san kamphaeng – Escaping the Known

As I sit here weeping, partly in pain from my shins, partly because I rubbed Tiger Balm in my eyes… again, I think it is time to reflect on our time at the Muay Thai camp. We signed up for a month and only 4 days are left now, so it is a logical point of reflection.

How did we end up here since we have never did Muay Thai before? Typically, a friend did this and we thought it was a good idea. So we did a little research and settled on this place: Santai Muay Thai in San Kamphaeng. It had great reviews, looked fairly non commercial and offered no yoga or ballet dancing lessons on the side, not to mention the fact that it was also fairly cheap in comparison to the places down in the South of Thailand. And here we are.

What can I say about San Kamphaeng? Its a tiny village on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, there is a main street, a couple of temples, a post office, a police station and few eating places, few rice fields, packs of wild dogs and few cows dotted about. Not the most glamorous location, but… the locals are very friendly, food is great (albeit not much of a choice), everything is cheap and Chiang Mai is only a 30 minutes songtao ride away (for those who do not know what songtao is, it is a pick up truck with benches and cover, a sort of tuk tuk bus if you like). Every Saturday, a market is put on along the main street that attracts the locals and us (there is really not much else to do here: train, eat, sleep, go to night market on a Saturday). The members of the gym are pretty much the only farrangs (foreigners, for those of you who do not have my basic 5 phrase base of Thai) in San Kamphaeng, beside a couple of dudes married to local Thai ladies and anyone we do not know gets a curious stare: who are you and what are you do doing in our town? Ludicrous, I know, it is not our town, but we all love it as our own, even after a short while. The locals recognise us and greet us, the local restaurant owner where we eat most nights knows us by names, we know where the best fruit juices are and where the best massage is to be had… it kinda is our town.

Onto the main event, the training! To say it is hard is not really to say anything, the average temperature is 36 degrees at the moment and the gym is an open plan affair with no air conditioning, anything in these conditions is hard, let alone 2-3 hour training sessions. We were told to take it easy the first two weeks, which we did not exactly listen to and have hammered first few days… Ste hurt his foot, I could not really move much for 2 days… Lesson 1: listen to your peers! To say we have fallen into the groove would not really be true, I feel fitter for a short while and then something else hurts. I am currently battling shin splints and bruised knees. I have overcome a vicious attack by ants in the ring: there were hundreds! And the underside of my upper arm looked like chicken pox for a while. I have finally started running in the morning, both times at the expense of the ability to walk for the next two hours. I am however proud to announce that that I ran 4k this morning, the longest distance I ever ran! The shortest distance ran here. It is either 4, 7 or 12 that the fighters (or just visitors like us) can run. Few days ago one of the fighters attempted 12 and got lost on the way ending up almost in Chiang Mai after about a 20k run and blagging a free ride back in a songtao… How we laughed… I am still proud of my 4 though.

There are places of interest everywhere in the locality, if you have a scooter, which we do not as I do not feel they are safe here for an inexperienced driver. Few people from the gym decided to head to the hot springs about 30 minutes drive away to soak our battered muscles and of course I have decided to join. We were going to rent out a songtao, but the fate had something else in store: as we were baking in the sun waiting to hail down a said songtao, a friend pulled up and offered to lend us two scooters: Great! everyone said and I quietly started to worry… I did not really know the person I was going to be riding with, Luca, an Italian. ‘So… you are very good on the scooter then?’ I asked with hope, ‘Yes, I am very fast and I love dangerous situations he replied’…. ‘Great, I am going to die’ was my thought that stayed with me as Luca whizzed through the streets overtaking cows and cars and occasionally racing the other scooter riders… Obviously I did not die, and by the end felt that despite his claim the lad was a safe driver, but the nerves were shattered… nothing a hot spring could not fix!

Although the training for us is a mere way to get a bit fitter after overindulging on wine and cheese in Australia for 7 months, for most people here it is fight training and a large proportion of those who train actually participate in fights. We have attended a couple of such fights recently which was very exciting. I have never been to a fight before, but I can confirm that watching people you know fight is far more exciting than watching just anyone. Would I ever participate? Never say never, but if I was 5 years younger, I would have said yes, definitely.

Another event worth mentioning was getting sak yant tattoos. Ste has a couple of tattoos already, but for me that was a first. Decision was sort of taken out of my hands as at 7am Ste informed me: we going to get tattoos at 9am! And so we went… Sak yant is a traditional Thai tattoo done by a bhuddist monk with either tapping a bamboo or a metal spike (in our case) called khem sak. This practice dates back before the start of bhuddism and has been practiced in SEA for thousands of years, although the popularity today remains mainly in Thailand. The tattoos are believed to have magic powers as they are blessed by the monk and the bearer is believed to be bulletproof… I have not yet put this to the test, but I heard that in Laos many have, with disastrous results.

Almost forgot! Which I suppose shows how much we are affected by this, but you might have heard on the news that we are currently under military regime and a curfew due to the most recent military coup in Thailand. There has been a lot of information in the media, but life here in San Kamphaeng has not been affected much, except that curfew IS enforced, which has affected the Saturday market and the fights in Chiang Mai with a couple being cancelled. The military presence is apparent in Chiang Mai (but they are friendly and open to posing for photos with tourists). The curfew has been relaxed which we take as a good sign and hopefully this will all blow over soon. The area we are in feels safe, but as it is a very heavy Red Shirt area, should anything were to escalate, the unrest would reach here and that would be terrible. Thailand as a whole and the North in particular is an amazing country full of great people and we hope and pray that this is resolved without further trouble.

As our time here is coming to an end, we do feel fitter, leaner and I think we have caught the Muay Thai bug as although we have to leave now, we are thinking on how and when we can come back…

And again, in no order:

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Muay Thai is a violent blood sport after all…

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The first Santai fighter performing a traditional Wai Khru dance before the start of the fight. It is a way of showing respect to the trainers and more traditionally to the King