This post is going to be the first in a series of weekly updates, but since I didn’t have my computer up and running when I arrived, this will be a longer recap of my first few weeks here.
Week One:
My journey to Bangkok started around 9 AM on Sunday, January 22nd, in Syracuse, New York. It ended 43.5 hours later, at 4:30 PM local time on Tuesday, January 24th in Bangkok. Stacie, my partner, drove me the first four and a half hours from Syracuse to JFK1. Delta overbooked the first leg, a JFK-LAX flight, and while I didn’t get bumped (praise the Lord), I was rudely informed that I was going to have to gate check my carry on, or they would bump me. I'd built a compact desktop computer for this trip which I had deliberately not checked, to avoid it getting broken. After briefly arguing that there were sensitive electronics in the bag (true), I was told to take the computer out, because they absolutely had to check the bag2. This means that I got to lug my 30 lb3 tower around airports for the entire rest of the journey, sans suitcase. After a 6 hour flight and a short layover in LAX, I was on my way to Seoul, Korea, the longest leg of the journey. It was an uneventful, if long, 14 hour flight to Seoul, where I alternated between napping, eating, and reading. For breakfast at the airport in Seoul I had some delicious tteok-bokki, tempura shrimp, and sugar-glazed Japanese sweet potato. The final leg, a 5 and a half hour flight to Bangkok, was on the biggest plane in the world, an Airbus A380-800.4
Upon arrival in Bangkok, after walking what felt like a mile and a half with my computer and getting through passport control, I found an airline employee standing next to the baggage claim for my flight with a placard bearing my name. Lo and behold, my checked bags managed to miss a transfer during the journey. I was given a sheet of paper with my information on it, and was told that I could expect a call in 1-2 days when my baggage arrived. As you can probably imagine, I was ecstatic about having been forced to check my carry-on, which meant that in addition to having to lug around my computer, I was now completely without clothes, since all of my clothes were spread between the two bags that were now MIA. Leaving Suvarnabhumi airport, I took a taxi to my Airbnb5, rinsed off6, and then went to Terminal 21 (a gigantic mall on Sukhumvit road) to buy an outfit7.
Despite the early misfortune, being back in Bangkok was exhilarating. Other than a higher rate of masking and new terminal stations on the BTS, not much in Bangkok felt different from when I was last there in 2019, a welcome sensation after all the upheaval of the past few years. Honestly, the biggest difference that I noticed between the Bangkok of my memory and the current iteration was the effect of marijuana’s legalization. A large number of the Sukhumvit tourist trap shops that were formerly full of knickknacks and tchotchkes are now weed shops, a marked difference from when I was there in 2018 and simple possession was punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The first couple of days were spent sans baggage, so I treated them like a vacation, revisiting many of my favorite haunts and restaurants. My first breakfast in Bangkok was at Café Tartine, one of my favorite breakfast spots in the world. My birthday was two days after I arrived, and so after recovering my bags from the airport, I decided to treat myself to a 2 hour massage8 and dinner at Ippudo, an amazing ramen joint.
With my Muay Thai gear back in my possession and my solo birthday celebrations completed, I figured it was time to get down to business9. I got in touch with my friend Danielle10, whose partner Jao runs Looknongsaeng Gym11, and dropped in for a class Friday afternoon. Looknongsaeng is relatively small and unassuming gym, sitting several alleys into in a residential area, and is populated almost entirely by killers. The gym’s stable boasts Jos Mendonca, a Brazilian and one of the first foreigners to hold a Rajadamnern belt, Richard Godoy, also Brazilian, who recently won an MMA fight on the inaugural One Lumpinee card, and several other fighters, including Silathong and Yuto Numponthep, who regularly fight at both Rajadamnern and on television cards in Thailand.
Boy howdy, I was not ready. I knew that after a couple weeks of not training at all, a farewell tour that consisted largely of going out to dinner with people, and a final night of drinking that ended up resembling an impromptu bar crawl, that I was going to be a bit out of shape. Out of shape was an understatement. In the two hours of training, according to my heart rate monitor, I burned over 1500 calories and had a peak heart rate of 191 BPM. I had to take a break after two rounds of padwork with Jao because I physically could not continue. It was rough, but everyone was incredibly friendly and I left wishing that I didn’t already have my flight to Phuket booked, because I would have loved to call Looknongsaeng home. After training I met Maysa, Jao and Danielle’s three-year-old daughter, who is one of the cutest and sweetest kids I’ve ever met. I was invited to tag along with them the following day, as Danielle and a couple other people from the gym were fighting in Hua Hin12.
Danielle’s fight had a discernable aura of excitement around it, as it was her first time fighting for a promotional belt. We met up at the gym around 5 AM and Jao drove the three or so hours down to Hua Hin. The fight was at Hua Hin Muay Thai, a gym that also hosts fight cards a few times a month. We arrived shortly after 8:30 and after an hour and a half or so13 of weigh-ins, promotional photos, and promotional photos of the fighters weighing in, we headed to the hotel that we had booked to drop our stuff off. After a quick lunch, Danielle and Boom (one of the other fighters from the gym, a tall and lanky 45kg ) retired to the room to sleep and relax; Jao, Maysa and I went to the beach. It was a windy day, and so there were what seemed like hundreds of kite surfers about. The waves were much higher than I’d seen in Thailand previously, probably due to the wind. After playing around in the waves and building sand castles with Maysa, we headed back to the hotel for a nap before the fights.
The Hua Hin card was definitely the most grassroots level of Muay Thai that I have seen in Thailand; on my previous trips to Thailand, I'd only been to a few fights, all of them either highly produced like Thai Fight and MX Muay Extreme, or at an established stadium like Lumpinee. This felt like a community event, with plastic chairs set up around the ring, kids running around, and refreshments being sold from a folding table toward the entrance.
Boom fought first, and had a significant height advantage over his much shorter and stockier opponent. Using his length to great effect, he kept his opponent outside of range for the entirety of the fight, coasting to a convincing unanimous decision. Up next was Helene, a Swedish woman who works in Myanmar and fights both Muay Thai and Lethwei14. Helene came out aggressively, swarming her taller opponent with a flurry of punches, and battered her on the way to a first round TKO victory. Prior to the weigh-ins, both Danielle and Helene had not seen their opponents in person. The girls they were fighting were both upwards of 5’9, taller than they’d expected, and both expressed a bit of relief that their opponents were not significantly smaller than them, an all-too-common occurrence with Westerner vs. Thai matchups in smaller promotions15. Danielle’s fight started relatively slow, with the traditional feeling-out first round typical of five round Muay Thai fights. Her opponent attempted to establish range with teeps and kicks, and Danielle attempted to close the distance, using strikes to work into the clinch, where she was dominant. Early into the second round, Danielle feinted a left teep to close the distance and connected solidly with a right elbow, sending her opponent crashing to the canvas for the KO.
After going 3-3 on the evening and winning a belt everyone was in a great mood, so we returned to the balcony of Danielle and Jao’s room and had a few LEOs16 and some food from the 7-11 to celebrate. This made the subsequent 5am wake up even rougher, as I had a 1:30 PM flight to Phuket from Bangkok and needed to get back in time to finish packing and catch the flight.17 Everyone was a bit hungover so the ride back was rough, but I made it, getting through security at Don Mueang about 20 minutes before boarding started.
Week Two:
When I arrived in Phuket it was overcast and drizzling; the hour-ish long ride to my Bungalow was uneventful, apart from a bit of difficulty in making sure the address on Airbnb was accurate this time. I have been to Phuket thrice before; once with Dan, which I detailed in my first post, once with my mom, and once with my ex girlfriend. This time, I was immediately struck by how many more people there were than any time I’ve been previously; not only was there much more traffic than I remember, I ended up having a great deal of difficulty even finding a scooter to rent because all the shops with decent internet presence were sold out. I’m not sure if the difference in volume is due to a global, collective desire to travel again after COVID, if I’m simply forgetting how busy it was when I was there, or if the couple of weeks difference affects high season that drastically here.
I’m renting a bungalow in Rawai toward the southern tip of the island, tucked away at least two alleys from anything that could feasibly called a main road, and I love it. It’s nice to have a little house all to myself; most of the people in this small community are friendly, and the complex is quiet. There’s a young Russian family across the path from me and an orange cat that sleeps on the chair on my back porch every day. I’m the sort of person who requires a sense of separation between work and home, and I feel much the same way about living on-site at a gym: while the idea of spending every waking moment eating, sleeping, and breathing Muay Thai may be attractive to some, I know myself well enough to realize that doing so would be a sure-shot way to guarantee I burn out well before my 6 months here is up. Having an idyllic little bungalow all to myself is great, because it allows me to compartmentalize between ‘training mode’ and regular life.
The day after arriving, I walked at least 3 and a half miles in my attempt to rent a scooter, finally having to settle for overpaying on a new Honda PCX for a week, gambling that a more reasonably priced scoot would become available at the place I actually wanted to rent from.18 While packing I realized that my monitor wouldn’t fit in my carry-on, and after I arrived in Thailand, I realized that I had forgotten the power supply for my computer. I was discouraged about my likelihood of finding the correct parts at a mall or on FB marketplace in a different country until I stumbled onto Lazada. For those who aren’t familiar, Lazada is basically Southeast Asia’s version of AliExpress, an online and app-based marketplace that allows various vendors and factories to have direct-to-customer sales. I ended up buying a surge protector, EU-spec power supply cable, and a 1080p, 75hz monitor off Lazada, all delivered to my door for a whopping 77 USD. Perhaps understandably, I was a bit skeptical of the quality of product I was getting, but the fact that I’m currently able to type this proves that at the very least, they work.
The gameplan was this: Spend the first week getting acclimated to regular training (which I knew would be a bit of a process after my session at Looknongsaeng), drop in for a session at the gyms I was interested in, and sign up for a month’s worth of training the following week after choosing between them. My first priority in training so far has been pacing: I knew that if I jumped headlong into training 4 hours a day that I would probably end up some combination of sick, injured, or burnt out. As such, I did one afternoon session at each of the gyms I was interested in, which ended up being Yak Yai, Sinbi, and Revolution Muay Thai.19 I was looking, in order of importance, for a gym that was going to:
Give me the degree of attention and instruction I needed to improve quickly
Whip me into shape
Have connections with promoters, enabling me to fight out of the gym when I was ready
Offer frequent and high-level sparring with people who are significantly better than me
Have a stable of active and successful fighters.
Gym #1: Yak Yai Muay Thai
Yak Yai was the first gym I tried out, at the suggestion of Seth Grande, an American Muay Thai fighter who I’ve followed on Instagram for a few years20. I hit him up when I was planning the trip to ask what his thoughts were on the severity of Chiang Mai's burning season, and when I mentioned that I was considering training at Sinbi, he suggested checking out Yak Yai as well. Yak Yai is brand new, having opened in mid-October of 2022, and I was immediately impressed by both the size (including two brand new, gigantic rings) and spotlessness of the space. During my drop in session I got the immediate impression that the three highest priorities on my list were going to be achievable at Yak Yai. There were somewere between 8 and 10 people training, which meant that in addition to padwork rounds, I got direct and personal feedback during both shadowboxing and sparring, a rarity at busier gyms. Class consisted of
10 minutes of skipping rope
5 or so minutes of running laps with various warmups interspersed (running while punching, etc), finishing with kicking each of the heavy bags
5 minutes or so of sprints
5-10 min of stretching
Wrapping
Shadowboxing
3 Rounds of boxing sparring
3 rounds each of padwork and bagwork
10-15 minutes of clinching
100 skip knees on the bag
100 sit-ups
Cool down stretching.
An optional 2k run, which I struggled through.
Henry, one of Yak Yai’s two owners, is a pro fighter from New York City. In addition to making a point of welcoming me to the gym, he chatted with me for a bit and gave me some pointers during sparring. I walked away feeling like Yak Yai would be a great place for my intermediate skill set to grow, and the vibes were all around immaculate.
Gym #2: Sinbi Muay Thai
The second gym I tried out was Sinbi, which is actually located less than a mile from where I’m staying (a major plus). Sinbi is huge, boasting three rings, a ton of bags, and a stable of world class fighters. Their ranks include Dani Rodriguez, probably the best active foreigner at the moment, a RWS21 and Rajadamnern Stadium champ at 70kg. I checked out Sinbi largely because of Dani Rodriguez; I figured that any gym that could turn a suitably talented foreigner into a Raja champ was one that had both the connections and coaching ability to push a career forward. I arrived at the gym just as class was starting, and was immediately taken aback at the number of scooters lined up outside the gym. After paying for the drop-in, I ascended the stairs to the main level of the gym and was greeted by the sight of at least 100 people warming up. This was a bit intimidating, but the session was well organized. Those who wanted to spar were separated from those who did not: the sparring group took the main floor and went for 5 rounds, changing partners each round. I sparred and had some good rounds; pretty much all of the guys I worked with had a good level of control, and the one guy I thought was going a little hard was much better than me, and so it might have just been that I was eating cleaner shots than I was used to. After sparring we each got 5 rounds of padwork. My pad holder was excellent and I was impressed by his ability to match the intensity of each round to my ability as we got used to each other. After padwork I clinched for 10 minutes or so, and then everyone did a set of core exercises and some cool down stretching as a group. My impression was that this was a great place to get good sparring in, but that the size of the gym and general level of fighters it produced would make getting noticed or invested in difficult; the interactions I had with the people training there were friendly but impersonal.
Gym #3: Revolution Muay Thai
Revolution Muay Thai, formerly known as Sitsongpeenong Phuket, is located near Surin Beach, about halfway up the island. I knew from the outset that the likelihood of Revolution ending up as my home gym was slim; my bungalow is roughly an hour away from the gym by scooter. This would mean waking up around 6:30 every day in order to be on the road before 7 to make the 8 o’clock morning class: if I wanted to return home in between classes, I would be looking at driving 4 hours a day in order to train for the same amount of time. Nonetheless, after reading several rave reviews on reddit, I decided to at least try out a class. Revolution had a harder-core vibe than the other two gyms I tried; not unwelcoming, but definitely a bit more serious22. I dropped in on a sparring day23, and so after a warmup consisting of skipping rope, running laps and stretching, we got right into it. I honestly lost track of how many rounds of sparring I got in total, but it was at least 10, roughly half boxing and half full Thai. We then did a solid 10-15 minutes straight of clinching, which I spent getting ragdolled by an incredibly strong and friendly Greek guy named Alex, who was in his mid 40s. After sparring rounds we did conditioning, alternating between hundreds of 1-2s, teeps, and skip knees on the bag. After the session I ended up chatting with a few of the guys who were training regularly at the gym, and they were all super cool. Revolution ended up meeting my criteria for everything except attention and convenience, and so despite me liking it a lot, I ultimately decided against it.
The Verdict:
I ended up deciding to do a month at Yak Yai. The location, friendly environment, and potential for growth there felt like the best fit for me, and the following week I signed up for a month of training.
I only trained for three sessions my first week in Phuket, although with each session lasting two hours, it was still more training than I was used to on a normal week at home. It’s been important to me that I pace myself, because I knew I was not in “24 hours of training a week” shape when I first arrived, and I’m in Thailand for so long that I want to avoid burning out if at all possible. I did run a bit on one of the days that I didn’t train, jogging the 1.4 miles and 850ish vertical feet of Monkey Hill in Phuket Town, in time to catch the sunset.
Week Three:
This was my first full week of training, and in order to gradually ramp up the intensity, I trained once a day, with the goal of graduating to training twice a day the following week. It was nice to return to some familiar faces, and as the week progressed I felt my fitness level increase palpably, on a nearly daily basis. I also started to click with specific trainers, especially Kru Joo and Kru Kwanchai. This was great, because my padwork sessions ended up incorporating a fair bit of new technique. Kru Kwanchai is a southpaw Muay Sok, or elbow fighter, and uses solid defense and forward pressure to create openings for his strikes. He has been working with me on throwing and creating openings for elbows using a combination of pressure, footwork and feints. I generally consider myself to be pretty teachable, and my attempts to listen and emulate the instruction I’ve been given seem to have led to an increased degree of attention and investment from the trainers, which feels great. Watching clips of myself on Yak Yai’s Instagram, I’m already noticing a discernable increase in how crisp I look on the pads.
I trained Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons, and then on Wednesday night, Kru Kwanchai and Chen (another guy from the gym) fought at Bangla Stadium24. I'd heard that the fights there are often of wildly varying quality, but I had never been and wanted to support the gym, so I piled with everyone else into the van that we rented for the occasion and headed down to the venue. I was really impressed by the production value and atmosphere of the fights: the stadium is located above the main Patong strip, with the ring on the second floor and metal stadium seating rising around it. The crowd was a mix of rowdy tourists, fighters from various gyms supporting their teammates, and the betting crowd (older Thais, almost entirely men.) This mix led to an electric atmosphere, and the steep stadium seating meant both a sense of closeness with other members of the crowd and a good vantage point for everyone in the building. Chen was the first to fight from our gym, and won by first round TKO after his opponent fell awkwardly during a clinch exchange and suffered an injury. Kru Kwanchai then put on a clinic during his fight, defeating his much larger opponent convincingly. The first round was insane, with Kwanchai’s opponent pushing forward aggressively for the first minute or so, only to be dropped by the first elbow that Kwanchai threw and wobbled by another to end the round. From then on, Kwanchai outmaneuvered his man, dumping him a few times and fighting effectively off the back foot. It was awesome to see one of my more reserved coaches effortlessly demonstrating their skills in a live fight, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
I had a bit of a scratchy throat Thursday morning (probably from yelling) and took the day off, just to be safe. I felt fine Friday morning, and so I trained Friday and Saturday afternoons. On Sunday I went to a restaurant with my Kiwi friend Kharn to watch UFC 284 in the morning, and just relaxed for the remainder of the day, knowing that the transition to training two sessions a day (with an additional 5k run in the morning) was going to be a major step up in intensity.
My goal is to have a fight by the end of my month at Yak Yai, and I’ve already talked a bit with Henry about potentially fighting on the 27th or 28th of the month if I feel like my conditioning is there. My desire to fight has earned me a few more reps on occasion and some more intense padwork from the trainers, but I like to be pushed. I didn’t come here to half-ass it, and it’s nice to try to find out where my limits are. It’s been a hectic first few weeks in the country, but I’m excited to see where my time here takes me.
Shout out to Stacie, the love and light of my life.
The fact that overbooking flights is a commonplace and legal occurrence and there are no consumer protections for delayed flights in the US is mind-boggling, but I digress.
13kg
The Airbus A380-800 is a double decker plane capable of seating 525 passengers in normal configuration. It is mind-bogglingly large.
The airbnb had the wrong address in the app. The actual building was another half mile down the road. I probably walked a solid 4 miles in total, lugging my totally-not-a-bomb of a PC tower around airports and local streets.
Nothing grosser than having to put the same clothes back on after showering
Buy travel insurance, kids. The travel insurance I have reimburses you for up to $200 worth of clothing purchased due to baggage delays, and so I wasn’t out money for that, at least.
1 hour of Thai massage followed by 1 hour of oil massage is the GOAT combo.
To defeat the Huns, or whatever.
I know Danielle through my friend Dan (previously mentioned in my first post), because they trained together at Luktupfah. Danielle is married to Jao, formerly one of the trainers at Luktupfah, and one of the best Muay Femur style technicians I’ve ever met. I’ve seen him fight and knew he was good, but sparring with him on my first day of training was a truly humbling experience.
There’s a bit of a dual name thing going on with the gym: the physical location is owned by someone else and was originally called Numphonthep gym. Many of the fighters from the gym still use the original Numphonthep name as their fight name. Looknongsaeng is the name of the gym that Jao’s father ran in the north of Thailand: when he passed recently, Jao decided to keep the name alive by adopting the name as that of his own gym.
A smallish seaside resort town 2-3 hours from Bangkok.
Almost all of which I spent playing with Maysa, Danielle and Jao’s three-year-old daughter, who is probably the cutest and sweetest kid I’ve ever met.
A Burmese martial art, similar to but distinct from Muay Thai, which allows not only punches, knees, and elbows, but also headbutts and a more robust set of throws and trips. Lethwei is fought without gloves, with only limited wrapping allowed to support wrists and prevent excess bleeding from the knuckles. Lethwei also allows a recovery period after the first KO, and so if your opponent recovers in the 10 minutes after you knock them out, you have to do it again to win.
The realities of varying skill levels and relatively shallow pools of potential fighters often dictate significant size and/or skill disparities between Western fighters and their Thai counterparts: Sylvie Von Douglas-Ittu talks at length on her website about having to give up significant weight disadvantages in order to find opponents, and the inverse is generally true of larger Western women trying to find fights.
LEO is one of the 3 major Thai domestic beers, alongside Chang and Singha. (Singha actually makes LEO, but that’s beside the point.)
The original plan had been to head back the night of the fights, but they ran late, and so we decided to spend the night, drink a bit, and head back up in the morning.
For context, renting the PCX for the first week cost me 2450 baht (roughly $71), plus a 5000 baht deposit (in lieu of leaving my passport as a deposit, which, by the way, don’t ever do). The place I wanted to rent from charged 3000 thb for a slightly older model of PCX, or 2500 thb for an old Honda Click, which is the most popular model of scooter.
I was planning on checking out Phuket Fight Club as well, but their schedule ended up being less than ideal for me.
I initially followed him because he came up on Hongthong Muay Thai’s story and at the time had the handle “weretalkinboutpraxis”, which I thought was hilarious. Since I started following him he’s fought Saenchai twice on Thai Fight.
Rajadamnern World Series, a high-production-value, three round Muay Thai league that boasts some of the top talent in the world.
There was one specific guy who I thought I recognized, but I was worried that I was doing the classic “mistake one member of an ethnic group for another” thing, and I didn’t say anything. Turns out I did recognize him, and it was Marat Grigorian, world class kickboxer and former Glory Lightweight champion.
There were about 40 people there, which was apparently a relatively quiet day. I was told that a lot of people missing because there were 3 fighters from Revolution fighting that day, two of whom were fighting for WBC Muay Thai titles.
Bangla Stadium is more or less a tourist trap, located right on the main strip in the Patong beach area, hosting fight nights a few days a week.