LengLeng

@Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu Thanks for sharing this. I am deeply sorry for what happened. I once had my home broken into and I thought when this happened that it must have felt like that. A violation and attack on your space that you built and nurtured. I'm grateful and happy you could rebuild it. You two are doing so many amazing things that no one ever done before and it's beyond me how you can be so generous not only sharing it, but also package everything you do in a way we can all learn from it. You always take care of putting things into a context, ensuring the right message comes across for everyone to absorb the knowledge. It also struck me more than once how you two never really take any time off and I have no idea where that energy and productivity and discipline come from. First doing all the things. Then sharing it. Repeat and repeat.

@Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu has plenty of experience re stitches hopefully she can give an overview. All I know they usually have a doc ringside and I've seen people being stitched up after fights at location (no hospital).. Weigh in is fuzzy. I have limited experience but. Depends on skill level. Rajadamnern (I think...) and Lumpinee weigh in same day (early morning). Other places no clue but if you're not that experienced they probably won't check weight at all. A friend of mine is fighting at Lumpinee tomorrow and weigh in is around 6am fight around 8pm. It is very common at less prestigious fight venues to have weight difference. A guy at my gym (64kg) fought at Asiatique BKK yesterday, weight (never checked though) was 70kg. I've been asked to fight someone 15kg heavier than me. Hopefully you'll have a trainer you can trust and consult on this. It's not super easy getting a fight in Thailand so you might not have the opportunity to be picky about it.

@RB Coop I have private insurance and have to pay out of pocket when seeking medical care which has given me an idea of what things cost. I've never had surgery in Thailand or got stitches but I go to the doc frequently and compared to other countries care is very affordable. I also recently needed to be taken by an ambulance to nearest hospital and got some urgent check and treatment done after an obstacle race injury. The event organizers took care of the bill so I don't know the exact amount but I don't think it was that much judging by the look at the guys who accompanied me and insisted to pay. Anyhow at international high-end hospital in Bangkok I've payed 20 EUR for expert consultations (orthopedic, ENT, cardiology, dermatology). 30 EUR for X-ray. 90 EUR for ultrasound scan plus surgeon consultation. 28 EUR blood test. Most expensive was a thorough heart check including stress test and loads of other tests for 1200 EUR. I had to drain my clinch ear, total cost 60 EUR. Physiotherapy following a muscle strain was 40 EUR/session. Treatment for the shingles was pretty expensive, medication cost me around 100 EUR. In general, imported medication will be pricey. But this is at a really expensive hospital and I could've opted for cheaper clinics or cheaper medication. They usually inform you about pricing before you say yes to anything. When I lived in the EU as EU citizen I managed to get really affordable and great travel insurance for when traveling outside of Europe, around 8 EUR/year. I would go for one of those that will cover emergency care. You might already have insurance if you booked your trip with visa or Mastercard, worth looking into. Depending on location you might need medevac (but it's not like an helicopter will airlift you out of the jungle, you'll still need to find your way to nearest airport). Thailand has excellent hospitals and doctors. I don't have any stats but my impression is that most common issue for tourists are scooter accidents.

I am not sure this is because lack of control. Where I have trained in Thailand there is always this belief that regardless of her size, a woman is always weaker (and somewhat fragile) that you tend to believe it yourself so you think you are not strong as a guy and your strikes won't be painful. I also feel that whenever I am smaller than the person I am sparring with, that I have to go harder because they can take more pain or whatever. So I am not sure this is about having a lack of control but rather not understanding your own strength. In my experience, women spar harder than men. I sparred with this woman fighter some months ago and I felt she went hard so I went hard too. She usually trains with guys and she told me afterwards no one had hit her as hard as I had. While I felt she went super hard. Eh haha.

Using 12 when training I feel this effect too, that I'm getting stronger. And when I'm using 10 I have more energy left after padrounds.

Sorry no idea. I'm around 60kg and woman and get 8.oz. Hopefully someone more experienced can answer.

Oh please don't take my 2 cents as a rule . Just my observation from training. I train with 12 oz which is slightly more than other girls but not overly so. I fight around 60kg and fight gloves are 8 oz. A lot of times the thai fighters at my gym (48kg-64kg) just take any gloves to do pads could be 8 or 12 or 14.

Liniment many use during training and you can get it at 7/11. At my gym we sometimes use vaseline during sparring when we do hard, serious sparring (like mock fights) but not sure how common it is. We never spar with elbows or knees other than in a very very controlled way. Vaseline also in every 7/11. Tape and gauze and mongkol only during fights and mongkol gym can provide. I wanted my own as women have to enter ring crawling in under bottom rope and only get the mongkol put on after we have entered the ring so somehow I wanted to counter this bs with having my own headpiece. 16 oz. we use during sparring mainly. And men 12 or 14 during training. Women 10 or 12.

Ah ok sounds good. When it hits 170 and above I get a headache and nausea and also got a rash in my throat. But it's manageable and December should be fine. No idea about groin protection as women rarely use them when fighting although some do. Some guys will use during clinch but not very common. But during fights of course. I have my own shin guards but of the softer kind (like socks) and some trainers don't like them so I usually get the regular ones from the gym when sparring (always used during muay thai sparring IMO but I know some gyms do sparring without). But shin guards from gyms are of varying quality so it might be good to get your own. I bought all my equipment in Thailand (training gloves, fighting gloves, mouthguard, wraps, shin guards, tape, liniment, vaseline, gauze, mongkol) so I'm not sure how western prices compare. But I assume prices in Thailand are ok. And you can always get most stuff from the gym (except mouthguard of course) but they can be smelly and old. As the Thais say: up to you .

Not to scare you, but since you have asthma just to let you know the air quality in Bangkok has been awful lately. I think Chiang Mai was ok. Usually air is bad Feb-Mar but this year it's been worse lasted well into May and started earlier. Might be a good idea to invest in a mask for runs. You can check PM 2.5 using apps or here: https://aqicn.org/city/chiang-mai/

No no please don't . I think it depends on context and how he feels about his trainer.

@RB Coop I always feel this is the hardest part to deal with, how to manage injuries. You want to be responsible and so on, at the same time not risking that the trainer won't invest in you. Add some language barriers and it gets complicated I try to downplay any kind of injury but that's from a woman point of view. Some trainers are very traditional and think girls are much more sensitive so if I start talking about some issue it becomes a big deal. Anyhow in muay thai everybody is injured. If I were you I'd not mention it at first, try out the training, test your limits and how you can manage. Most likely your trainer will notice if you're in pain and if you need your asthma medication and will be able to determine whether you can fight or not regardless of you explaining your health issues or not. And probably you're not the first fighter with these issues he's trained. I've seen it many times where a newcomer arrives and directly goes to a trainer and explains everything about themselves and what they want and need and cannot do and the trainer is always like "yeah yeah" but my interpretation is what he's thinking is "let's first see you train". Just my two cents.

You can buy thai sim cards in every 7/11 so you can stay online during your stay. At the airport they have some spaces where you can buy them, I think it's TRUE and DTAC stands just close to the exit (either same exit as taxi or one level below). Grab is Asia's version of Uber. When I arrived end 2017 you had both but if I'm not mistaken Grab purchased Uber and now there's only Grab. It is currently being (or will be) legalised and for that reason taxidrivers have been protesting outside Ministry of Transport lately. There are reported cases on taxi drivers having beaten up grab drivers. Regular taxi is cheaper than Grab taxi. Grab motorbike cheaper than regular motorbike taxi. Obviously grab has the advantage of the customers not having to explain where to go, which can be tricky with regular taxi. I use Grab motorbike every morning to work. Home from work I use the bike taxis standing there to support them but also becauss, as almost every taxi driver, they're big muay thai fans :). I don't think you need to worry about being rag dolled or exhausted. If by this you mean being swept and thrown a bit yeah that happens (for fun but no serious) but if you are an MMA guy you already got that advantage. They will pair you up in clinch and it's either gonna be with a trainer or student and it would be a dick move to go hard on a new guy. Thai gym trainers are used to westerners being tired just having arrived. The big risk is if you say you are tired but the trainer can see you are not (they know for sure) they might not respect you. But they will see if you are super tired and really try. If you are new they not gonna try to break you. Except padrounds and to some extent clinch training pace will be up to you. Personally I'm more concerned with getting easy padrounds and not being pushed at all. It happens I get a trainer who thinks I'm not strong enough and will give me short padrounds with very few speed kicks and never tell me to do pushups or anything in between. That hurts more than being so exhausted from padrounds. If you only stay 2 weeks unfortunately there's a risk trainers won't invest in you too much to push you too hard. Just be yourself, make sure to give an effort and enjoy your time. Let me know when you're there I look for you during the morning run .

Hi Gary! I've trained very briefly with FA group and joined the morning run and they do not run together. Basically walk from the gym to chatuchak park together and then run at own pace. But not everybody running. I'm now at a different gym but I live in the area so I run regularly in chatuchak park in the mornings and I see their fighters running and so far never seen a group run together but instead at their own pace. I don't think you need to be nervous about that. Re sunscreen oh I don't think that's an issue at all. I'm super white too and I wear sunscreen too but I never felt it was an issue at all. Yes they have a rinsing station (like a shower thingy) and it's considered polite to rinse off before or after clinch (although at my gym almost none of the thais do this just maybe 1 of 10). Best option for you is to get baht at one of the atms at the airport where you pick your bags. Follow the signs and instructions for taxi (no grab service for pick up allowed). You can also get sim cards there. Have a print out of address to hotel in thai with you for the driver. It should be around 500 baht to chatuchak area. Re food no idea about street food but if you google restaurants+saphan kwai you will find some good options. I can recommend Cat on the roof-bar in saphan kwai for great thai food and beer. Have a great time.

On Facebook (where photos from their training are posted daily as they have a professional photographer - which I felt was distracting) doesn't look too crowded atm. When I was there yeah it was many people, more westerners than thais which made it very "western" but the amount of people did not feel like an issue. Training is good lots of clinching, sparring and pads and your own bag work. Trainers especially Kru D and Yothin are great. They have an American manager who handles admin stuff so easy to get help with stuff if needed. One thing that was annoying was that mats get superhot in the afternoon and doing pads on them was tough. FA group is close to Ari and Saphan Kwai. The former being a thai hipster neighbourhood and the latter an up and coming area and in my view nicest areas to stay in Bangkok. If you like or not probably depends on the people currently training.

I agree! Thanks so much for sharing.

@Natewoods This is a great post on importance of running and hard training regimens in Thailand: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/paul-banasiak-sponsored-fighter-harsh-training-realities

I'm gonna jump on this one because I'm curious. Ajarn Gae is well known and so is Elite Fight Club. It comes up as suggestion in many discussions on muay thai gym, but mainly from westerners with limited experience of training in Thailand. And people with more experience will sort of not be too enthusiastic in their response. I've never tried it out because of this reason. I've seen one of the trainers (not Gae but also known) a couple of times on the BTS as I pass by EFC daily. Anyhow now I see the same non-enthusiastic response and I'm curious. Is it because Gae and EFC are a bit touristy?

I just got absorbed by it. It's like this destructive super-passionate relationship I keep coming back to even though I keep getting hurt and the guy is a dick but all other sports I ever loved are friendzoned forever. Mainly I love being in the gym. Or having a gym to go to. It gives me a purpose and feeling of improvement even though work might suck or other stuff in life might suck. Muay thai allows me to get out of my head and into my body. I like the feeling of being sweaty. The sounds of someone kicking pads. I love the feeling of pushing through exhaustion. Of always hurting a little bit. The constant presence of pain makes me feel alive. I like the physical closeness in the gym, with other students, with the trainer. To discover movements and skills I practiced suddenly becoming available to me. I learn so much and I discover so many things about me and others that I could never have understood in any other way than physically experience it. I learn patience. I learn how good things and beautiful things are parallel to pain and frustration. I get the physical experience of hard work pays off. I learn about violence and I discover my own violence. And I really like gym when people don't talk much. When bodies do the talking.

Thanks for sharing this is really interesting. To be accepted, meaning be accepted by the other guys right? Or if it's a mixed gym, does it matter what the women think at all? Or you want to seem impressive to the girls to be respected by the guys? Because as a woman, most of the time all you want is for the guys to accept you as well. Much more so than other girls accepting you. Re the support system, I think most of us simply think it's a chosen thing. That you don't need people. But of course we all need people. I guess this is why they say men are usually worse off after a divorce than women, simply because the woman did all the relationship building and maintenance with their common friends and without her the man suddenly finds himself alone.

I grew up with a guy as my best friend and hanging out with him and his friends was sometimes just about taking the piss out of one guy until he lost his temper or started crying. It was so insanely brutal and I never wanted to be part of it. In retrospect though I wished I had been hardened like that would've helped me a lot, especially in the gym. Regarding sparring with girls yeah we know. And we use it to our advantage all the time. We know the guy can't go too hard without looking bad. However I've sparred with a guy I knew was angry with me and it's pretty uncomfortable knowing he can kill you if he wants. But nothing is worse than the heavy tall dude who has no control. Thanks for your post.

There's a female only section on this forum which is very helpful for women training muay thai. But for a long time I've been wondering about issues men face in the gym. Where I train there are mainly guys. Young boys up to very experienced fighters. I watch them train and spar and bond. I see escalated aggression. Frustration. Inexperienced boys being pushed around learning to control the temper. I see bromance. I see all this touching (is this a thai or universal thing stroking each other's butts?). I see language confusion. Dominance. I see guys being laughed at for being chubby. I see guys not knowing how to clinch with a girl or whether to go hard when sparring. I see westerners trying to seek approval from thai trainers. I would be very interested to hear about common struggles men face in the gym.

Agreeing with this, you could take the MRT to Chatuchak. I tried FA group and the trainers, especially Kru Diesel, are great. They also usually have girls training of various sizes. Lots of clinching. They have a photographer coming each afternoon so it's easy to follow current clientele on Facebook. I went to a different gym as their training schedule didn't match mine. I must say I felt the vibe was a bit off when I was there but could've been my own projection or just the people training there at that time.