More specifically I’m going to Thailand to train in Muay Thai Kickboxing and MMA (mixed martial arts).
I’ve trained in Muay Thai for just over two years now, gathering this obsession with fitness and combat since my 2nd year at university. It helped me lose weight, gained practical defensive techniques, confidence and ambition. It also helps me to relax, to think things through after many stressful situations and to calm my inner “criticiser”, I find that I’m sometimes my own worst enemy; that I should be achieving so much at a certain age and I can put myself into a downward spiral if I don’t. So I took the big step: 1 month in thailand training!
Thailand Day 0-1
Where to begin??
The flight itself was tedious (as all 12 hour flights, with a 2 hour layover, and another 2 hour flight, followed by an hours taxi journey). I met an interesting older couple on the long haul flight from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur, there were off on holiday to malaysia, we shared a few rum and cokes and got chatting about how there daughter will be recently graduating and has been offered a residency in London to continue her studies in medicine. Lovely couple! After another connecting flight to Phuket I was picked up by the Tiger Muay Thai taxi company and driven to the Chalong, Patong area. My first initial thoughts were “my god its f****n hot here!’. It s a drastic change from 5-6 degree heat to 32-35 degree heat in the matter of hours!. Another thought followed later in the taxi, the thai people are nuts!!. The main road that we traveled down was similar to a dual carriage way, except there were no separation of lanes and pretty much every scooterist that shot past was not wearing a helmet, carried children in the baskets at the front, were on mobile phones or were just chilling whilst going at 50-60mph, insane!
It also will become paramount to me that due to my location Im going to need a scooter to get around to the beaches, bars and sights during my downtime (more on that in a future post)
My accommodation is pretty nifty, for the equivalent of 200 pounds I’ve got a bachelor pad which consists of all air conned, tv, internet, shower, toilet, balcony and swimming pool all for a month. The location is a short walk from the gym, and at top of the road is a local eatery (amongst many others) owned by a tiny tiny thai man called Tony, who can only be described as the nicest person I’ve ever met, always remembers names and faces (only been here for a day) and loves to chat or “banter” with us farang.
I made a point of introducing myself to my neighbours, who consisted of 4 irish lads (who leave on wed unfortunately) two americans lads and a russian woman, all training in Muay Thai (some at different gyms). After sharing a dragonfruit and some other weird berries and chatting for a while I needed to the hit that hay, it had been pretty much 20 hours since I’d slept and I was dead to the world.
Upon awaking on monday at 6am I proceeded to the gym to try my hand at YOGA of all things; was very relaxing, a good way to stretch and start the day, and was taken by a fitness instructor from america called Ocean Bloom, my god, she’s just ridiculous but in a good way (google her).
I advance onto the matt to have my first Muay Thai Lesson. I joined the intermediate class: we warmed up and worked on combos, followed by 3 rounds of bag work, 3 rounds of padwork with a padman in the ring and then we started boxing sparring. The session was meant to last 2 and half hours, but in a word, i pretty much died after an hour. They say it takes a good 4-5 days to acclimatize to the intensity, heat and humidity of this country, and going from training in freezing cold, heater fed gyms to training in 30 degree heat I got exhausted pretty quick. After one round of sparring, maybe about 90 minutes in i had to sit down and really take a breather, my head was spinning, i felt dizzy and faint and it took me a good 20 minutes after to regulate my breathing. Lesson learned (it also didnt help the fact that I had only eaten cornflakes before hand). Tomorrows plan, eat ALOT more before commencing training.
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| Supplements ho! |
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| This will be consumed every 2 days |
The rest of the day I spent relaxing in the sun by the pool, spoke to a nice American woman who had been traveling around Asia; has been to the beaches in Phuket and informed of the best places to visit, but these will only be accessible if i rent a scooter (gonna have to man up and get one it seems!)
Ate once again at Tonys, spoke to a few Australian, American lads and a Russian lady, who were talking about their weekend, beaches, nights out and club spots to go to. Hopefully something for the weekend can be sorted
At the moment its 10pm in the evening, my irish neighbours have lent me boardwalk empire season one on pirate dvd and i’ve got The Rum Diary lined up for later, featuring the legend Jonny Depp. Night sorted. Also there’s a huge ass lightning storm happening outside.
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Peace
