I had a fiend who was from Laos when I was in high school. He used to get MT vids sent over from Thailand and we'd watch them.
We were doing TKD at the time. No MT clubs were around back then.
Later when I was 20 I got the opportunity to visit a MT club in NZ.
It just blew me away. I was a 2nd dan in TKD by then but I felt I was no match for any of the fighters at that gym. So I joined and trained for 6 months. But then I got a job in Japan.
In Japan I tried a bunch of different arts over a period of about 8 years, but I felt none of them were as effective as MT.
So I ended up going back to MT.
In some ways I wish I had just stuck to MT in the first place.
Then I found A martial art called Daidojuku which combined MT, Karate, Judo and jujitsu and fell in love.
I've been doing that for about 4 years now. Our training is so heavily MT influenced though that its like we practise MT in a Karate gi!
I've been to Thailand a couple of times to train, and looking forward to going back again in March.
It seems the more I learn about MT the deeper my appreciation for it.