Here's how I learned how many pushups I can do and avoided being murdered in the process.

After skimming through the journal entries for my most recent trip to Thailand back in October of last year, I realized that I somehow managed to leave out a pretty wild story, especially considering the fact that most of my entries consisted of slight variations on the train, eat, drink, sleep routine. Even a quick look at the original text file I used to jot down short notes on my experiences failed to mention it.

Seeing as how this story took place about seven months ago (that coupled with the fact that there was alcohol involved), my recollection of the night's events may not be 100% accurate, but I'm going to do my best to remember everything as they happened. There is no need for creative embellishment as the actual events are pretty great on their own merit.

Most of my nights were spent at a little beer bar called the Beach Bar which was directly across the street from the Icon nightclub. The Beach Bar is close to Sinbi's gym, I know and like the girls, and I almost always have a good, relaxed time there. Also there almost every night was some eurotrash fuckface and a perpetually drunken Russian (I know, I know) named Victor. What the girls told me about Victor was that he owned a few rental properties throughout Phuket, was married but in love with a bar girl, and suffered from an unknown or unnamed disease he contracted through a dirty bamboo tattoo he got while spending time in Cambodia. What I overheard Victor tell me about Victor was that he spent a number of years in the Russian Army and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men, women, and children.

Anyone that's even gone out drinking with me or has spent any time around me after I've been drinking would most likely describe me as a pretty chill drunk; I don't get loud and I don't start shit with anyone, so why Victor decided to start shit with me on more than one occasion is still kind of a mystery to me. He started shit with plenty of the girls at the bar as well, but my only guess would be that I got his attention because I was usually the only male in the bar under the age of sixty-five, and the girls seemed to genuinely like me while avoiding him at all costs.

The first time Victor decided to make a scene wasn't really all that big a deal; it involved some yelling, cursing, and posturing, but I never felt threatened and the bar's owner (who unfortunately had to -- and most likely still has to -- deal with Victor's shit on a daily basis) was there to calm him down. I stayed in my seat the entire time and tried to avoid escalating the situation, all while maintaining eye contact with him in case he decided to sucker punch me. Things died down considerably once Victor passed the fuck out on an old couch set up in the back of the bar, by the kitchen.

A few days went by without any further incident. In fact, after Victor had sobered up the following day, he told the girls he felt like a real asshole and asked them to apologize to me for his bullshit. I couldn't care less about this guy, but I was thankful that I could drink in peace at my favorite bar again. God knows I didn't want to go through the trouble of finding a new one, or go hang out at the Freedom Bar on Rawai Beach with all of the dinks from Rawai Muay Thai.

Of course this was all too good to be true. Not all that long after the first incident, I was back hanging out at the Beach Bar with Victor sitting directly across the way from me, when I saw him talking to an older guy seated directly next to him, appearing fairly agitated. I couldn't make out anything he was saying, but I noticed him point at me more than once. I initially figured he was probably explaining what had happened the other night, but he only got more and more angry. Eventually Victor enthusiastically rang the bell above the bar that's used to buy everyone a round, shouted "drinks for everyone!" before pointing directly at me once again and continuing, "except for him! YOU don't get a drink!"

"Fuck. Here we go again," I thought, and I attempted to diffuse the situation by informing Victor that I bought my own drinks and I was completely fine with that. But he raged on, once again leaving his chair on the other side of the bar and getting right in my face. Again, I remained seated but facing him in case he decided to do something stupid. I guess it's worth noting that Victor probably had somewhere between 50-60 pounds on me, but he was a few inches shorter and almost fall-down drunk. I wasn't scared of him -- worst case scenario I could easily outrun this dude -- but there absolutely no reason for me to fight this guy. I'm in Thailand, for Christ's sake. Have you ever watched Locked Up Abroad? The last thing I ever want to do is run afoul of the law in Southeast Asia. Plus this is my favorite area bar, and I have no desire to x it off my list for some shit I didn't start. So I kept my composure and told him to sit down.

During the course of his huffing and puffing around the bar, he shoved Rung -- one of the girls working at the bar -- hard enough that she fell backwards a couple feet into some rocks. Getting in my face is one thing, but beating up on a Thai girl half his size is far over the line. It was at that point that I finally got up and stood between him and the girls. Again, I stood my ground, but I didn't do anything to instigate any sort of physical altercation. I even let my hands dangle at my sides, stupidly leaving my entire face and head open. I still wasn't particularly worried about anything this guy could do to me. Have you ever seen a drunk try to throw a punch?

By now, the bar's mammasan was so pissed that she picked up a giant flower pot by the side of the road and threw it down at Victor's feet, sending ceramic shards and soil everywhere. It was actually sort of hilarious, but the whole situation was surreal enough for me to easily stifle any laughter. Victor cooled down for a minute or so after the flower pot incident and took his seat at the bar, but managed to quickly rile himself back up. This time, before he got back up, he grabbed a seashell ashtray off the bar and crushed it in his hand, shredding his palm and instantly bleeding all over the place. I remembered what the girls said about his mystery illness and this now became my primary concern. Victor again approached me and began to threaten me with a shard of the seashell ashtray, shouting that he was going to slit my throat from ear to ear and then pay off the local cops, all of which is probably entirely possible. But I continued to stand my ground as I got more and more annoyed the longer this stupid situation stretched out, I actually started to lose my cool a bit, going so far as to call Victor a "pussy" multiple times for needing a weapon to fight someone almost half his size.

This is where things get a little fuzzy, and not because I was stabbed with a broken ashtray and sustained major blood loss or anything. The standoff between Victor and I continued for maybe another ten minutes or so while he continued to rant on and on about all of the money and power he had in Phuket and all of the people he had killed back in Russia while I seriously began to miss my previously ice cold Chang beer, still sitting untouched at the far end of the bar. I guess that once it finally became clear to Victor that I wasn't going to swing at him and that he was too much of a blowhard to deliver on half of the threats he made towards me, he moved on from threatening my life to challenging me to a pushup contest. Seriously.

While a good, old fashioned pushup contest sounds infinitely better than fending off a drunken Russian with a broken seashell ashtray for a weapon, I also felt like I was at a slight disadvantage as I A) had been training all day, which included somewhere between 100-150 pushups already and B) my left shoulder had been bothering me for months already (this was back when my posterior torn labrum had been misdiagnosed as bicep inflammation just before I left). But then I came to the realization that even if I lost the challenge, it would probably get Victor off my case anyway as it would effectively prove to me and everyone around us that he was the better man, so I accepted and agreed to go first.

I'm no knucklehead, so I made sure that I left a good five to six foot buffer between Victor and I before I dropped down onto my hands. That way, if he decided to wait until I was on the ground before attempting to soccer kick my skull, I'd have some time to react. It turned out not to be an elementary ruse; Victor really let me do my pushups in peace -- 78 in total. Victor was next. Although he started at a brisk enough pace to worry me, he petered out and eventually stopped somewhere in the mid-forties. Ready to quietly revel in my win and get back to my drink, I was surprised when I learned that we weren't done. Or, more specifically, Victor wasn't done. After a thirty second break, Victor then continued doing his pushups and counting as if he had never stopped, picking up exactly where he left off. I had no idea where he was going with this, but I let him continue, figuring the better he felt about himself, the less I would have to deal with him. Two pushups in, his arms gave out and he fell face-first onto the concrete, splitting open his forehead. Unfazed, he returned to the starting position and grinded out four more pushups. He then stopped again, took another twenty second break, and then grimaced through another three or four pushups for somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty "consecutive" pushups. Victor stood up, said something about it being "close", and then -- obviously unhappy with the result -- challenged me to a one armed pushup contest. All I really wanted was to drink a fucking beer in peace, but I reluctantly agreed. This time, Victor went first, dropping down to the floor, taking an extremely wide stance, and doing ten ugly one armed pushups. I can't remember the last time I did a single one armed pushup, let alone after knocking out somewhere around two hundred pushups in the preceding hours, but I dropped down, assumed a normal base, and managed to muscle through thirteen of them. After being bested by a much smaller man twice in a row, and at his own challenges, Victor then proposed a THIRD contest: sit ups. By this point, I had most definitely had enough, and I declined. Victor took it well, even offering to shake my hand and buy me a drink. I took him up on the latter and made him buy me a Jack and Coke for my troubles (and for the warm Chang he dragged me from) and managed to go the rest of my trip without dealing with his bullshit again. In fact, on more than a few occasions, Victor would approach me at the bar, shake my hand, and ask me how I was doing. And if I remember correctly, he even said something along the lines of, "you're my friend now; if anyone ever fucks with you, you tell me and I fuck with them." Of course I never took him up on it as out of the four times I've been to Thailand, this asshole was the only one who ever gave me a hard time. There was the drunken German from the previous trip who went on and on about how much he hated America, but he was a harmless idiot.

So that's how I avoided being killed by a drunken Russian by way of a broken seashell ashtray and learned how many consecutive pushups I could do in the process. I hope I didn't miss any entertaining or important details.