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Wangchannoi is no longer at the gym, he has moved to a small gym in Cambodia. Bangsaen had indicated westerners were welcome to train with the gym, but it Isa true Thai gym and ther aren't many options nearby so staying at the gym seems most likely the only accommodation if you intend to stay beyond a couple days. They don't have social media in English, so I'd recommend just going to the gym and pleading your case: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4N8wMms2sU3xkeBbA

Hi Warren It was very quiet when I was there. A few local guys and 2-4 foreigners but that can change and I'm sure this gym has got more popular. You can schedule privates for whenever you want. The attention to detail here is unbelievable and I highly recommend you train at this gym. In my experience, everyone was really good training partners and I learnt loads everyday.

One of the most confused aspects of Western genuine interest in Thailand's Muay Thai is the invisibility of its social structure, upon which some of our fondest perceptions and values of it as a "traditional" and respect-driven art are founded. Because it takes passing out of tourist mode to see these things they remain opaque. (One can be in a tourist mode for a very long time in Thailand, enjoying the qualities of is culture as they are directed toward Westerners as part of its economy - an aspect of its centuries old culture of exchange and affinity for international trade and its peoples.). If one does not enter into substantive, stakeholder relations which usually involve fluently learning to speak the language (I have not, but my wife has), these things will remain hidden even to those that know Thailand well. It has been called, perhaps incorrectly, a "latent caste system". Thailand's is a patronage culture that is quiet strongly hierarchical - often in ways that are unseen to the foreigner in Muay Thai gyms - that carries with it vestigial forms of feudal-like relationships (the Sakdina system) that once involved very widespread slavery, indentured worker ethnicities, classes and networks of debt (both financial and social), much of those power relations now expressed in obligations. Westerners just do not - usually - see this web of shifting high vs low struggles, as we move within the commercial outward-facing layer that floats above it. In terms of Muay Thai, between these two layers - the inward-facing, rich, traditional patronage (though ethically problematic) historical layer AND the capitalist, commerce and exchange-driven, outward-facing layer - have developed fighter contract laws. It's safe to say that before these contract laws, I believe codified in the 1999 Boxing Act due to abuses, these legal powers would have been enforced by custom, its ethical norms and local political powers. There was social law before there was contract law. Aside from these larger societal hierarchies, there is also a history of Muay Thai fighters growing up in kaimuay camps that operate almost as orphanages (without the death of parents), or houses of care for youth into which young fighters are given over, very much like informal adoption. This can be seen in the light of both vestigial Thai social caste & its financial indenture (this is a good lecture on the history of cultures of indentured servitude, family as value & debt ), and the Thai custom of young boys entering a temple to become novice monks, granting spiritual merit to their parents. These camps can be understood as parallel families, with the heads of them seen as a father-like. Young fighters would be raised together, disciplined, given values (ideally, values reflected in Muay Thai itself), such that the larger hierarchies that organize the country are expressed more personally, in forms of obligation and debt placed upon both the raised fighter and also, importantly, the authorities in the gym. One has to be a good parent, a good benefactor, as well as a good son. Thai fighter contract law is meant to at bare bones reflect these deeper social obligations. It's enough to say that these are the social norms that govern Thailand's Muay Thai gyms, as they exist for Thais. And, these norms are difficult to map onto Western sensibilities as we might run into them. We come to Thailand...and to Thailand's gyms almost at the acme of Western freedom. Many come with the liberty of relative wealth, sometimes long term vacationers even with great wealth, entering a (semi) "traditional" culture with extraordinary autonomy. We often have choices outside of those found even in one's native country. Famously, older men find young, hot "pseudo-relationship" girlfriends well beyond their reach. Adults explore projects of masculinity, or self-development not available back home. For many the constrictures of the mores of their own cultures no longer seem to apply. When we go to this Thai gym or that, we are doing so out of an extreme sense of choice. We are variously versions of the "customer". We've learned by rote, "The customer is always right". When people come to Thailand to become a fighter, or an "authentic fighter", the longer they stay and the further they pass toward that (supposed) authenticity, they are entering into an invisible landscape of social attachments, submissions & debts. If you "really want to be 'treated like a Thai', this is a world of acute and quite rigid social hierarchies, one in which the freedom & liberties that may have motivated you are quite alien. What complicates this matter, is that this rigidity is the source of the traditional values which draws so many from around to the world to Thailand in the first place. If you were really "treated like a Thai", perhaps especially as a woman, you would probably find yourself quite disempowered, lacking in choice, and subject only to a hoped-for beneficence from those few you are obligated to and define your horizon of choice. Below is an excerpt from Lynne Miller's Fighting for Success, a book telling of her travails and lessons in owning the Sor. Sumalee Gym as a foreign woman. This passage is the most revealing story I've found about the consequences of these obligations, and their legal form, for the Thai fighter. The anecdote of the disorienting photo op meet is exemplar. While extreme in this case, the general form of obligations of what is going on here is omnipresent in Thai gyms...for Thais. It isn't just the contractual bounds, its the hierarchy, obligation, social debt, and family-like authorities upon which the contract law is founded. The story that she tells is of her own frustrations to resolve this matter in a way that seems quite equitable, fair to our sensibilities. Our Western idea of labor and its value. But, what is also occurring here is that, aside from claimed previous failures of care, there was a deep, face-losing breech of obligation when the fighter fled just before a big fight, and that there was no real reasonable financial "repair" for this loss of face. This is because beneath the commerce of fighting is still a very strong hierarchical social form, within which one's aura of authority is always being contested. This is social capital, as Bourdieu would say. It's a different economy. Thailand's Muay Thai is a form of social agonism, more than it is even an agonism of the ring. When you understand this, one might come to realize just how much of an anathema it is for middle class or lower-middle class Westerners to come from liberties and ideals of self-empowerment to Thailand to become "just like a Thai fighter". In some ways this would be like dreaming to become a janitor in a business. In some ways it is very much NOT like this as it can be imbued with traditional values...but in terms of social power and the ladder of authorities and how the work of training and fighting is construed, it is like this. This is something that is quite misunderstood. Even when Westerners, increasingly, become padmen in Thai gyms, imagining that they have achieved some kind of authenticity promotion of "coach", it is much more comparable to becoming a low-value (often free) worker, someone who pumps out rounds, not far from someone who sweeps the gym or works horse stables leading horse to pasture...in terms of social worth. When you come to a relatively "Thai" style gym as an adult novice aiming to perhaps become a fighter, you are doing this as a customer attempting to map onto a 10 year old Thai boy beginner who may very well become contractually owned by the gym, and socially obligated to its owner for life. These are very different, almost antithetical worlds. This is the fundamental tension between the beauties of Thai traditional Muay Thai culture, which carry very meaningful values, and its largely invisible, sometimes cruel and uncaring, social constriction. If you don't see the "ladder", and you only see "people", you aren't really seeing Thailand.

When we spoke to them during our filming they at first said that they were closed to non-Thais, but a little while later they changed their mind and said they were open to it, but that if you trained there you could not come and go, ie, you would have to treat it like a camp, and train in the restricted Thai fashion. I think this would be very difficult to manage if you did not speak Thai, to be honest about it. Most western friendly Thai gyms have enough English to get by, but Chor Hapayak is very, very Thai, at least as we encountered it. Also of note, believe that Wangchannoi is no longer a trainer there, though Bangsaen Tor. Kotsan (who is also in the Muay Thai Library) still is.

Hi Leto, welcome to the Library. There is a The Basics tag which allows you to scroll through all the sessions which tend to concentrate on basics. Sometimes these put basic principles into higher purpose, so they aren't just for beginners, and basics are really important at all levels, so everyone can get something out of them, but beginners especially. Thais like to always return to basics. You can find that here: https://www.patreon.com/sylviemuay/posts?filters[tag]=MTL%3A The Basics Every session has tags at the bottom of the post where you can scroll through related material. Among the basic sessions there are a few that stand out for me: #22 Singdam Kiatmoo9 - Making the Basics Beautiful (71 min) watch it here < this one really is a ground up walk through the basics of stance, rhythm and stepping. Getting everything right so that what you build on echoes through all your techniques that follow. Singdam provides perhaps the best progression through the basics I've yet filmed, the blueprint of his beautiful, effective style. This instruction is bottomless. Even after 5 years in Thailand there is a ton for me in this very close examination of powerful technique essentials. #34 Samart Payakaroon - Balance, Balance, Balance! (81 min) watch it here < here one of the greatest ever teaches an elementary symmetry and his philosophy about balance in all things. Atop the tower of Muay Thai legends probably stands Samart. 3x Fighter of the Year, 4x Lumpinee Champion and WBC World Boxing Champion, no fighter more brilliantly showed what femeu fighting could do. In this session he shows the foundations of how to build true balance, the ultimate key to his fighting style. #14 Chatchai Sasakul 1 - Perfecting Hands (106 min) watch it here < Chatchai is probably the best boxing coach in Thailand. But he also was a respected Muay Thai fighter in the Golden Age. He teaches a weight-transfer philosophy in strikes connected to Muay Thai Former WBC world boxing champion at Flyweight, and winner of Best Coach of the Year in Thailand, Chatchai in this nearly 2 hours of video makes micro adjustment after micro adjustment, honing in pristine technique in the basic strikes of boxing, for use in Muay Thai. It's all about weight transfer. #64 Chatchai Sasakul 2 - Elements of Boxing (72 min) watch it here < more basics from Chatchai. Honestly his sessions can be viewed many, many times. Chatchai is not only a former WBC world champion, he also is the recipient of Thailand's Coach of the Year. He is one of the great striking coaches in the world, and in this session he breaks down all the basics from the footwork on up. Nobody has a more beautiful and potent hands foundation. Watch and learn from a master. #96 Hippy Singmanee 3 - Basics of Balance, Rhythm & Footwork (75 min) watch it here < one of the slickest fighters of the Golden Age breaks it all down to how to move and rhythm through all strikes and defense. When a legend of the sport teaches you the core basics of Golden Age Muay Thai you stop and listen. These movements are essential for reaching higher levels of fighting, and Hippy - who was probably the best small fighter of his time, always fighting up - teaches these movements to his own young fighters. Build from the ground up. #60 Sagat Petchindee 3 - All the Strikes Tuned and Dangerous (101 min) watch it here < one of the best instructors in all of Thailand going through all the strikes One of the great, legendary names of Thailand, Sagat Petchyindee the inspiration for the Street Fighter character, goes through his entire striking philosophy with lots of technical correction and fine tuning. See the secret to his creation of smooth, efficient, explosive power, and witness the amazing man himself.