That One Time I Went Boxing on Ko Phi Phi

I spent a lot of my first trip around the world partying. I was twenty-five and ready to cut loose after a quarter century of living a fairly sheltered, middle-class life. In my mind, a lot of backpacking was about meeting fellow travelers, partying, and saying yes to anything that came your way. And that often lead to some outrageous experiences.

Like getting into a boxing ring in Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

Before I began that trip in 2006, I used the website MySpace to meet travelers in advance, since, as an introvert, I was very worried that I wouldn’t make any friends on the road. MySpace had a lot of travel groups, so I reached out to people in hopes of meeting up with them on the trip. (I was early to using the web as a social tool: I had a blog in 2001, and I met my first girlfriend on Friendster back when meeting people online was taboo.)

After landing in Bangkok at the end of that year, I happened to run into Lindsay in the airport, a Brit I was scheduled to meet later that week in Krabi. She was with her friends John and Stephanie. As luck would have it, we were on the same flight to Phuket, so we decided to start our trip together early.

In Phuket, we had booked lodging at the hostel made famous by the movie The Beach. It was as terrible as the film made it out to be, with thin walls, dirty bathrooms, and hard beds. We stayed one night.

From there, we went to Ko Phi Phi, where we planned to spend three nights. The island was still reeling from the tsunami that had devastated it two years before, a cacophony of noise as it tried to rebuild itself. There was debris and construction everywhere, and many businesses were still closed and homes abandoned.

We found a cheap room on the far end of the main town, bunking together to save money, a traveler’s most precious commodity.

That night, we did what backpackers do on the island: we partied. We ate cheap food in the bustling night market, with vendors selling overpriced pad thai to travelers who didn’t know better. From there, went from bar to bar, getting progressively drunker, before ending up at the Reggae Bar, which is famous for two reasons: buckets of cheap booze and a boxing ring in the center.

But the ring isn’t for watching professional Thai boxers. No, it’s there so backpackers can watch other backpackers beat the shit out of each other for free buckets of booze. (A “bucket” is Thai whiskey, Red Bull, and Coke in a child’s beach pail. It gets you very smashed.)

As we got drunker and drunker, James dared me to go box in the ring. “Come on! We need more booze,” he said egging me on.

As the night wore on and the alcohol did its thing, I decided to say fuck it. “Fine, I’ll do it,” I agreed, giving in to the desire to say yes to anything and impress my new friends.

I ended up in the ring with an oversized German guy who was about as drunk as I was.

“Go easy on me,” I said. “I’ve never been in a fight.”

“No problem. This is just for fun anyway,” he replied in a slurred, accented voice.

Being drunk, I got a bit overzealous and didn’t “go easy” on him. I got aggressive, landing blows where I could, and the first round was called in my favor.

In the second, he fought back, not wanting to lose to an American who was half his size. His blows hurt, even in my drunken state.

That round was called for him.

In the final round, we both got a little aggressive. He easily defeated me, as the ref, not wanting me to get too pummeled, quickly called the round — and match — for him.

But everyone loves an underdog, so boos erupted from the audience.

Aiming to please the crowd, the bar also ended up giving me a free bucket, and the German guy and I cheered each other. His friends joined mine, and we partied the night away.

The next morning, when I woke up, I was stiff as a board and had a terrible hangover. Though just lightly bruised, I could barely move. Every part of my body ached.

“Why is everything sore? What did we do last night?”

It took a few minutes, and then it hit me (so to speak).

“Ohhh, yeah, I boxed someone last night!”

While I was not thinking of the repercussions to my body the night before, I was well attuned to them now. It was like a truck had backed up and down my body multiple times as I laid flat in bed.

My friends and I laughed and joked about how stupid it was to box someone double my size for some alcohol. I lay there aching as my friends got ready, until I finally had to get dressed myself. We headed to the beach to soak up the sun on the sand and get some breakfast.

Boxing in that ring was one of the more spontaneous things I did on that trip and, while I won’t ever do it again, it’s one of those “fuck yes” moments that brought me closer to my friends and made for a good memory.