I swam the 850 meters across the Mekong yesterday morning and in addition to the glorious prize of not drowning and a 29 min time,* I also won a sunburn! Now I know that if your big not-drowning plan is to swim on your back three-quarters of the way, you should remember sunscreen. Remind me again, athletic family, what’s fun about physical exertion to the point of exhaustion? Ah, I jest. We all know it’s for the bragging rights and giardia.

The river swim was but one of the weekend’s exceedingly strange activities. Last night I trekked out to the TV station headquarters to watch Thai boxing being televised from a heatsink of a stadium halfway between MSG and the fighclub basement. Thai boxing pits small (buff) guys in smaller shorts against oneanother and involves a kind of grappling-embrace I suspect is far more common in gay porn than in sports. Did I mention the building is a heatsink? By round two these guys are literally sliding off the ropes, floor, eachother; anything they touch. During every round there is this terrific, eerily beautiful and almost religious music being piped over the loudspeakers. After boxing came dinner at a beer garden which sported possibly the most psychedelic stage background this side of a junior high garage band’s in 1970s Detroit.

What else this weekend? I rode a moto for a half-block without crashing. The houseguards got a puppy. Had tequila shots with the owner of the Mexican joint while eavesdropping on old guys next to us unrelatedly talking about the Daily. Got mangoes off a mango tree. Bought 5 DVDs that all seem to be damaged. Made plans to become addicted to Battlesatr Galatica. Began rereading The Quiet American.

Und. Ja.

*to be fair, though, that should be about 5 minutes less since I got swept along with the current and wound up a fair hike from the docked return boat)