Training in Bangkok

Me and some friends from my muay thai gym decided to take a holiday together in  Thailand, and include in the holiday some training days. Training in Thailand is an experience that a lot of people go for if they already train muay thai as Thailand is where this martial art is coming from.

We didn't have an exact plan of where to go and thought to just stay in central Bangkok and try different gym. But unfortunately Bangkok is extremely crowded, gyms are not as close as we thought and getting anywhere with taxis is always an adventure. Believe me when I say that taxi meter don't know how to get anywhere even if they have an address or sometime don't want to even bother.

Eventually we found out that Banchamek gym was in range from where we were staying and decided to try and go there. If you are not familiar with this name you may have heard of Buakaw? Well, that is  his own gym.

The place is not far, however we were staying at Asia Hotel by Rachatewi station which incidentally is on Petchaburi road which lead straight to the gym. On the other hand that area feature a massive, permanent traffic jam.

We got lucky on the first day as we took a taxi early in the afternoon and somehow managed to get there in less then half an hour and with less that 100 baht(not even £2).

The place is surrounded by banana trees and look amazing and genuine. We have been greeted warmingly by one of the fighters and said that we could train right away, but we didn't bring any gear with us and decided to come back later in the afternoon.

The place is not visited by tourist, most fighters were in Surin with Buakaw (the other gym outside Bangkok) and we had a chance to train one-to-one for about and hour with a trainer each.

We started with some skipping with the classic thai heavy rope, then moved on to shadow boxing follow with 4 rounds of pads. We are not training in the hottest season, but the heat makes the workout quite harder. After pads we would do some bag work for technique and conditioning, a bit of clinch and we concluded with some abs.

The trainers are fun and make the staying there very enjoyable, but they get serious during training. They also test you, and see how far you can take it. In fact some days I have been pushed harded the others with longer skipping time, more and longer rounds of pads.

We have been kept going for a week now and loved it, but in few days we will be flying to Phuket, therefore we will be soon say goodbye to Banchamek gym and see what the south of Thailand has to offer.