Kero Tide

I wrote a poem to Sylvie about Karuhat once: "Karuhat, The king of cats, He has a hat, full of clapping bats And lots of friends, in as many flats He's not a brat. But if you act, Like a twat, He will pat your back and you will fall, In a friendly pit full of hungry rats." And this has been my input, lol

This whole thread really hits me hard in ways I can't articulate well yet. Thank you for this. It resonates strongly with an anecdote of mine though: I took a video of a snail recently. I like taking short clips of stuff happening around me, usually animals. I always have in mind to send them to my friends/family. It's a love language of sorts. It's rare that I film stuff for myself. As a result, I tend to film with the mindset that I shouldn't let the video be more than a minute long. You know, the social media standard length ... Over a minute might be too long - they might get bored. So when I saw that snail at first I sat down with the idea of simply taking pictures of it. The snail didn't seem bothered by my presence at all and kept sliding forward to wherever he meant to go (sometimes snail freeze or "go home" we get too close). After a few rapid snaps I felt like filming its journey for a few seconds. The snail looked even more cute in motion! As soon as I started filming I thought why not just stay still and let the snail leave the frame entirely before cutting, no matter how, long that might take? Honestly, my thought weren't that deep while it was happening. I was simply appreciating the beauty of the snail in that particular lighting. I attributed some meaning to it afterwards: maybe I did it to remind myself how I need to slow down; how I need to focus better on the whole story, not just tiny parts here and there; how I need to commit to the very end of things: not taking shortcuts, no stopping when the pace and the distance and the matter are too uncomfortable; and not running away. Snails can't run away. They're very vulnerable. After I stopped filming, I stayed with the snail until it reached the side of the path - where there's less risk to be stomped on. Usually when I see a snail in the middle of a path/road I pick it up and put it somewhere I assume is "safer". I didn't want to interrupt the snail's flow this time. https://youtu.be/aMZdEv09Qgo

Sylvie smashing through the weight classes, and the WBC rankings as a result.

When I was in Thailand I was using the Woody brand in size medium. I don't like it when shinguards go over my toes or over my knees so I choose a smaller fit on purpose. In France I don't use any.

"No run, no Muay Thai" ... Hahahaha.

Because Muay Thai is breathing to me. Everything else is just drowning. There's a quote from Rosa Luxemburg that goes: "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains". In a similar fashion I wasn't aware I wasn't breathing before starting Muay Thai. The oxygen it gave me is my life-changing discovery - that and kitties.

Out of my little training experience in Thailand, I would say as long as you're doing something they most probably will appreciate the effort. I trained at Lamnammoon Muay Thai (in Ubon Ratchatani) for about two months and during that time I saw that most people (foreigners) weren't always doing the full 10k in the morning, and some had to walk or skip altogether because of injuries or exhaustion, etc. Even the Thai fighters didn't always run non-stop. Sometimes they walked, especially in the afternoon run. Also their running pace were usually quite slow. Not that they can't run fast but most often they couldn't be bothered. That said, the more you run (and the harder) the more the coaches will be content and take you seriously. My coaches basically told me I could fight when they saw how much I ran. Not when they saw how hard I hit or how slick my techniques were (Lol I would still not be ready then). Running is really essential. You say you're an awful runner, but how many days per week do you run usually? Unless you're a rare exception, your running endurance should definitely improve if you run everyday. It sucks for a while but that's okay. It should stop being awful once you're used to it. Unless you personally want to keep improving your pace for whatever reasons, then running will suck forever haha.

I don't have much more infos to add to what's already been said. Plus I've only stayed one week in Pattaya so my input is very limited. I was staying at the Royal Thai Residence and I ate outside everyday. Basically my eating routine was fruits for lunch and a meal consisting of rice and veggies for diner at a street food stall nearby the hotel. That evening meal cost me about 50 bath. The fruits I'd buy them in the morning before training at a market near Jomtien Beach. If I remember well I would buy for around 100/150 baht of fruits and it would last me two days or so. I'd also buy cheap snacks from convenience store sometimes; and coconuts everytime I see them. I think one whole coconut costs around 50 baht. As for water you can buy a bottle for cheap (10 or 15 baht I don't remember) and when it's empty just fill it back up for 1baht at the many "water providers thingies" you can find everywhere outside. It's cheaper to do this than buying packs. All in all, I think I was spending around 150 baht on food/water everyday. I guess you could do less if you don't snack at all. I told Kevin the more time you spend at the gym the less money you spend on food (or otherwise) so there's a tip if you want to save money. You could also try fasting every other day like Sylvie and Kevin. Hahaha.

I hate wearing shinguards. I don't wear them anymore at my gyms or when I just train with my coach outside. I don't like wearing any kind of protective gear anymore to be honest, not even gloves. It just feels unnecessary bulky and in the way like swimming with all your clothes on. I also happen to have grown fond of both the pain I feel and the pain I inflict when bones hit bones. It's so satisfying to see your partner wince from the contact while you barely felt anything. Or you actually felt something big time and you loved it! Getting more exalted as a result. In both instances your partner usually freaks out/back down. Besides it really does help better with learning control and distance not to wear anything. When I kick kinda too hard at the wrong distance and the part of myself that lands on the other's bone isn't my shin but my foot, I can assure you I feel like screaming and will remember it. If I do the same with shinguards, I will probably not feel the sting at all. My body and mind might not learn the lesson. Might get longer to sink in. Really, protective gears annoy me so much now. I don't even wear bands anymore. I'm no expert at all so I'm not saying I'm right. I just find them useless for the kind of person I would like to become, and the kind of enjoyment I get out of not wearing anything. I even envy men who can train in pants barechested. You're not as free to be that naked when you're a woman, for several (kinda obvious) reasons I can't be bother to list out.

I was planning on expanding my view and experience on this issue at some point. I didn't insist on it right away because I meant to only do a "quick" review here first. There is definitely a different treatment of women when it comes to clinching in this gym and it's no small thing. Though far from what Sylvie experienced at Lanna. Still, around three years prior to my stay there women were not even allowed in the only ring at Lamnammoon's at all. It's one of the first foreigner (a man) who got to train at Lamnammoon's and who still lives in Ubon nowadays who told me about this. It's changing though which is good but it's kinda slow. When I arrived at the gym I noticed the other (just as recently arrived as me) Westerners who were men were right away told to go into the ring when it was time to clinch but me I was not. After a few days I started asking for clinch and insisting - which is really out of character for me. After a while longer I would just go in the ring at the same time as them and hope for the best lol. I hated having to wait for a clinch partner when we were an odd number in the ring so there were periods when I wouldn't even bother to ask for clinch or to get in the ring and I'd just do other work so as not to waste time or cool down for nothing. The trainers would never seem to wonder why I'm not clinching. If I were a man I'm pretty positive they would either tell me to go in the ring or at least ask me why I'm not clinching. It's a lot of little stuff like this throughout my stay. Plus most of the Thai boys felt awkward clinching with me, I could sense that. Things started to shift a little when my first fight was booked and after everyone started noticing how serious I was in my training. The nearer my fight the more I was actually told to clinch which felt real good. I left the gym a week after that first fight so I can't say for sure if I would have eventually been wholly included in the flow of the gym - with no more feeling subtly left out of clinching. It definitely looked like I was getting there - or maybe I'm being too optimistic too early. Can't say for sure. The Thai boys were warming up to me too and maybe it would have gotten less and less awkward for them to clinch with me and girls in general as time went by. Here again, only speculating. I don't think there ever was a woman fighter staying really long term at that gym since Lamnammoon took over the old Sor Sumalee gym and made it his own. There was a Thai woman fighter there a while ago before my stay, but I don't actually know how long she stayed and whether she struggled with getting the same clinch practice as the men or not. Like Sylvie said in one of her posts, the more women are present in old traditional gym and take up space and set precedent the nearer we're getting into normalizing Nak Muay Ying and women in so-called traditional "male space". One year staying at Lamnammoon and I would've gotten a clearer picture of how open minded they are of letting big changes in. Lamnammoon is still commonly narrow in his thinking. He told me once women fighting is not the same as men fighting and there was no ambiguity that he meant they were lesser than men. But amongst the narrow-minded I sense he's pretty open-minded, if that makes sense. There may be room for big shift in thinking. Or yet again I'm being too hopeful. I'm also still going back and forth in my mind between how much of the holding out from clinch directly comes from the men at the gym and how much it comes from my own anxious mind seeing too much rejection where there is not as much and as a result rejecting myself before they could even get the chance to reject me. Like I'd rather take my own life than having someone take it from me. Which in itself sounds like a nasty effect of the patriarchy... You're conditioned to segregate yourself to save men from having to perform this chore. They can stay sit on the couch slacking while you self sabotage for their sake. I'm getting worked up here all of a sudden. None of what I've mentioned or experienced there is new to you at all of course. It's sad it's still common stuff all over Thailand. It would still be so interesting to see what kind of experience Sylvie would get there for a week or so, being the legendary titan that she is. They would all probably become quite speechless. But yeah not at the expanse of her piece of mind. I only started getting real serious not awkward clinch training when I got to Petchrungruang. Maybe one day Lamnammoon's gym will get to that level of "intense clinch training no matter the gender" but it definitely wasn't there yet when I was there. It's still an incredible gym and I definitely want to go back there for a month or two. I'll be more insisting with clinch this time, if not for me, for women coming after me.

Lamnammoon Sor Sumalee was an absolute legend from the Golden Era who specialized in knees. He won his first ever fight with a knee KO (He was nicknamed the Vampire of Knees by the press). He has his own gym now, situated in Ubon Ratchathani, one of the four great city of Isaan. It's the region he grew up in. I went to Lamnammoon's gym last year (2018) between end of September and early December. Damn, I don't even know where to start... It was SO great. I love this place to bits. Before I keep going whoever reads this may want to check out Sylvie's take on "Gym recommendations" if they haven't done already. It's always difficult recommending a gym because gyms are not frozen in time and everybody has their own expectations about what they want out of things in their lives. Lamnammoon's gym, like any other gym, go through changes all the time. The training partners I had during my stay there and some of the coaches I was blessed enough to learn from are not currently there anymore. And those people contributed a lot to my progress and happiness. Now, Lamnammoon is Lamnammoon no matter what. His gym has a its own soul that he's slowly been nurturing for years with all his heart which I think has remained the same to this very day. It's an intense, old school, leaning toward Muay Khao (but not exclusively at all. He adapts to the fighter's nature), big on fight kind of gym. If you give your heart to the gym and work hard, you will get the equivalent attention and focus right back to you. If you'd rather train not too hard and just be a chill tourist, you won't get ignored or looked down upon or neglected but you'll get the same kind of nonchalance in return. It's a fair place where you reap what you sow. Unless you're a woman. However to be fair the disparity between genders really is not as great as what you'd expect in a gym that not so long ago still didn't allow any woman in the ring. Clinching put aside I got absolute great training and attention like everybody else. No shady behaviors from anyone either. First day you get there Lamnammoon will probably take you on pads himself to assess where you're at. Then he might advise you to take it lightly the first week, and gradually build up the intensity of your training to match the overall level. Definitely take it light the first week! Don't go all in at the beginning. He told me how he saw SO many Westerners coming to his gym and going crazy berserk the first few days to try and impress everyone, before quickly dying out like a deflating balloon. I don't know whether you wish to fight or not, but if you want to fight you should be serious and consistent and not skip training (unless you're ill). Lamnammoon absolutely loves people with good heart. That means: being humble, training hard all the time, never quitting, not showing fatigue, not complaining about comfort issues. When he was a young fighter Lamnammoon used to sleep on the ring alongside his buddies and his pillow was a pad, and that's it. So, I don't encourage you to complain about being in pain or feeling uncomfortable unless it's really serious, or unless you don't intend to be taken seriously as a fighter. .Accommodations. > Staying at Lamnammoon's home: you can choose the whole package of training/room/food for 28 000 baht per month. You'll be housed at Lamnammoon's own home in one of the several rooms he rents mostly for foreigners. There's aircon in the room. You can also get WiFi. No TV though. And if you have the same room I had: no warm water and an annoying mouse running around and munching on your bananas lol. His home is situated 6km away from the gym. You get fed twice a day (Lunch + diner after each session) with delicious home cooked local dishes (it's absolutely wonderful I kid you not). That's the option I took and I don't regret it one bit even though it's far from cheap. But investing in such a great gym feels awesome, and being around Lamnammoon and his family all the time is too precious for words. Sometimes he takes you out to the restaurant alongside his family. What an honor. His wife and his son are very welcoming and kind. He also has a daughter but I didn't interact with her much. I saw his dad a few times and I was too intimidated to discuss with him much. He had an aura of pure wisdom and kindness about him. Such wonderful people. > Staying at an hotel near the gym: some of my fellow training partners from the West were staying at this hotel very close to the gym. It's 5000 baht a month I think and the quality is pretty decent. The cost of training at Lamnammoon's (without food and lodgings) is 10 000 baht per month. So hotel + training = 15 000 baht. There are restaurants around the hotel and one meal usually cost around 40 baht or something. If you do the math you'll see this option is way cheaper. You'll also be more free to leave the gym whenever you want, whereas if you stay at Lamnammoon's house you've got to leave when the driver leaves (the driver being Lamnammoon or his son or whoever gives us a lift). Unless you have your own vehicle: you can rent a motorbike if you wish. Lamnammoon can take care of this for you. It's not expansive. Sometimes I had to cut short my conditioning/stretching at the end of session cause we were leaving. It's simply out of order to make anyone wait for me. This was a bit of a downer for me sometimes. .Training. After the first week of adaptation that was quite light (yet still painful because I was running on mostly no sleep and I had weird cramps all over my body), this is what my training schedule there looked like: > Morning session (6am to between 9 and 10am): ° Run between 10-14km (mostly 12k) from 5.45am until around 7am, time when you should be arriving at the gym, getting ready for the morning session. The running route goes from Lamnammoon's home to the gym. You can wander off track to make it a long run since the actual distance between the two places is only 6km like I said. You leave your gym bag in Lamnammoon's car and he brings them to you later on in the morning. ° 10min shadowbox ° Many rounds on the bag (I can't give you a number. It's until you get called for padwork. And when you're done with padwork you go back on the bag until you get called for clinch.) ° 3 rounds on pads. If you have a fight coming it's 5 rounds and they're more intense. (The young Thai fighters there get 7 rounds sometimes. I honestly envied them a little. Some days I didn't envy them at all though. Lol.) Depending on the coach you're assigned with, it can go from a slightly boring and chill to real fun and tiring as hell. Lamnammoon is the absolute peak of both great fun and so fucking hard as hell it's like you're climbing Mordor without Sam by your side. ° Around 30min clinch. A bit more when you have a fight (if you're a woman you get less unless you are very insistent I suppose, which I wasn't) When clinching is done it's back on the bags for endless reps. ° Drills/reps on the bag. Sometimes on your own, sometimes supervised by Lamnammoon or Kru Lampang (when it's supervised, you fucking die). The basic instructions for the drills are as follows: 200 hundred speed kicks, 300 hundred knees, 300 teep, 5min of only elbows. This is the bare minimum. After a while my own routine looked like this: 300 hundred speed kicks, 200 hundred knees on the "uppercut wall bag thing", 300-400 hundred knees on the normal bag, 200-400 teep, 5min elbows, and whatever else I felt like adding as extra bonus if I have time left. °Conditioning (abs, pull-ups, push-ups, whatever) + stretching. This part is almost always up to you. There were times when we did it in groups, but mostly not. Then it's around 10am and training is done for the morning. You go eat. Afterwards if you're silly like me you skip sleeping and instead go for a walk into the city center to do errands that aren't necessary or you just chill on your bed watching Netflix. When afternoon session finally comes, you curse yourself hard for not having slept. Lol. > Afternoon session (3.45pm to 7pm): ° Run 6km. I never did more than 6km, never less either. I fucking hated these runs because of the heat, the traffic, the road work, the dust, and the occasional acidic reflux from not having digested my lunch properly yet. ° Around 20min skipping rope. I remember one blissful day when Kru Lampang was talking to another trainer while we were skipping rope and completely forgot about us. They always tell us when to stop skipping and if you're a good student you just don't stop until told to. That day I must've skipped for about 35min haha. Sweet hell. ° Rounds on the bags, same thing as morning. ° 3 rounds of padwork (5 if you have a fight) then back on the bags until called for clinch. ° Around 30min clinch (when I wasn't clinching I just did a mix of shadowboxing and bagwork. Or I worked drills with another partner that wasn't clinching. Or I got extra technical instructions on stuff from available coaches) ° Sweet drills of hell on the bags (same thing as in the morning) ° Conditioning and stretching. Then you either eat at the gym or at Lamnammoon's or wherever and I don't know about anyone else but usually at around 9pm I'm dead on my bed. Except for the first week: it was sleepless nights after sleepless nights. /!\ Some important notes: - All rounds last 5 minutes. - The last 30 seconds of each rounds must be done faster and more intense (the coaches all go leow leow leow at you which means speed speed speed). - After the end of each round you go straight on the floor and do around 20 push-ups, then off you go drink some water. - On Tuesday and Saturday mornings you get Muay Thai sparring instead of padwork. We all get to spar each other in turns. No exclusions here. One round lasts 10min. The whole sparring time usually lasts around 1h or so. If there are a lot of people, they have to make the rounds last only 5min so as to make sure everyone spars everyone. But you don't get one min rests after those 5min, you just switch partner quickly that's all. - On Friday morning it's boxing sparring. Same thing as Muay Thai sparring when it comes to rounds and such. - Sometimes we get a session that's all freestyle and looks like no other. But mostly they're all like what I've described above. - You drink water from a shared bucket filled with ice. The water is super cold. You can bring your own bottle if you'd rather. - There's a stereo blasting Thai music. Mostly country sounding Thai music. Sometimes one of the boy or the foreigner would connect their phone to the speaker and put their own music, for a change. - There are showers and toilets at the gyms (one for women, one for men). You can shower there if you wish. Frogs like these place too. - You can leave your gears at the gym (gloves, shinpads, skip rope, bands). Just make sure you don't leave them lying around it's not polite. - There are dogs at the gym. They run all around you during training. They're adorable and so cute. At first I was annoyed by their clinginess but eventually they grew on me. There are also ants. Those on the other hand are real painful fuckers. You'll see. .The trainers. > Dam: he was a young padholder same age as me (28). He stayed at Lamnammoon's house too so we bonded like friends, which means his padwork never brought about any kind of anxiety to be "worthy of your coach" or something like that in me. His padwork style was enjoyable, even though boring at times, but some days I really liked the fact that it didn't stress me. He was insecure and sometimes asked me afterwards whether his padwork skills are good or not. I had to comfort his insecurities which felt odd. I liked him though. I don't know if he's still there because he didn't enjoy that work so much (it's very tiring and doesn't pay so well) and I don't see him on Lamnammoon's Instagram posts anymore. > Kru Lampang : he's absolutely awesome. Very cheerful and cheeky and so fun to work with. He's very tiring but his padwork style is not linear and while you do suffer a lot you also don't feel the time fly by, cause he's so much fun. That said I will never forget my last rounds of padwork with him before my first fight. It was on a Sunday morning and he made me start the very last round with 50 kicks and 50 knees. It doesn't sound so bad like that but living it was quite something lol. > Kru Rengrad : he's as awesome as Lampang but more bear-like in his aura: at first you may think he's grumpy and not interested in you, but in truth he's such a teddy bear and he's very generous. He's so good with punches. His padwork is awfully tiring because it's relentless. He doesn't stop the rythm and hardly ever stop to correct you. Thank God he never makes you do speed kicks at the beginning or ending of his rounds otherwise... Well, our loss I suppose. > Lamnammoon (aka Kru Yo): the big boss is plain batshit crazy. Padwork with him is like a hyena on crack doing a bunch of summersault on a rollercoaster at full speed without brakes while singing the Pokemon theme song with a chipmunk voice. I love his padwork style so much despite getting anxiety attacks every time I know I'm going to be on pads with him. Pressure to not suck and all that. I didn't experience any other trainers while I was there. When I look at Lamnammoon's Instagram posts nowadays I notice several new heads. Kru Lampang is still there but Dam and Kru Rengrad are not. They might come back or not. God only knows. .Thai Fighters. > Robert, Petch, Bahn, and Top are the main fighters there and they are still very much there and thriving. They've been at the gym for around four years when I got there last year. They're still teenagers and all except Top still go to school. They are so damn skilled and a joy to train with! They're pretty small and light but it doesn't matter. Unless you are truly way way bigger than them, you'll progress a ton by their side. Even if you're a giant you'll progress. I'm very introverted so I didn't get to warm up to them fast enough before it was time to leave. I suppose it's for the best. They see so many people come and go they may not be so enclined to become best pal with you and then having their heart broken because you must leave. That said, they're still welcoming and fun to be around. Just watching them in their home (they live at the gym) is a blessing in itself. > Wut was a new fighter when I arrived and as of right now he's not there anymore. He was 18 I think. I was amazed by him so much. I loved watching him blasting the pads. I have a printed picture of him stuck on my door hahaha. Yeah I'm a fan of his. .Ubon Ratchatani. > The city itself isn't really pretty at first sight - but there are some really beautiful spots if you care to go look deeper around. I'll let you discover them for yourself. It's a big town with big shopping mals like big C and local street markets and you can go to the movies or get massages or go swim at one of the local swimming pools that are almost always empty, etc. If you're like me and you don't care much about night life and distraction from Muay Thai, but still likes to wander around sometimes in huge mals (I don't have those in my own city so they were novelties too and I was fascinated) and still occasionally feel like going to the movies, you'll like it enough. If not, well... You'll get bored quick. But then again you don't go to a gym like Lamnammoon's to be chill and comfy and waste yourself away at night, do you? It sounds almost paradoxical to me. _________ Lamnammoon really values hard work and dedication. When he saw how much I ran and faster than everyone else on most days, he seemed genuinely pleased. The two weeks leading up to my first fight (after almost two months being there), I didn't wait to be told to go up to the gym on Sunday mornings to get extra trainings even though I didn't have to. Yeah the gym is open non stop Monday to Sunday. The Thai boys train every single day, morning and evening. They fight often and they usually get between three days to a whole week off after every fight. I only went to train on two Sunday mornings once I got a fight, otherwise I usually took that day off. But you can definitely train everyday if you feel like it... There were some Sunday mornings when I still did a morning run, for example. Lamnammoon is really kind and funny and helpful. If you ask for help he will definitely help you, and he never forgets about you. But if you need something and you don't ask, he's not going to be a mind reader and check up on you every single second of every single day. He still very much cares about you having a good training and being happy at his gym. A few times throughout my stay he asked me with concern whether I was homesick, and if I was happy at all. Because I'm introverted and very quiet and intimidated by his charisma he thought maybe I wasn't happy. So, if you go there do make sure to let him know how you feel if it's something genuinely positive. He has a big heart in every way. Also, something that my introversion made me miss (until I got some company at his home who were chattier people than me): he's got a lot of stories to tell but you need to ask him questions otherwise he won't tell you anything. Thanks to Broke, Rocky and Jodie for doing what I couldn't do at all which is basically talking to him. Lol. Now the only downside: if you're a woman, you'll get less clinch practice. You won't be prompted to do it by the trainers. The Thai boys might feel awkward clinching with you (not all of them. Wut definitely did not like clinching a woman...). The pre-fight massage you get is less thorough than the boys' for obvious but still frustrating reasons. You may actually get less fights, though I'm not so sure about that last one at all. I got only one fight because of my height, or so I was told. I'm tall for a woman and most Thai women are relatively small which is not an appealing disparity for most gyms with the smallest fighter. I was envious of the Western men at the gym getting fights after fights after fights. Some even complained of having too many ones booked... Tsk. They don't fucking know their damn luck. _________ This answer turned out longer than intended. I probably still left out lots of stuff though. Don't hesitate to ask me more questions if you have any. If you do go there you can contact me anytime on here for any kind of things. Although you may not need me at all because there's a super British guy that lives in Ubon called Mickaël who used to train full-time at Lamnammoon's not long ago and who still goes to the gym occasionally to train or help around or serves as guide for the fresh new farangs. He will definitely help you if you meet him. Or Kru Yo (Lamnammoon) can put you in contact with him if it's needed. I intend on writing a day by day account (diary style) of my whole stay there. I'll post updates in here as I go along in this little project. If you're interested I encourage you to follow the thread. In any case, thank you a lot for reading me. I hope you found this review useful. Good luck on your own journey, fellow travelers! > Anyone interested in going to Lamnammoon's gym should regularly check out his Instagram page to see how his gym is doing and what the training looks like at any given time. He post videos often : https://instagram.com/lamnammoonmuaythai?igshid=11qff920fl1ol > Also a must see is this recent short documentary made by a woman named Angie. It's wonderful:

Hey! I stayed there at the end of last year for about two months. I wrote about my personnal experience which was nothing short of wonderful in the following thread. Check it out:

Not my intention to take away Samart's credit and overall awesomeness away. He's mind-blowing no matter what. Plus it's not like I truly have the sharpness and the knowledge to judge whoever's the greatest fighter (Although, objectively speaking, I would say it's Sylvie, but she's not part of this topic for some reason, lol.). That said, I have a feeling Samart was made the greatest by the media; whereas Dieselnoi made himself the greatest. I don't care the depth of someone's talent and slickiness and I don't care whatever genetical advantage someone has, when you train as hard as Dieselnoi did, made the most of what was given to you, and were forced into retirement because everyone were too scared to fight you... Well then you're the greatest. It's pretty obvious to me. But nowadays History remembers only what the mass media decides to highlights and archives. Which brings us to Sylvie yet again (and you Kevin). Thank God for her journalism. She kinda refutes the old idiom that you can't have your cake and eat it too: she's the greatest Muay Thai fighter (or shall be soon enough) and the greatest Muay Thai journalist. How about that. Otherwise yeah it's Dieselnoi to me for sure. Not a hardcore fan of Samart's singing and dancing hahaha not even sorry.

I need to keep that very much in mind. I have been trying for years to stop being the one who moves out of the way of people when walking in the street. Sometimes I succeed, but most of the time i fail. I'm not the confrontational type. I hate contact and I hate conflict. I've only very recently told people I don't do cheek-kissing (this is the French way of greeting people - I fucking hate it) and sometimes i still do it: when people are too insisting or when I care too much about their feelings or when I'm just caught off guard, and the conditioning takes over. Yet I love the contact in a Muay Thai context. I enjoy the violence and I actually do enjoy hurting people - and being hurt too, just as much, maybe more. I find it so much easier to take space in this context. But I don't want my personality/mind to be fractured and dispersed. I think it may be a lot easier to have different personas than to build yourself as a whole person. Having Alter Egos sounds very cool, appealing and romantic. It's a popular trope in pop culture. You see it all the time in super heroes. I was drawn to it for a while - as a sort of trendy thing to aspire to. But when I think about it and after reading your take on it, it does sound way more badass to simply be whole, just completely yourself all the time. Also to be accountable to everything that you do, and not just be like "well, can't help it, that's my other persona / the demon inside me / the addiction / bla bla bla". Like Eminem with his Slim Shady. "I can be an asshole, and a monster and a psycho because that's not really me actually. That's my other darker me." -> it sounds a bit like escapism. The ring can be a place where you escape. You think you're dealing with whatever troubles you deep inside that created that fracture in yourself by being a monster in the ring, and maybe it does help a little. But if you're ONLY "dealing" with it in the ring and never outside of it, what happens when you can't be in the ring anymore? When you don't have your mean to escape, to let off some steam, what then? I guess that's what happen then. You're more likely to break at some point. It's too fragile to be split. Look at what happened to Voldemort and his horcruxes. Lol.

This made me tear up, no exaggeration. Thank you so much for sharing your journey.

I've just watched this old fight of Sylvie's yesterday and I find it particularly memorable for many reasons: - This fight like most of her fights happened late in the evening. The whole day prior to it (like for 20+ hours) she was badly sick with food poisoning. She couldn't rest; nor hold water down. She went into this fight in bad shape with pretty much zero energy. - It was her second fight in three days, and she had another fight scheduled the day after this one. So basically, the four days went like this: fight 167 - food poisoning - fight 168 - fight 169. Damn. I hope I'll never come to a point where I'll just be reacting to her achievements like: "Oh 13 fights in one day while suffering from pneumonia? Whatever. It's Sylvie." Because whatever craziness she's up to is never not absolutely awesome. I must nurture my constant state of "being awestruck by Sylvie" forever and ever. - Her commentary for this fight is so damn funny. I think it was after the second round, during the break, that she said: "I haven't pooped myself. So far, so good." Yeah, she had me there. I laughed a lot. Kevin sometimes filming everything but the two fighters is also funny. Maybe he's like me, and gets distracted by ghost cats. - Despite being sick and unusually tired, she held her own against Thanonchanok - a world champion way bigger than herself and very strong. Sylvie beat her once in the past; this was a rematch. (Actually, as of today they have fought 9 times with Sylvie winning twice.) She said in the commentary something along the lines of being sorry this rematch wasn't going to be much of a challenge for Thanonchanok. Got to love Sylvie's concern for her opponent's quality time. It was still a close and pretty exciting fight. Sylvie was in a state of "I don't give a fuck about anything anymore" which I suppose was most definitely an asset. It's the kind of attitude she aims for in her fights. She doesn't credit herself for it here because it was not a conscious choice on her part. If it's a result of being ill, then it's just luck. Yeah but it wasn't luck that she chose to be in that ring that night. She could've stayed home to heal. "Fucking impressive" doesn't even come close to describing her strength. This was her Post-Fight vlog: She also wrote a blog post about the fight, check it out for even more insights: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/fight-168-sylvie-petchrungruang-vs-thanonchanok-kaewsamrit

I find it funny that the government responded with a rap song. Thanks for the infos. I had wondered whether the members of RAD ended up in jail or worse. Since they got so popular maybe the government didn't want to make martyrs out of them? Like in the movie Gladiator lol... Nice ballad you shared, thanks! I will check out his rap songs too.

I don't really have words to express how much I love this essay. It's incredibly beautiful and well-thought out. <- saying this when it comes to your writings it's like saying water is wet. I feel you - hahaha. I mean, I think I feel where you're trying to go with this. I'm just a baby in Muay Thai. In French, when you want to say someone is very naive, you say that person was born from the last rain. In English, I think the idiom is: "you were born yesterday". It just so happens that yesterday it rained a lot in my city. That was my Muay Thai birthday actually. I am one day old now. Happy birthday to me lol. I don't understand much and I don't have much to say yet. I'm still going to meow a little here. Though it won't be a profound meow. It's a very high-pitched kitty meow. So far, I've never thought that fighting in the ring is essentially about winning against your opponent. I've just been approaching it as another form of Jihad. Not the Jihad expressed in Dune. That's a one aspect of the Dune series I strongly dislike. It wrongly associated Jihad with colonisation and conquest. You can kinda feel that the book was written by a white man... That's another matter anyway. Jihad isn't about conquest and defeating an external enemy. It is simply a neverending battle against your own ego. That's what fighting is for me. Defeating my own ego. The ego for me is everything that has to do with being comfortable - physically, mentally, emotionally comfortable. Comfort brings you nothing but stagnation - to the point where you end up rotting away. Keeping away from comfort is staying closer to pain. The kind of pains that you don't like and find extremely unpleasant/extremely hard to bear. Comfort always has a way to sneak up on you - so a pain that may be challenging in the beginning can quickly become pretty comforting, and even addictive. When that happens, you need to stir away from it and find another kind of pain that you will hate, so you can grow - or die. If you're not able to keep your hand in that box right. That's why I think maybe I understand a little your Gom Jabbar analogy. It kinda echoed with what I was thinking/feeling even though I never precisely thought about the Gom Jabbar test before. As a matter of fact, the first time I read Dune I didn't understand what the hell was going on in that test haha. I just understood there was a lot of pain involved, a lot of fear (I love the litany about fear Paul recites in his mind during the ordeal), and there was the risk of death. I reread the book several times and each time it brought about more understanding. I don't know if I'll ever get to 100 fights in my life to experience the kind of understanding and metamorphosis you talk about here. I don't even know if I will ever experience any kind of real pain to really test myself during my lifetime. I am pretty certain where I'm at right now, it would so easy to extract informations out of me with physical torture. I'm that scared. Some people not only can withstand extreme torture, but they can make up complex lies while under extreme pain. That fascinates me to no end. I guess the not-knowing whether you will be able to endure what could be coming at you is part of the pain. Maybe it's even worth than the pain itself? Well, I wouldn't know. If Paul knew what was awaiting him in the box. If he knew putting his hand in the box was going to be so painful, maybe his mind would've crumbled way before getting in there. That's why it's so incredible when you know what kind of pain you will get, and go in there anyway. Sylvie has been doing the Gom Jabbar test 241 times so far, fucking hell. It's like the box is her home. I don't even think the Gom Jabbar could kill her now. Her own blood would just fucking transform the poison into protein. Take that, Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam. Lol. Just a little thank you for this. It irks me so much when people not only think that humans and animals are separate, but that humans are superior than any other species. When people use religion to justify this, it irritates me even more. This prompted me to listen again to the following song. It kinda fits.