, I consumed more calories than I was used to, but from better foods.  I also made every Saturday a cheat day and ate and drank whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted.  The hardest part of the whole thing was not drinking beer during the week (but if I had to drink, I had whiskey and soda water.  Cheating? Whatever.).  In the end, it worked.  I thought I would gain weight as I put on muscle but after 30 days, I’m 7 lbs. lighter.

I also took 100-150 grams of whey protein (powder) and some supplements daily.  Feel free to look ‘em up if you don’t know what they are or for; I don’t feel like explaining… I took (fish oil, vitamin C, a multi-vitamin, L-lysine, L-glutamine, bio-magnesium, and calcium). 

Why did I “fail” in two areas: Muay Thai and improving flexibility?  Well… A motorcycle injury prevented me from being able to do what Muay Thai training demands (and by “motorcycle injury” I don’t mean I drove off a cliff while in a high-speed chase or anything crazy like that.  I lost my balance and dropped the bike on my foot… while parked… stupid, stupid, stupid).  And flexibility…  I tried yoga once and… well, that’s just not my thing.  I’m perfectly fine with not being able to touch my toes, thank you very much.

*I would post the before and after pictures, but my female fan club is almost full and I don’t want the Patterson brothers poppin’ broners back in Maryland.  Save it for each other, fellas.

MENTAL GOALS:

            -Read a minimum of 30 minutes a day:  CHECK

            -Improve Thai language skills:  CHECK

            -Study a subject that I normally wouldn’t:  CHECK

-Travel somewhere new on a strict budget:  CHECK

All goals here achieved!  I finished three books this month (that’s three more than I finish in a usual month).   I drastically improved my Thai with only 3 lessons (from a great teacher) and just 20 minutes of studying a day.  Thanks to an awesome website, Memrise, I actually learned a lot about art history, a random subject that normally I wouldn’t give two thoughts about (I can now tell you the difference between Monet and Manet… yay.).  Last but certainly not least, I had an awesome 4-day excursion to one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been, Ang Thong National Marine Park (separate blog post on this coming soon) for under 5,000 baht ($160 USD)!  Only in Thailand.

Even if I didn’t reach Bourne status, March turned out to be a really productive month and I was able to not only save money and prep for Nepal, but also have fun and improve other areas of my life with this little experiment.  Next, maybe I’ll track how my health responds to a month of eating yak stew, drinking yeti blood, and mountain trekking in the Himalayas… Operation: Abominable Snowman.  But for now… I’ma go eat big bowl of rice and wash it down with a tall, cold beer.

Happy New Year from Koh Phangan!

Koh Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand.  It’s known for two things:  beauty and parties.  Year-round, people from all over flock to Haad Rin Beach on Koh Phangan.  This is where they hold the infamous Full Moon Party once a month.  THEN… once a year... on December 31^st, they combine the lunacy of the Full Moon Party with a New Year’s Eve extravaganza.  Words can’t really explain what Haad Rin is like for New Year’s Eve.  Many argue it’s the best NYE party in the world.  It’s an 800-meter long shoreline filled with more than 30,000 people.  There’s music blaring from gigantic sound systems.  There’s dancing in the ocean.  There's face painting.  There are buckets and buckets of booze.  And there’s fire.  Ohhh ho ho, there is fire.  Fire dancers.  Fire works.  Jump ropes of fire.  Slides of fire.  Lots and lots of fire.  It’s like Funland in the Pinocchio story, where all the bad boys go to have a good time.  Except there's girls there too.  I was lucky enough to be there for the second year in a row.  I dare not bring a camera, so all I have are a few photos that friends took from this year and last.  It was a great year to finish up a great year.  I hope that everyone had as good of a year in 2011 as I did.  I know that 2012 will be even better!

FIRE SLIDE!

BUCKETS!

PAINT!

FIRE JUMP ROPE!

WEIRD PEOPLE.  ALL.  OVER.

Cambodian Adventure Part III: The Finale

Back to Phnom Penh…

            Phnom Penh is a big city but it lacks the glamour of a metropolis.  There aren’t many skyscrapers, it’s built on a nonsensical grid system, and honestly it just didn’t seem that impressive.  The traffic and pollution are horrible.  To anyone planning a visit, I highly recommend wearing sunglasses and having a bandana or something to cover your face with while riding in a tuk-tuk.  The dust and filth in the air, stirred up from the dirty streets, is like nothing I have experienced (not even in Vietnam or Thailand). 

            With that said, Phnom Penh is an amazing place and I did enjoy the time that I spent there.  It’s located where the Tongle Sap meets the Mekong River and every morning from sunrise til 8 am, you can see hundreds of people on the riverfront beginning their days with aerobics and yoga.  There are hotels, guesthouses, and hostels all over the city for an array of prices.  While I was there, the people seemed to be a little standoffish at first (city-like, I guess), but were really just as nice and friendly as everyone in Siem Reap if you talked to them for a bit.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend much time in Phnom Penh.  The plan was to stay in Siem Reap for a few more days.  Of course, I did what I always do and waited until the last minute to try and change my flight.  What I didn't know is that it's Air Asia policy that, even with the travel insurance I had, there's a minimum of 48 hours notice needed to change flights (mine was scheduled to leave the next day).  SOOO, without having much choice, Ry-dude and I got on a bus a few hours later and headed 5 ½ hours away, back to Phnom Penh.  This gave me from 6 am to 4 pm (on the day of my departure) to see and do everything in the city that I wanted to.

Skulls uncovered after excavations at the Killing Fields

            Ryan and I hired a tuk-tuk for the day ($12 USD) and the driver took us to the Killing Fields, S-21 (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), and lastly the shooting range.  “The Killing Fields” are about 35 minutes outside of town.  For a $2 entrance fee you’re allowed in and can see where the Khmer Rouge mercilessly massacred so many Cambodian people.  If you're not familiar with the history of the Khmer Rouge and what happened in Cambodia in the 1970's, you can school yourself here.  Once inside, there was a free audio tour that allowed us to move at our own pace between marked sites (including mass graves, execution areas, and a huge collection of human skulls), all of which were shocking.  I even found a human tooth in the dirt, recently washed up to the surface by rain.  After the hour-long tour we bought some incense for the shrine and monument, and then checked out the museum near the exit.  As hard as it is to stomach, I am really glad I got to see this.  I learned a lot and have so much respect for what the Cambodian people have had to overcome.

Mass graves, like this one where 450 victims were buried, are all over the Killing Fields

            Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, better known as S-21, was not much easier to see.  It’s a high school-turned-torture prison camp.  This is where the Khmer Rouge would torture people.  It causes the same distress as the Killing Fields, and after 20 minutes, we decided to leave. 

*In this picture (to the left of the Ginger) is a man missing one leg.  Unfortunately, this is an all to common site.  Still to this day, Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined areas on the planet.  The Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) estimates that there are between 4 to 6 million mines in the ground.  Note that the entire population of Cambodia is only 11. 5 million.*

"Say Hello to my little friends!"

            Our final stop of the day was of a brighter hue.   On the opposite side of town our tuk-tuk driver dropped us off at the shooting range.  Talk about kids in a candy store; they had everything!  I had only shot a gun once in my life before, but I have to admit, the mere site of machine guns and RPG’s got me more than a little excited.  Although we opted not to, the option was available to shoot a rocket launcher at a live cow ($350 US).  Our budgets and morals didn’t allow for that so we opted to pay $65 each to shoot 20 rounds out of an AK-47 and 50 rounds from a Russian machine gun with a tripod.  Rambo would’ve been jealous.  Firing these bad boys and blowing coconuts to smithereens was a badass experience and the grand finale to the whole Phnom Penh escapade.

"Yippee ki-yay motherf*er!"

After that, the tuk-tuk driver raced me to the airport and I hopped on my flight back to my first love, Thailand.  I had a great time in both Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.  Cambodia is now one of my favorite countries.  My only regret is not being able to spend more time there.  The food, the historical sites, the prices, and the people are all fantastic and I hope I get to go back again.  Maybe next time I’ll shoot rocket the launcher. 

Please... No smoking, no photography, and NO HAND GRENADES!

Thousands of skulls, teeth, and bones are kept in a shrine at the Killing Fields to pay respect to the dead and remind people of what the Cambodians went through

A tooth washed up from the rain that I found on the ground at the Killing Fields

Me, about to get medieval on a coconut... 

Cambodian Adventure Part I: Flight of the Ogre

Teaching in Thailand has many of the same perks as teaching in America does.  The best, in my opinion, is the vacation time.  In the States, most teachers get holidays and the summer months off.  In Thailand, we’re off from the beginning of March to mid-May (Thai summer is hot, especially with no A/C and 55 students per class), as well as all of October (when the rainy season hits the hardest).  This bonus allowed me to travel for four weeks last month, paid.  I went diving in Koh Tao, raged in Bangkok, experienced the filthy skeeze that is Pattaya, watched a fire show in Koh Samet (my eyebrows were nearly singed by a disobedient, flaming bow-staff that decided my face was a better landing target than its owner’s hands), and hiked a five-tier waterfall in Kanchanaburi.  I don’t have the memory (thank you, Singha beer) nor the patience to write about each and every one of these places.   I do, however, want to share a little bit about final leg of my October travels, which was to Cambodia. 

            I was only able to spend about a week in good ol’ Cambo and I wish that I’d had more time.  To me it’s the wild west of SE Asia.  Still recovering from the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, it is not nearly as developed as its neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam.  The air is constantly filled with dust from the unpaved roads, waterways flood because of the lacking infrastructure, and there’s evidence everywhere illuminating the unbelievably widespread poverty.  My roommate, co-worker, and travel dude-bro, Ryan gave a pretty accurate, yet not-so-delicate description, “Cambodia is a dirtier, cheaper version of Thailand”.  This is true, but Cambodia is also a lot more. 

Everywhere I went the people were exceedingly friendly and genuinely happy.  In guesthouses and restaurants the service was far better than in Thailand (but the food didn’t hold a candle).   Everything costs a dollar or less.  Everything.  Draft beer, 50 cents.  Food, a dollar.  Tuk-tuk, a dollar.  You can even find dorm-style hostels to stay in for… a dollar.

Because of the floods and my loathing of 15-hour bus rides, I decided to pay the extra 50 bucks and take a flight from big, bad Bangkok to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.  The flight only took 55 minutes, but short of crashing into the Gulf, it couldn’t have been much worse. 

Part I:  GETTING THERE

            As I waited to board the plane in Suvarnaphumi International Airport, I couldn’t help but notice a fat, sweaty, googly-eyed, middle-aged European oaf bumbling around the gate.  Air Asia is known for its tiny seats and I instantly felt bad for whoever had to sit next to this caricature of an oversized troll, probably named Igor or Bruno or something of the like. I will say that he had the most vicious, greasy, salt-and-pepper mullet that I have ever seen.  Gotta respect the mullet.

The plane began to board at 5:00 p.m.  Two stereotypically beautiful Thai stewardesses greeted me with fake smiles, Sawadee Kaa, as I entered the aircraft.  23F.  Sweet, a window seat.  I sat down and buckled up.  The ogre looked confused as he lurched and searched for his assigned accommodation, getting closer and closer to me, struggling to ram his way down the aisle, invading the space of everyone he passed with his protruding side-fat.  I already knew where he would end up.

Bruno Trolldude stowed away his carry-on after a brief struggle with the overhead compartment.  I don’t know what he had in there.  Probably a small assortment of Speedos to show off his impressive Euro-body, a camera so he could show pictures to his friends back home of the beautiful Asian women that he didn’t pay for, and maybe a bottle of his favorite vodka recently purchased at the airport duty-free shop.   Whatever was in the bag, it definitely wasn’t deodorant. 

He sat down in the seat next to me; amazingly fitting between the two armrests, yet instantly overflowing in to my bubble, trapping me against the window.  He then raised his tentacle revealing a beautiful sweaty armpit that smelled like Cheetos, so that he could make sure that all of the air conditioning fans above were on blast and pointed directly at his perspiring dome piece.  Suck it up, I thought.  It would only be an hour-long flight and at least I’d have a nice view of the smog as I ascended out of Bangkok at twilight.

It was like watching a drunken turtle on its back as he thrashed about trying to reach the seatbelt underneath him.  I could smell the booze as he took short, heavy breaths the way that only overweight, two-pack-a-day smokers do.  Fortunately, the wheezing only lasted ten minutes.  Then, the ogre slept.  Unfortunately, the snoring began.  Ugh, the snoring.  I’ve had the experience of standing on a runway for the take-off of a fighter jet, endured booming thunderstorms, shot machine guns, and it all pales in comparison to the roaring rumble that came from that congested nasal passageway.

Within a few minutes, everyone in proximity was marveling at the sight and sounds of seat 23E.  First, the other passengers shook their heads and delivered dirty looks.  Then, they stared.  Then, they laughed and pointed.  Some people yelled indicative comments, but nothing would wake up Bear-pig-man. I figured that once the plane took off, he’d wake up and reset.  30 minutes in to Air Asia flight FD-3081, this proved false.  Eventually, two young English guys across the aisle began blowing up the paper barf bags provided by the airline, and popping them next to his ear, laughing hysterically the whole time.  Still nothing.  Even the airhostess that served my $5 Coke to me, attempted to wake him with a polite nudge, but gave up quickly, probably for fear that he might eat her.  At that point people stopped looking at him and started looking at me.  With pity, I assume.

The only thing that could wake the beast was itself.  Eventually, it was his own coughing fit that would bring him out of slumber.  It was one of the grossest things I’ve ever witnessed… and I’ve seen some grimy shit.  It began with a single cough.  Probably a piece of phlegm stuck in Fatboy’s windpipe.  Then, a short-lived pause as he inhaled oxygen signified the end of the snoring and the beginning of a violent session that would ultimately serve as an alarm clock to his mile-high siesta. 

At the beginning of the coughing fit/seizure/Discovery Channel special, he was still asleep.  His arms flailed, hitting me at least twice.  His legs bucked, pressing his already fully reclined seat even further back in to the knees of the old lady behind him.  He mumbled unrecognizable nothings in a language that I can only imagine to be Hobgoblin.  Fee Fi Fo Fum.  Every gulp of air he sucked in was immediately followed by a crackling cough as he sprayed entire lungfuls of phlegm on to the seatback in front of him.  It lasted maybe two minutes and as he finally came to consciousness he noticed that all eyes were on him, but didn’t seem to care.  He panted and gasped for a moment; clearing his throat and catching his breath as he wiped the drool off his chin and sweat off his horned forehead.  The beast was awake.  I expected a wave of applause, but there was none.  At this point no one was amused, only disgusted.  But at least it was all over.

The pilot came on the loudspeaker announcing that we were on our final descent.  A stewardess past by and told me that when I finished my $5 Coke (now contaminated), I had to put my tray up.  “No problem.”  Then a large, furry appendage from beside me reached across and raised my tray, locking it in to position on the seat in front of me…  “You put up tray now!”

I nodded.  “Sorry to disturb you, Bruno.”