Sor Vorapin Muay Thai

[Damian Mavis]

Here I go starting another thread in this section....ok we all know you Muay Thai people are out there! How come nobody but me posts here? haha

Anyway, I have been training a bit at Sor Vorapin Muay Thai camp in Banglampoo in Bangkok. It's near all the creepy foreigners....The training is pretty good, the best part is if you stay with all the other foreigners the club is right there for you to train at a couple times a day. This week I have been training here, at the Thai Japan Muay Thai gym and at Asia Pacific Tae Kwon Do. It's a pretty good combination. If anyone ever decides to come down to Thailand this info will be invaluable I'm sure but if none of you ever come..... guess this is meaningless heh.

My website has 3 sections of photos of Thailand and the training here if anyone is interested.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

Can you rate all the traingin rates($) you know. Thanks...

[arnisador]

How much weight have you lost?

[Damian Mavis]

I don't know about the weight I've lost... I haven't weighed myself but I wouldnt be surprised if I'm exactly the same as usual. I've trimmed down some fat but I've been doing wieghts here regularly and probalby got a little bigger in the upper body...not to mention with all the running my legs are bigger than they have ever been too. My body looks better than it has in oh....8 years....I'm getting old...ugh. The trick is to keep this up and stay in shape once I'm back in Canada... I think eating icecream before going to sleep is out of the question from now on.

I think you wanted the rates? Ok:

-Fairtex $30 Canadian ($20 U.S.) per day includes lodgings, 2 great meals day and 2 training sessions with ex champs as your personal trainers. The grounds are beautiful and they have a nice pool to lounge in during the hot afternoons.

-Lamai on Koh Samui ($11 Canadian) per day for 2 training sessions. Food and lodging are up to you to find but you can live at the camp but I have no idea if he charges people or if he lets you stay free if you fight for him. I will find out once I go back in a few weeks.

-Thai-Japan Gym ($1 Canadian per year) includes access to the whole facility (weights, pool, Muay Thai, Judo) Muay Thai training is 5pm to 7pm every night except Monday. Find your own food and lodging.

-Sor Vorapin ($20 Canadian per day) includes 2 training sessions...however I think it's much cheaper if you pay per week. Find your own food and lodging.

**Fairtex and Lamai are more serious than the other 2. But training is training and if you are in the neighbourhood its all good. Thai-Japan Gym can be serious if you have some skill and want to spar shin on shin with a pro.

The only other new camp I hope to visit while here is in Chang Mai which is a 14 hour train ride away....I'll let you all know if I go of course.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

-Thai-Japan Gym ($1 Canadian per year) includes access to the whole facility (weights, pool, Muay Thai, Judo) Muay Thai training is 5pm to 7pm every night except Monday. Find your own food and lodging.

like sound of that ALOT.
i dont understand the $20 dollars a day. why are the rates so high? i used to pay 80$ a month.

[Damian Mavis]

For Sor vorapin you mean? 2 reasons... one is it is located near the foreigner area so people will pay more and they know it and the other reason is because the per session rate will be more expensive than per week or per month. It gets alot cheaper if you pay up front for a certain amount of time. I like to move from camp to camp right now so am paying more.

In case anyone is considering coming over here, keep in mind the cost of living is very cheap. You can get hotel rooms for $7 a night and a good meal can be $3 - $5. You can get cheaper but quality suffers.


Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[arnisador]

I'm surprised you have such consistent net access.

[Damian Mavis]

Not as surprised as me. Before I got here people warned me I might not find an internet cafe...... talk about an uneducated thing to say haha. There's at least 3 on every block. Most are slow but I found one that actually has DSL and is fast as lightning. Even the Fairtex camp rents internet time. EVERYBODY rents internet time. It's quite the little industry here. I'm on the internet every day at least 2 times daily in order to keep my school running and smooth out any problems with emails. (I have to make sure 3 different instructors are ok and doing everything right - I'm a bit of a worryer when it comes to my school alone without me!)

Some days I just dont have time to log on or I am travelling but the past 2 weeks in Bangkok I have been on everyday.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[blackdiamondcobra]

The reason for the higher costs? Alot of the popular muay thai camps like all those mentioned above
are meant to cater to the "farang" market which yields them
good money for little work. Fairtex has realized this and has jumped on the
bandwagon as well. They got hip to the Western market. Sor Vorapin has two camps one for the
farangs and one for their boxers and serious fighters. The farang
camp is situated in the banglampoo area and the other in another place.
I have seen this situation grow over the last fifteen years since I have
been training there. In the more disciplined, hardcore camps they
make the "farang" adjust to the training and the rigors of it and dont
cater to him at all. In the farang friendly camp, they ease up on them and
let them move into pad work without really working hard at basics. In Chiang Mai, I felt
the camps were especially easy going as opposed to the rigors of the
top notch bangkok camps. If you dont believe me, befriend a good thai
fighter or trainer and he will tell you point blank.

Are you saying Thailand is an un-modernize and cheap country? Sorry for the words but I'm getting that vibe

[Damian Mavis]

I found that if you have the ability you get the serious training. I see plenty of foreigners doing exactly what BlackDiamondCobra said : taking it easy and getting psuedo Muay Thai training. Those people are usually beginners with no fight experience. If you are doing well, at least in my case, they always put me in with the fighters. And I wouldnt have it any other way...I'm not stupid, I can tell when I'm not getting serious training (kind of like at Sor Vorapin). As for Fairtex, you train side by side with their top pro fighters... so only an idiot with no observation skills would be able to see if he was not getting the exact same kind of training. The first 2 days they treated me like I was fragile and it was disapointing me. But without me even complaining they brought my training up to the level of their fighters and I was happy as poo by mid week.

The Lamai camp in Koh Samui is totally geared towards foreigners...but it's also geared towards pressuring them to fight. They have several people fighting from that camp each week. That is actually some of the hardest training I have experienced here. Not so much for the hard workouts but just from limping home covered in bruises and all beat up. We kick the crap out of eachother there and you really learn alot about fighting at that camp fast.

Anyway I agree with what BlackDiamondCobra said but think it was a little to broad and generalised.

MuayThaiPerson: I wouldnt call Thailand unmodern, the big cities are modern....dirty but modern, but definately cheap. You can go to really expensive places here and pay more than you would at home or you can live cheap as dirt. Meals for $0.80 and hotel rooms for as low as $1 a night (Canadian). I personally mix and match my living styles. One week I might stay at the $3 a night hotel and another at the $30 a night one. Sometimes I eat at the Sizzler for $10 and sometimes I have a big bowl of soup on the corner for $0.80. There is plenty of places at all cost levels.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[blackdiamondcobra]

I stand by my post and it was very clear in re-reading it. I dont
think any farang is going to get the in depth training in any
camp until he becomes part of the camp. It comes down to
understanding how a camp works and over time if you stick
with a top notch camp you will see this revealed and why. Trust
and understanding by both sides is essential. So Mr. Marvis has his
views based on his short time there and its interesting but
as long as you stay on the farang road you remain stuck there.
"The years see what the day will never know"

[Damian Mavis]

Well I have to disagree with you a bit still, I trained with the pro fighters....with them and right beside them, I see what they are doing and I see what I am doing, it is identical with one small exception. They have more staying power. Whereas I wither after about 5 rounds they seem to be just as strong as their first round.

I totally agree with you, I simply didnt experience that myself. I'm not trying to toot my own horn but I did get treated differently than the other foreigners. Whether it was my ability and experience or the way I push myself until I'm going to drop dead I don't know but they did treat me differently than the other foreigners in my group. There was one other foreigner that lives at the camp and is very good who was training like me and the fighters. The rest of the foreigners didn't train anything like us.

Are you willing to concede that maybe things happened the way I'm saying it or am I still blind in your eyes? heh.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[blackdiamondcobra]

Like I stated previously I think your insights are shallow and all the posts seem at best self aggrandizing and insolent. You seem to be wanting to insist that you have gained something beyond norm in a very short amount of time (without taking the time to understand how a camp works and how information is dispensed). I'm not going to continue your polemic. There's no sense wasting my energy here.
Good luck with your training and the depth of it.

[arnisador]

He's actually there, now! I suspect he has some idea of the "ground truth"!