The Renaissance Man Project is an original non-fiction novel by Nathaniel Kostar, occasionally known as Nate Lost. Follow @natelost
From deep sleep I open my eyes just wide enough to see my watch: 6:48 a.m. My plan was to go to a yoga class at 7, but I have neither the will, strength or desire to leave this bed. I go back to sleep and wake up about an hour later. Now I really try to get up, but I’m sore all over. My upper back, shoulders, shoulder blades and lats, my legs from my thighs to the tops of my feet, my biceps and especially my triceps, my sides just below the ribs, and even the muscles in my ass are sore. I fall gently back onto my pillow, trying not to lean too hard on any of my many tender aches.
I finally make it to the camp around 10 a.m. with a revised plan to lift weights on my own and then train Muay Thai in the afternoon. But when I get to the gym, Lars is sitting on a scooter in the parking lot and calls me over.
“Hey Nate,” he hollers. “I go to the beach. You want to come?”
“You’re not training today?”
“No, too tired. My body needs to rest.”
“Shit, I hear you.”
“The salt water is good for the muscles. We go train tomorrow. Today, let the body heal.”
Lars is far more experienced in dealing with the body than I am. He can bench press 300 pounds and touch his head to his knees with the flexibility of a 12-year old Russian gymnast. Plus, he talks like a Norwegian shaman. He knows what’s best, I think. Also, it feels good to hear him complain about being sore. This motherfucker's just come from six months training Kung Fu somewhere in the mountains of China. If he's sore and needs a day off, maybe I do too.
I glance over and see Dang carrying his thin stick past a fighter hugging a heavy bag—‘knee! haa! One!, knee! haa! Two! knee! Haa!...’
“Fuck it, let’s go. You know how to drive one of these?” I say as I climb onto the back of the scooter.
“Yes, we drive all the time in Norway...But on the other side of the road! Ha!”
We zip along the narrow road, past Tony’s where a few injured fighters are taking a late breakfast. I have already met four or five guys at Tony’s with huge gashes on their legs and bruises up and down their bodies; injuries suffered not from fighting but from attempting to navigate these precarious roads on scooters. A big guy from Vancouver told me he pulled out onto the main road that intersects the road where we train, and instead of pulling into the left lane like they do in Thailand, he naturally pulled into the right lane headed directly for traffic. He jerked his vehicle to the side in time to avoid a head-on collision, but roads in Thailand are often flanked by large irrigation ditches and he went straight into one of these ditches at twenty miles per hour. He was pretty banged up and hadn’t trained in two weeks and spent most of his days sitting around Tony’s chatting with other fighters.
On the way to the beach we pass the elephant who looks more melancholy than usual this morning as about ten tourists—khaki-pants and dangling cameras—hover around with curious excitement and expectation. We pass the tall, thin rubber trees—perfect in their form. Then my apartment, and a sign I haven’t noticed before that hangs on a gate across the street—“Snake Park.” It looks like a big theatre, and I imagine a plethora of viscous snakes are hissing, twisting, hanging, and slithering from vines inside. We turn onto the main road, a two-lane pot-holed “highway” that’s shoddy concrete fades fiercely at the sides into gravel, rock and mud.
Trucks, cars, scooters and motorbikes zip by exhaling dark plumes of smoke. Looks like a good road to die on.
“What beach are we going to?!” I shout over the hum of the scooter.
Lars shrugs. “We follow the signs.”
I don’t know Lars very well, but he strikes me as an extreme kind of guy. A Mountain Dew commercial hanging off the side of a cliff or racing a DMX bike over massive sand jumps in a man-made desert kind of guy. He speeds up to about forty mph.
After ten minutes of racing along we come to a police road block. We slow down, and a cop, uniformed and stone-face, waves us to the side of the road. Lars stops the motorbike, gets off and walks over to speak with him. I sit on the scooter until he comes back.
“What happened?”
“We get a ticket.”
“For what?”
“No helmets...no license. ha!”
“Oh shit. How much?”
“500 baht.” 500 baht is about $15.
“No helmet or license and only 500 baht!” he laughs and climbs onto the scooter.
“So what do we do now?”
“We go to the beach!”
Twice more we’re stopped by road blocks before we get to the beach, and once on the way back. But each time we show the police our ticket they laugh and wave us on our way.
We eventually reach a town called Pattaya. I’ve already heard tales about Pattaya from people at Tony’s. Prostitutes, massage parlors, bars, clubs, Muay Thai fights—it’s all here. There’s also a sprawling shopping mall and a cluster of shops along a beach that must have once been very beautiful but that is now littered with trash and Western tourists, mostly middle-aged men, stretched out under palms like white-bellied whales. As we cruise the town, Thai girls leaning in doorways wave us in their direction. On the sidewalks sinister, hard-faced men hold up signs that say things like, “Ping Pong Show,” “2 for 1 drink and girls,” and “120 Girls on four stages.”
“They must have some big fucking stages!” I say.
“Or very small girls!” Lars shouts back.
They certainly have a lot of girls. Everywhere we look, more girls. And some are not girls, but men dressed as girls, known as “Ladyboys” in Thailand. They peer at us seductively from narrow neon-lit “massage parlors” and cat-call “massaaaash” as we pass.
We only stop at Pattaya to buy sandals from a little road-stand. Then we head further up the coast. We finally arrive at a quiet beach named Kata. This is what we want. White sand and crystal water. The flat-line horizon and a seemingly infinite blue sky. Palms like green flags lining the back end of the beach where older Thai women give massages and smoothies and tropical fruit drinks are being mixed in blenders at little stands where coconuts, mango, and pineapples are stacked. And other stands sell fish and shrimp and Pad Thai and fried rice.
We park the motor bike and walk out onto the sand, tired and content. We are happy not to be in Muay Thai running laps and punching holes through the dense, sultry air. Happy to see the natural beauty of Thailand for the first time—lush green mountains morphing into cliffs and rock formations that jet out over the glassy, calm water. We are happy to watch pretty women who are neither prostitutes nor ferocious fighters jog by us in the shallow surf, their feet kicking up beads of clear crystal. And I’m happy myself—happy to have made it the ten miles or so over the hills of Phuket without tumbling to the hard cement and an early grave at the hands of my new Norwegian friend.
“500 baht! Ha!” Lars says again, looking at our ticket. “In Norway we go to fuckin’ jail, man!”
The Renaissance Man Project has been in the works for many years and I'm excited to release pieces of it on Steemit. If you want to support the book please hit me w/ an Upvote & Follow @natelost if you're on Steemit. And if you're not on Steemit, you should consider checking it out, especially if you're a content creator.
I also make music. My first album, Love 'n' Travel, was recorded in New Orleans, LA by Db Productions and is available on Spotify and Bandcamp
Follow me on Twitter @NateLostWords
Facebook @NateLostArt/
or visit NateLost.com.
Muchisimas gracias for reading and supporting independent art.
MAD Love.
Read Intro, Part 1
Read Intro, Part 2
Read Intro, Part 3
Read Intro, Part 4
Read Ch 1, Part 1
Read Ch 1, Part 2
Read Ch 1, Part 3
Read Ch1, Part4
Read Ch 1, Part 5
Read Ch 1, Part 7
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Lars currently owns a gym in Oslo, Norway. He teaches Muay Thai, meditation, Gi-Gong, Kung Fu and other martial arts. Click here for more info about his gym Balance La Vida
