Ooi's TKD

Oois' TKD is a WTF school run by a Canadian and has branches in Pattaya and Sri Racha. It is run by Mr. Mike Gillies. Much like me, Mr. Gillies has trained in several martial arts with Muay Thai being his second art after TKD. Mr. Gillies has fought 5 times in full contact Muay Thai bouts against Thai fighters and has won all but one of those matches. Mr. Gillies was flown to Cambodia to fight the ex Cambodian Champion and lost due to elbow cut in the 5th round. However this was after Mr. Gillies knocked him out with front snap to the chin in the begginning of the first round. At the 8 count the ref turned to Mike and saw he wasn't in his corner so ran him over to his corner and then went back to the fallen Cambodian and restarted the count, giving him enough time to recover... they blatantly cheated but Mr. Gillies didn't care because for him it was all about the experience. He was happy to finally have fought someone of skill. The Sri Racha branch has several assistant instructors that were professional Muay Thai fighters and I found the personal training I received from them to be one of the best training experiences I got while there and it greatly helped prepare me for my fight in Thailand. Mr. Gillies himself helped me the most as he has the same background as me and he was able to help me bring my TKD and Muay Thai together in the ring.

Asia Pacific TKD

Asia Pacific TKD is located in Bangkok on the 8th floor of the Emporium tower. It is run by a fellow Canadian, WTF Master Don Ferguson. Master Ferguson has excellent technique and power and is a great TKD technician. His students include actors and movie stars.

ISS South East Asia International School of Martial Arts

This school is run in the same building as the ISS/WMTA Muay Thai camp in Pattaya that I will describe later under its own section. The owner/operater of this school is Sifu McInnis. Sifu (Chinese term for instructor) is a very interesting man. If you check out his website in my links section you will see what I mean. Besides his vast martial arts knowledge he has had an interesting career having been bodyguard to officials that had prices on their heads and working closely with the Thai military. He is also a coach/promoter for K1 fighters like Peter Aerts. The building he runs his martial arts and Muay Thai camp out of is like a giant pagoda with each floor holding a different training area for a different theme or martial art. I train there in the evenings with Mr. Gillies who runs Ooi's TKD in Pattaya. The training is like a mix between kungfu/karate/TKD/Muay Thai and grappling with a little gymnastics thrown in. It is pretty crazy some of the stuff they do there but always fun. One of the nights I was injured and just went by to watch, I was extremely disappointed I couldn't take part as they were balancing on stacked logs and while they wobbled all over the place they would execute bo staff techniques. Not all the training methods were as dynamic as that but the training in general was always very interesting. I currently try to train with Sifu once a week.

Fairtex Muay Thai camp

Fairtex is located on the outskirts of Bangkok. Fairtex is beautiful, the grounds are very nice and there is a cool pool to lounge in during the hot afternoons. Exotic animals and birds like peacocks walk the grounds freely and add to the atmosphere. The only time the animals weren't welcome was when the roosters would sometimes sound off at 3am.... you do get used to it. Fairtex costs approx. $20 U.S. per day but includes 2 training sessions, 2 great healthy meals and a room with a fan. you can pay more for airconditioning. The training is top notch and you get lots of personal training. It was very exciting training side by side with excellent pro fighters all week and then going to Lumpini stadium and cheering them on. It was like being part of the team. I liked the trainers very much and went out socialising with them one night and had a great time. Fairtex also sells a large assortment of equipment and clothes (like Muay Thai shorts and shirts) that they make for you right on the grounds. The equipment is vastly cheaper than western prices.

The training would start off at about 7 am for a run. The run goes along a nice country road and passes beautiful scenery. About 8 am you would go warm up and then take part in the morning session from 8:30 am to 10:30 am. Most camps had similar regimens consisting of 3 to 5 rounds of pad drills followed by bag work followed by 3 to 5 rounds of focus mitt drills and more bag work or sparring. At Fairtex if you want to do all kinds of different training and want the trainers to push you hard you should tell them, otherwise they might take it easy on you as they are used to all kinds of out of shape people coming through their camp so tend to judge all foreigners as somewhat lazy or less capable. You eat your first meal at 11 am and then have free time all afternoon until 3:30 pm when you can do a light run or warm up for the 4pm session which lasts until 6pm. You are supposed to push harder during the afternoon session but other than that it is very similar to the morning session. Dinner is at 6:30 pm. I would spend my afternoons sleeping or in the pool or shopping at Big C the shopping mall down the road. By cab it was about 15 minutes away. I was often so tired I went to bed by 8pm.

Lamai Muay Thai camp

Lamai Muay Thai is located in Lamai on Koh Samui, an Island that attracts alot of tourists. I had never seen the ocean up close before so I was really happy to find a camp to train at where I could swim in the ocean during the afternoons. The beach was beautiful and the water warm and sometimes very active. I would regularly fight the waves just to keep standing by the shoreline.

Lamai Muay Thai is run by a Muay Thai promoter and trainer named Stephan from Germany. He is somewhat... insane... but in a good way. This camp is geared towards foreigners that want to fight. The training was actually one of the best camp experiences I had on my whole trip and I learned much more at this camp then anywhere else. The reason for this is if you aren't a begginer you train in the fighters group and basically do nothing but spar and fighting drills. I limped home from training every session covered in bruises and sore all over... exactly the kind of training I relish. An example of a session would be 20 minute boxing round with another fighter followed by a 20 minute leg sparring round followed by a 20 minute stand up grappling round. Then we might do a gauntlet where each fighter has to spar against all the other fighters one after the other with no breaks, rarely this would include some pad drills. Pad drills just didnt seem like the priority here. With all the combat training my reflexes and timing and strategies improved greatly. I recommend this camp for anyone that wants to fight. Stephan can also set up a fight for you in less than a week and they are pretty good about matching up skill levels. Did I mention Stephan was a little crazy? He would often be yelling and swearing at us to push harder and if I got matched up with a girl fighter and I didn't hit her hard enough he would physically knock me to the floor and then commence to kick the patooey out of her (she didn't seem to mind). That man added alot of character to my trip.

My friend Kristian fought out of this camp while we were there and I got to be corner man for him which was a hoot. Although Kristians opponent was more skilled than him, Kristian won with heart and will with a knockout in the 5th round. This is after Kristian had several standing 8 counts and almost got knocked out repeatedly... he's one tough guy and he made the classic come back that people love to see or hear about.

I have another friend Phil that stayed at this camp for 6 months previous to my trip and he fought out of that camp about 6 times. This is definately a good camp to go to if your looking to start fighting.

I am not positive but I think the fighters that actually get in the ring, train and live for free here but again I am not positive. The normal fee is $10 Canadian for the day which includes 2 training sessions and access to a weight room. I slept at a hotel on the beach and ate in cheap restaurants.

Saw Punjit Muay Thai camp

I have probably mispronounced and terribly mispelled the name of this camp as I only know the name of it from hearing it once. This camp used to be very famous with champions coming from this camp but now it is unfortunately not as popular. I befriended one of the ex pro fighters and trainers of this camp and asked if I could visit him and train with him one afternoon at his camp. He showed me around his camp and then he gave me great personal training for a few hours where I learned a ton of new things. This is a very unique looking camp as its architecture is Japanese. The compound looks like an amazing Japanese dojang and the buildings were extremely interesting. My friends name is Choa (pronounced Chow) and he is a very cool guy, he speaks fluent english that he learned just from hanging out with his foreign friends. The only negative thing about hanging out with Choa was that when we went out in the evening people thought we were a gay couple... which I thought was funny but Choa didn't think it was funny at all... I can still hear him shouting "we're not gay! we're Thai boxers!" Somehow that made sense to him.

Saw Punjit Muay Thai camp normally charges about $30 Canadian per day and that includes food and lodging as well as 2 training sessions a day.

ISS/WMTA Muay Thai camp

This camp is located in the building that Sifu McInnis owns and operates in Pattaya that also holds the evening martial arts classes. Sifu McInnis is a promoter for K1 and often has K1 fighters and champions training at this camp. I say often but maybe it just seemed that way since while I was training there on and off for a few weeks I met 2 K1 champions there. Nick helped me with my long knee and Peter Aertes was nice enough to give me advice on how to prepare for my fight . I was happy to get any kind of information from such high profile and successful fighters. The regular training there was very good, unlike some camps the trainers here hit me regularly to keep me on my toes which is exaclty what I needed. This is the camp that I hooked up my fight with as Sifu McInnis is very well connected and promotes fights in this area as well.

Sor Vorapin Muay Thai camp

Sor Vorapin is located in Banglampoo in Bangkok near Koa San road. (Koh san road is a famous foreigner area) Because of this location the camp is filled with foreigners. Some are serious fighters and some were begginers. It has extremely easy access being so close to places were tons of foreigners stay to sleep and hang out so I think this camp must have many people coming and going all the time. I didn't train there more than a few times and I often saw many new faces. The training in the ring was very similar to what I had already experienced at other camps but outside the ring they often had you do begginer drills and excercises that kind of turned me off of wanting to go back. Great camp for begginers though, I'm assuming they treat you differently if you become one of thier fighters.

Sor vorapin cost about $10 Canadian per training session, I'm not sure if it is cheaper for more sessions paid at once as I paid per session.

Thai-Japan Gym

Thai-Japan gym is a fitness centre that also houses a Judo club and Muay Thai training area along with many other facilities, it is located in Bangkok. I would go to this place to do weights if nothing else since the membership for the year was $1. Yes one dollar. That included training in the camp. I don't know about the Judo club cost but I watched them and it seems very good. They have an excellent large training area and they train seriously and I was very tempted to buy a Gi and ask to join in. The camp is kind of different... I was just training on the heavy bags and watching some of thier fighters spar in their nice large ring (without any protective gear but boxing gloves) and I realised that no one was going to approach me so I better do the approaching. I asked if I could spar and they set me up with one of their fighters. It was my first time with shin on shin contact since we werent wearing any gear and it was alot of fun. We weren't hitting as hard as a fight but much harder than anything I had ever done with nothing protecting my shins. It hurt but not nearly as much as I imagined. Needless to say my opponent kicked my butt all over the place, I spent most of my time defending except for a nice kick I placed on his head that had the trainers laughing and shouting at my opponent, presumably to keep his hands up. I left covered in bruises but very satisfied with the experience. I landed up training there occasionally after I would do weights.

Rakaemhang University

I try to train at the University as often as possible and go there to train Muay Thai and gymnastics. It is very cheap but the training isn't that serious. It costs next to nothing though and is better than nothing. If you join a camp there is no point in going here.

My first full contact Muay Thai match

It was alot of fun but a little disappointing. I trained for it and stressed over it for 3 months and was fully prepared to get my butt kicked. I wasn't going in there to win, I just wanted to prove my heart to the Thais. The Thais don't care if you win or lose (not really) but if you can take a beating and keep going they respect that greatly. They think of most foreigners as soft compared to thier fighters so when a foreigner takes lumps but doesn't give up they like to see that. Unfortunatley I didn't get a chance to show that I had heart as I dominated the 2 rounds it lasted and won with a body knockout in the second round. I blasted him with a turning sidekick (or back kick) and he went down and couldn't get back up. I was very happy at the time even though something was nagging at my brain that something was wrong and it wasn't until I watched the tape that I realised what it was. My opponent wasn't very good. Throughout the fight I kicked him in the head several times, nailed his legs a bunch of times, punched him repeatedly and clinch kneed him consecutively at least 12 times. They told me he had a bunch of fights under him but he fought pretty badly and that kind of takes away from the whole experience but I guess it's a good first fight for me to learn from. My only injuries were all from hitting him. I resprained my foot from kicing his ankle from out of range with the top of my foot and sprained my middle finger on my right hand from a bad punch coupled with the worn down gloves they gave me. My shins were also in pretty bad shape the next day but that healed fine. My finger still bothers me... of course having not gotten medical attention for it, that s my own fault.