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I just wanted to add some examples of how migrant workers in Thailand, particularly those from Myanmar, are looked down upon quite a lot here. One of my students is from Myanmar and when another teacher asked her if she felt as though Thai people saw her as different and how they acted towards her, she struggled to find the words to explain so pulled out her phone to use the dictionary. When she turned the phone around to show the teacher, it read 'disdain'. Earlier this week, I was telling one of my classes about how someone once attempted to pickpocket me in Chiang Mai. One student responded with 'they must have been from Myanmar. Not Thai'.

Tiffany Van Soest shared the following post on her Sqor and Facebook accounts earlier today:

This is the ring they're setting up for tomorrow night's fights. I'm not sure how long they'll keep using it for, but I hope they are able to keep putting their shows on.

Former UFC champion Ronda Rousey revealed that she thought about ‘killing herself’ soon after her shocking loss to Holly Holm in November. During an appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show, which is set to air Tuesday, the current SI Swimsuit cover model admitted that she plummeted to dangerous lows after losing her bantamweight title in that fight. In the powerful exchange, Rousey explained what it was like physically to be hit by Holm. She then started to cry as she described how she felt mentally immediately after the fight. Honestly, my thought, I was like, in the medical room and I was like down in the corner, I was in the corner and I was like ‘ what am I any more if I’m not this?’ I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself and that exact second I’m like ‘I’m nothing, what do I do anymore and no one gives a shit about me anymore without this.’ And to be honest I looked up and I saw my man Travis was standing up there and I looked up at him and I was like, I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive. Really that was it.’ I haven’t told anybody that. I only told him. - See the full article including video of the interview HERE.

Ashley Nichols announced this morning that she'll be coming back to Thailand on February 23rd and created a GoFundMe for anyone who would like to donate and help her stay here and fight for as long as possible. Click here to see the page. "In the last year, I applied one of the diploma's I earned in college to work and took a full-time job in the security field while teaching once to twice a day and training as well. I recently competed in a world title fight with the best in the world at a Lion Fight Promotions Muaythai event. During camp, my daily schedule was 5am or 7am start to about 10pm end, 7 days a week, non stop, grinding hard. I teach and train a morning class from 530am-730am, 3 days a week; this includes class, weightlifting, and a hard running session. Next, work for 830am to about sometimes 6 or even 630pm for the 9-5 job. Afterwards, I'd go to the gym to teach and train at the same time from 7pm-9pm, and finally complete a conditioning work out at the gym or track til 10pm with the help of my team mates by my side to keep the intensity. Through out I would also travel about twice a week to Niagara falls for boxing and Georgetown for functional peak training. Although at the competition, I came out on the lesser side of the decision and lost the match, I gained great ring experience, and insight into where I want or even need to be right now if I want to continue with the momentum I've built from the match. I spent the year out of the ring doing my best at the job I chose and was a good experience in the end. My goal now is to return to Thailand, train, live, and get the chance to fight each month out of Kaewsamrit Gym. I quit my job and my ticket is booked and I leave February 23, I didn't think I'd use this funding source because I feel others are in more need, but if I can raise even a little, that will help with costs of living and training. I am at a point in life where I believe if I choose this one option, move to Thailand, gain experience training, living and competing as often and for as long as I can, it will contribute to the lasting legacy I wish to leave behind and build upon my return. It will contribute to strengthening the benefits of it all, and I can better share with the future generations, and the inspired when I return. I can share the challenges, set backs, courage to continue, and all the experiences on this journey with them through teaching, work shops or seminars, and sharing the stories of a way of life that has benefited me in positive ways with a vision that they too will feel inspired, and courageous on their journey in life as well. Through Muaythai, I have been able to commit to something meaningful, grow and set goals and achieve them, gain experience and learn from miscalculation, also breaking free from the turmoil of residential school aftermath that effected my family for generations and which I still sometimes battle today. And where often, looking back and to the future, remember the support of my first nation's community, the Muaythai community, my peers, and family, I am reminded of the work I've done to choose the right each day even when some of my past choices haven't always been the best but taught lessons. I see the significance in choosing, of cultivating positive lifestyle change, community, and staying dedicated in moving forward. When I am my authentic self, humbled, and surrounded by the culture, choosing warrior culture and working on my craft, balancing myself and preparing the best version of myself, surrounded by the lifestyle and the family I have in the Muaythai camp, I will get opportunities in the ring, and in the community to represent the camp I stay at to the complete and best of my ability. I share my gratitude with you should you see my story as inspiring or meaningful in its humbling beauty. Thank you."

Here's a couple of shots from when Kate came to train with me yesterday along with Sean Fagan. It was so great to meet them! Kate also trained with Sylvie earlier in the week, so it was cool that we were both able to catch her before she goes home on Monday.

Glad you liked it! We hope to make that a regular thing. In each episode we'll talk about what's going on in female Muay Thai in Thailand, discussing specific shows and fighters. If there's anything else you'd particularly like to hear, let us know!

I've recently come across a sports massage clinic in Bangkok and thought I should add it here. Bangkok Sports Massage: BangkokSportsMassage.com Facebook/BangkokSportsMassage They offer lots of different services, starting with a free consultation and a 60 minute sports massage for 780B.

I'm still on the lookout. I have tried a couple of other gyms, but neither of them were good for me. The first one wasn't very female-friendly and I didn't feel welcome there, and the second one did have quite a few Thai female fighters, a couple of whom are my size, but their training schedule doesn't fit with mine at all. I'm only available in the mornings because I work in the evenings, but when I went there for a morning session, it was only me. Two thai girls turned up later, but basically sat around the whole time, then did a few sit ups and bicep curls before leaving. I was told that they almost never spar at that gym, as well. It was quite disappointing. I'm have another gym in my sights, so going to train there either tomorrow or one day next week. Fingers crossed! For now, at least, an old sparring partner of mine has come back for a month, and my gym has got me a fight lined up, so things have looked up for the time being.

Hi Paula, I can't vouch for Sylvie's 'lady garden', but I'll try and weigh in on this one :wink: This is something that I've been told I have a problem with, although in fighting rather than sparring. I'm not sure if it's for lack of wanting to hit a person or rather a lack of confidence, but I've been told many times that I'm 'too nice'. It bugs me, probably because I can't quite work out if they're right or not and I get insecure about it. I do find myself apologising to people in sparring sometimes too, so maybe I do feel bad. Anyway, in training, we spar relatively light, and I think that is the best way to get around it. Obviously, in order to fight you do need to spar hard once in a while, but my trainer tells me 'spar slow, learn fast'. It allows you to practice in a safe way, so you can focus on using proper technique rather than worrying about hurting them, because even if you tag them, it won't be hard enough to hurt. It also becomes a kind of partnership where you're helping each other to learn, rather than a competition where you're trying to just beat each other. I feel like I've rambled here, and I'm just about to head out to work now, but I'll hop back on the forum later. :thumbsup:

Oh no! You didn't need....stitches or anything...did you? :ohmy:

Haha! Good point :smile:

Is there a validity period for the promo code or does it not expire?

It sounds like we are in the same boat, so I don't know that I can offer any advice, but I'm taking the leap and trying out a new gym next week. I suppose I won't know how I really feel until I do that. It's been so long since I really stepped out of my training environment and I'm excited to have some new eyes on me and see what that brings. I will report back on how that goes for me.

Milena (Micc) and I trained together today! She's in Bangkok right now, so came along and did some sparring with me, which was great. After that, we met up with Kelly Creegan for dinner and had a great time. It was so awesome to be able to meet up after talking online for so long!

This is a great idea! My 2015 in Muay Thai started off well, but the second half of it went pretty badly, so I'm looking to make some big changes this year. 1. Change my training environment. This is important because I don't think any of my other goals can be achieved without this one. 2. Fight more frequently than I did in 2015. 3. Get my boxing back to the standard that it once was. My hands used to be my best weapon and won me some knockouts, but I've become more of a kicker recently and holes have started appearing in my boxing as it's been neglected along the way. 4. Be first. I have a bad habit of waiting instead of initiating exchanges, but when I do push forward, it works much better for me. I just need to make sure I do it. 5. Meet/train with as many of you guys as possible! (Micc is already meeting up with me and Kelly tonight, which I'm excited about :smile: )

I'm glad you're enjoying your new gym after making that change! It is hard, even if you know that there's something not right with where you're training, to be confident enough to step outside of it. I've been struggling with that for a while now, being unhappy in my gym but just keeping my head down and working the same way that I always do. I've come to accept now that it just might be time for to me to go somewhere else because there's only so much I can do on my own. A gym might cycle back into a good phase just as it cycles out of it, but I'm not going to be in Thailand forever so I don't have all the time in the world to wait for it to get better. So, I'm looking to move on and I suppose I'll have some more concrete news about that soon. By the way, it's funny that you say that about my accent. It's changed slightly a result of living abroad for so long and being around people from America a lot of the time. Some of my students are confused by it and can't quite work out where I'm from, but whenever I hear my voice back in a video, I think 'ugh, I sound so British'. Thanks for this post, Sylvie. I'll try not to leave it so long before I get down to Pattaya again next time!

I'll ask her!

I don't use contacts myself, but I just wanted to add that to what's already been mentioned about the likelihood of them not staying in during a fight. I can't count the amount of times I've punched a contact lens out in sparring (although I do secretly go 'yesss!' with my inside voice when it does happen, since it means i landed an accurate punch), and it seems really awkward and frustrating for those partners to deal with. There's always that moment of confusion for them when it pops out and they can't see properly, and if that were to take place in a fight situation, I could definitely see a referee stopping it because if they didn't know what was going on, it would look like you just weren't defending yourself. Remember when Tiffany Van Soest fought Sindy Huyer and the ref called a TKO when a teep pulled Sindy's sports bra down and she turned away to stop her boob from falling out? I imagine it would be the same kind of disappointment. Anyway, since I have no experience of actually wearing lenses myself, that's all I can offer. I'm glad to see there's a good amount of discussion on this topic because I have often wondered what it's like to deal with this! You guys are awesome.

Oh yeah, American movies are big here. TV shows, too. Lots of my students are fans of The Walking Dead and Prison Break. When I teach about crime and have my students describe a criminal to a police officer, they almost always describe a dark-skinned male. 9 times out of 10. On a more positive note, I've just discovered that there's a new Thai magazine called 'TAN', which is going against the grain and promoting darker skin by encouraging Thais to go outside and enjoy themselves rather than hiding under umbrellas or indoors and worrying about getting a tan. "TAN, a new bilingual magazine founded by renowned Thai musician and rapper Joey Boy, will hit the racks Tuesday as it promotes the beach and travel culture. Going against the booming industry of whitening products in Thailand, TAN will embrace bronzed skin and encourage Thais to leave their air-conditioned comfort zone and go into the sunlight without being scared of getting darker “We want to inspire people to be brave to go out and do something. Just go out in the sun and get tan. Whatever it is you want to do, do it, “ Joey Boy said in an interview with Woody Morning Talk. The new magazine will feature real-life stories from various perspectives, along with travel tips, reviews and activities in Thai destinations for both native and foreign explorers. As a cycling traveler himself, Joey Boy says, “Sometimes we don’t even know where we want to go. We all get stuck in crowds and traffic. TAN wants people to go travel in their own style, instead of following popular attractions and trends.” The print and online magazine will be in both Thai and English. To start the “TANism” movement, the first issue’s cover topics include beach addiction, travel savvy and hedonism, with stories from the founder of Herschel Supply Lyndon Cormack and Vogue model Kusuma Chawdon. Several celebrities and social media influencers who love beaches and bronzed skin will feature in an online campaign where they give their thoughts on tanned skin to promote the magazine." - See the full article here

The way I react to it varies from day to day. Sometimes, especially when it's in a work situation and it's in front of other people (usually students), I will just move on with the lesson as quickly as possible, but there have been times where I've called them out on it. I actually have two incidents that happened in the last two days for you guys: Yesterday, I was teaching a fairly low-level class with a doctors and patients theme, teaching them how to discuss symptoms and give advice. Towards the end, I overheard one 'patient' tell the 'doctor' that his problem was his 'black skin'. He was a little dark, but not that much (not that any shade would have made that comment OK). The doctor student responded with 'it's OK, you die and in the next life --' I cut him off before he finished his sentence, but it seemed like he was about to insinuate that he would come back as light-skinned in the next life as some kind of reward for being dark-skinned in this one! He then advised him to go and live in Korea, 'because there is snow and everybody is white' (Korean beauty standards are a big thing here). Instead of dealing with that student directly, I turned to the patient student and said 'actually, you should go to my country, because a lot of people there love your skin colour and think it's beautiful'. Today, my boyfriend went to his new gym, which is owned by a Thai guy named Phil, who studied at an international school and speaks very good English. Phil's wife was there, who also speaks pretty good English. My boyfriend asked her 'how you living?' (he is laughably bad at grading his language) and she obviously didn't know what he meant. Her husband explained that he was asking her how she was doing and she turned to my boyfriend and said 'oh, sorry, I don't speak n***a'. He explained to her nicely that she should never ever say that, but he wasn't offended because he realised that she genuinely didn't know that it wasn't OK. Still, wow. Also, one of my Thai coworkers gave me whitening cream as a Christmas gift on Saturday. I'm already white, but whatever. I'll be re-gifting that one.

Here's a poster I saw on the BTS today. According to the text below, it's an ad for a campaign to urge people to take care of their bank notes in order to make them last longer. Apparently, that includes stopping black guys from stealing them from you....or something?

After coming to Master Toddy's I was taught to straighten the arm in front of me when I kick to 'blind' my opponent and protect myself, as dropping the arm down leaves you open. He HATES the arm swinging, but that's just his style. He just has to be different, haha. It took a long time for me to get used to it and to be able to get any power that way, but now it's second nature. This way, I focus on getting my power from turning my hips over as quickly as possible, which puts my of my body weight into the kick, and I find that swinging the arm in the opposite direction kind of works against that for me.

It seems like the only other tourist visa option is for 30 days, and they have been limiting the amount of land border crossings people can do. It seems like they can turn you away at any time. I have a friend who is flying to Kuala Lumpur every 30 days, which is ridiculous. I've also heard that people have been turned away at the airport coming into Thailand for not having proof of onward travel. Seems like they're really cracking down, which makes no sense considering they really need tourism right now.

This visa option sounded great at first, but looks to be turning out to be worse in reality. It seems that in order to be eligible for this visa, applicants but be able to provide proof of income over a certain threshold for the previous 6 months. This is going to make it very difficult for a lot of people. This kind of visa is still very new and no one seems quite sure what the rules are, but we do know that it must be obtained in the applicant's home country, which means most people won't be able to do a quick visa run to Laos or Malaysia to get it processed. Check with your local Thai Consulate, a lot of them don't seem to have made announcements regarding this kind of visa yet. The Washington D.C Royal Thai Embassy has, and lists the requirements as follows: 1. Your actual Passport or Travel Document. (Passport or Travel Document must not expire within 6 months and contain at least ONE completely empty visa page). 2. One visa application form completely filled out (Download) 3. Two passport-size photographs (2″x2″) (photocopy or photo taken from Photostat will not be accepted). Photographs must have a light color background with a full- face view of the person without wearing a hat or dark glasses and covering up shoulders Photos must be taken within 6 months. 4. Flight confirmation/reservation (The name of the applicant must clearly appear on it) 5. Hotel reservation confirmation (The name of the applicant must clearly appear on it) 6. A copy of bank statement or evidence of adequate finance for the last 6 months with a minimum balance of $7,000 (every months) (The name of the applicant must clearly appear on it) 7. For non-US citizen, a copy of permanent resident alien card or a copy of valid US visa 8. An employment verification 9. For students, full-time student status proof 10.For self-employed, business license or business registration indicating the applicant’s name. 11.For minor under 20 years old, copy of a birth certificate, copies of mother and father’s passports/ID and copy of Marriage Certificate if any, letter of consent from mother and father for the minor to travel abroad in case not accommany with the child (have to be notarized) . in case of sole custody, a copy of court order must be provided