The Long Road To Nibbana

The other (well, as well as all the other ones and the general “chuck it all in and go on holiday for six months” thing) foolish thing we did in Chalong was walk to Big Buddha.

Before you write us off as cultural heathen, I’ll explain. It wasn’t Buddha that was the problem, it was the fact we decided to trek 10km, on foot, in shorts and Vans trainers, to get there.

Quite often, Andy and I will have an idea about a place, that flies in the face of conventional sense or transportation setup. In California, it was the idea that we could ride heavy steel beach cruisers up and down canyons to get to class.  On this occasion it was ignoring the fact that everyone else was going by scooter or taxi, and embracing an “invigorating amble” in the countryside.

And so Thursday morning we set off, equipped with long skirt/scarf affair (me, temples frown on lady legs and shoulders), mosquito repellent (to stop us being bitten) antihistamine (in case we were and Andy started going into anaphylactic shock, he’s a bit body sensitive), suntan lotion (it was pretty much high noon), six large bottles of water (obvious) and some flipflops (me again, I just don’t like having hot feet).  It was like an Xtreme Churchgoing Expedition.

Before we could reach spiritual nirvana, we had to walk along the motorway. The first 4km of the journey were spent on the hard shoulder (no pavements in these parts), dodging lorries and drain holes, and accompanied by continuous horn honking and calls of “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk?” (pretty much any time Thai people see Farangs walking they assume they have only ventured out in order to find transport).  Even this waterbuffalo looked at us like we were mad.

Around 2km in, I decided that what would really help a 10km trek in crazy arse heat would be a face like thunder and a mild case of “woe is me-itis”.  In case you have any doubt (unlikely) it didn’t make things easier.

After 4km, we got to turn off the motorway, onto a smaller road up the mountain. Handily, this point is stocked with stalls selling tourist tat, offerings for the statues and coconut water.

Remarkably, given my love of tat, I chose the most refreshing option.

Just past this delightful sausage display (doesn’t everyone hang their meat by the main road?) we found the bottom of the hill.

What followed next involved another 4km, some “look at the amazing view” comments from Andy, quite a lot of groaning and puffing on my part, and some elephants (sadly chained up as a tourist attraction, so we didn’t stop to take photos with them).

Inspired perhaps by the idea of “Sandwishes”, about three quarters of the way up we stopped for a coffee and to slip off our shoes.

Post coffee, I couldn’t get mine on again, so I switched to flip flops. Logically this seems crazy, and we all know I love a whinge, but they served me well for the rest of the day.

After around 2 hours, we finally made it to the top. I swathed myself in additional layers until all flesh was covered (it wasn’t a sartorial high point, I’ll admit) and we went sightseeing.

The Big Buddha is indeed very, very large, 45 metres/147 feet tall. Sadly at the moment, he’s wearing a bit of scaffolding (they’re developing the site into a large-scale tourist attraction and spiritual hub) but it was still impressive.

There was also a little golden Buddha (12 metres/40 feet) and plenty of monk effigies where you could think nice thoughts and zen out a bit.  

Perhaps it’s because of the large numbers of tourists marauding around (some of whom were upsettingly sitting on the laps of statues) or the fact that I’m not a practising Buddhist, but I didn’t get the hit of karmic calm I was expecting. It was however a good time to reflect on our travels and family and friends back home, and buy a bit of marble in their honor to be included in the renovations.

Then it was time to laugh at some monkeys (one of whom was drinking pop that had been left out for the gods) and sample some coconut ice cream.

We’d obviously run out of steam or camera batteries (we did take a lot of photos of those monkeys) by the return journey, as we’re completely bereft of imagery. Suffice to say, Andy was valiantly attempting to ignore two big blisters and we made it about 6km of the 10km downward trek before finding a taxi for the last bit.

So that was our “rest day”. Time to head back to training again…

We Go Up A Level…Aka The Intermediate Muay Thai Class At Tiger

Sure enough, after a couple more beginners sessions with Mr Miyagi (coincidentally almost  carbon copies of the first lesson, complete with infidelity tales) we got bumped up to the Intermediate level.

It’s not like a friendly graduation thing, the trainer literally accosts you during the warmup, frogmarches you round the corner, and deposits you on the mat of the new class. Anyway, we were promoted.

The Intermediate class runs roughly in the same format as the Beginners one, with “runs” being the operative word.

We were hoping that the get fit onslaught would drop and the technique-finessing element rise in honor of our new status – we swiftly found it was just more intense all round. 

As a swift numerical breakdown:

1) Running. Of course. Heels, knees, arm swinging, all that jazz.

      2) Stretching, and a chance to look at your sweaty, grimacing face in the mirror.

3) Wraps on (nothing makes you feel like a lady more than having someone wrap your hands for you. A marriage proposal perhaps), gloves on, and then partner-based combination drills. Again, your partner is largely picked for you – you’ll understand who you’ve been matched with because the krus will point wildly and occasionally just shove you in the right direction.

      4)  Shadow boxing. Works a bit like X Factor, they watch you and decide which trainer will take you on the pads for the next bit.

5) Three rounds of padwork (we’re guessing they were about five minutes each), interspersed with twenty press-ups in between. As before, how this goes largely depends on who you get as a trainer – one guy helped tidy up my narrow stance, another just yelled “20 left kicks, 20 right kicks, 20 left kicks, 20 right kicks,” continuously at me, followed by, “You smoke cigarettes?” (I don’t) when I gave him the “I am not enjoying this in any way" face.

      6) Three fiveish minute rounds on the bags, interspersed with 20 press-ups.  Often with mandatory continuous jumping knees, and shouts of “more power, more POWER” as a backdrop.

7) Three rounds of sparring.  At this point most people will be able to have a go at sparring (the beginners class housed a few non-starters on that front) – Andy’s end of the room was speckled with more technical, fluid ability (and a few “win at all costs” aggressive types), my side of the mat looked somewhat more awkward and ill-timed.

      8) 30 minutes of lactic acid inspiring fitness drills. Often with a partner – could be continuous kicks, continuous press-up variants, split-lunging jumping stuff, or hopping on one leg back and forth across the room. Whatever it is, it will burn like a mother (bear in mind this is not generally a point in the class that you wish to embrace cardio).

      9) 300 situps and 200 pressups.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are “Clinch Days”, which means you skip the shadow boxing but get two ten minute rounds of continuous clinch sparring instead, followed by laps around the outside of the gym.

In terms of the fitness, and this is a personal thing here, I found it problematic. By this point we were taking two bottles of water (one frozen cold, one filled with rehydration salts, which are sold everywhere on the street) to the class, which certainly helped. I was also taking magnesium supplements to help with muscle recovery. But it’s no secret that I’m not of optimum fight age, and I found that 2.5 hours at such intensity was too long, or at least too long to recover enough to train again the next day.

So, despite having fantasised about training twice daily all through January (particularly whilst stuffing my chops at Christmas), what actually happened involved quite a lot of time out, yoga sessions and massage before I could take on another high intensity stint.

For me, a schedule where the technique is split away from the conditioning elements (perhaps in back to back sessions that you can opt in or out of) might have been more workable in terms of everyday training.

And again, from a very personal perspective, I’ll admit I didn’t find these group classes the quickest way to fine tune my technique.

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I already had some basic Muay Thai knowledge, gleaned from various sources over the years. But whilst I can theoretically string together combinations of basic punches, I am painfully aware that my form looks like that of gibbon full of Red Bull.  So yes, I need some definite sparring practice to find out if those combinations are impractical, but I also need someone to take me aside and say things like, “What’s with these wildly flapping elbows?” “Stop looking off into the middle distance” and “You’ll break your hand if you keep hitting things like that”.

Tiger teach hundreds upon hundreds of folk a week, and the machine-line nature of their business, coupled with the large class numbers, means it’s really hard to build any kind of ongoing training relationship with a singular trainer.

Perhaps if I’d attended on a more continuous basis (see the paragraph above), or bought in to a 10 class privates package, some kind of rapport might have developed. There were certainly a couple of trainers who volunteered advice whilst training (Andy maintains I got roughly ten times more interest than him, on account of my feminine charms).

But, and it pains me to break the hearts of Tiger aspirants across the globe, those were the noteworthy ones.

And in general, there were just as many who looked, well, a bit bored, with teaching hapless farangs.

Three weeks in and the ratio of broken body:learning wasn’t quite working for me.  It was time to rejig my training plans again…

Living On Tiger Street

I can’t even begin to pronounce the name of the street that Tiger is stationed on. Heck, I’m not even sure which bit is the street name. 

Here’s how the address is listed on Tiger’s website: 

7/6 Moo 5 Soi Tad-ied Ao Chalong
Muang Phuket
Thailand
83100 

Anyway, as I said earlier, the general area is filled with at least three major Muay Thai camps – Tiger, Dragon and Phuket Top Team. 

It’s also crammed to the rafters with differing levels of accommodation – from uber-basic (I presume, I didn’t venture into anyone’s crib to inspect closely) on-site rooms, to luxury hotels like Cocoville, The One and Signature. 

The cheapest options come in at around 4500THB (£96) a month, and the swishest about 24,000THB (£514), with a bit of variation depending on whether it’s high or low season (January is pretty much the highest point in the calendar). 

Now obviously £500 odd quid between us is pretty reasonable for top-end digs, and coming from a flatshare that cost me alone around £1,000 a month, the tendency is to rush right in with a credit card. If we were on a shorter holiday, say two weeks, I would have been holed up ordering room service 24/7. 

But of course our travels are clocking in at around 6 months in total, and we’re wringing every last penny out to make them last longer. So we took a browse through the mid-price options and came across Fern House (around 18,000THB/£385 for a couple staying a month). 

Handily, given Fern House only has nine rooms in total, it seems very few people know about the place. 

Around the third time I answered the “Where are you staying?” question accurately and saw blank expressions in return, I defaulted to “next door to Cocoville”. 

However, quite a few of the rooms are booked up by return visitors, so it pays to contact them well in advance (and directly, they have to pay commission to Tiger if bookings come in through the gym). 

Stylewise, it’s a place with relatively scant furniture and adornments, but those that are included are aesthetically pleasing, in a rustic wood and concrete kinda way. 

As someone whose obsessive-compulsive disorder inspires regular cleaning, straightening and binning sessions, this triggered way fewer neurotic outbreaks than an overstocked mishmash of cheap and nasty chairs, tables and fridges.

And given I generally pass out pretty early and don’t drink much, being 5-10 minutes walk away from camp also minimised my late-night interactions with young fighters who may be enjoying a beer or six and a girl from Patong. 

Impromptu mum-style lectures are rarely appreciated.  

Aside from the décor, Fern House had a couple of other great things going for it. 

1) A pool. With jacuzzi jets and largely no-one else in it (only nine rooms, you see?) 

Training for a couple of hours at a time, in 30 degree heat and humidity, really brings out the sloth in a girl or boy. 

Andy even took his Kindle in (it makes me wince every time I look at this picture). 

2) Tanja. As the main face of the hotel, Tanja is about as helpful and enthusiastic as it’s possible to be without spontaneously combusting. She’s on hand to offer you free bananas in the morning, patiently teach Thai phrases or turn around laundry in a matter of hours. 

To say she goes an extra mile is an understatement – when we couldn’t find a scooter hire place with a single bike left, Tanja popped next door and asked a friend if she could lend us hers. She loves a good chat (I now know quite a lot about her family setup, career history, financial planning and romantic aspirations) and her personality really made Fern House a homely place to stay. 

We have of course done the Facebook befriending thing and I hope I get the chance to return one day. 

And no, it's not a funky perspective thing, she really is that tiny. We gave her an Magnum lolly when we left in an attempt to fatten her up though.

Aside from our hotel base, the area around Tiger is…well, somewhat surreal. 

Business and tourism are pretty much based solely around the fight crowd, who catwalk their gym-branded t shirts up and down the road (the ones saying “Fighter” are particularly popular). 

In the month we stayed there, I only saw the home crowd change out of fight wear once, ironically for the “BBQ Beatdown” event at Tiger (I think some romancing might have been on the cards that evening). 

The street's inhabitants are also approximately 80% male, and heavy on testosterone. As a woman, I felt a bit like a misplaced kitten in a pack of marauding lions – not exactly prey, but a little surplus to requirements. 

And the ratio of Farang to Thai folk seems similarly saturated, with almost everyone in the latter group working in the service industry – whether dolling out food in restaurants, washing or drying gym wear, building new hotels, tattooing Westerners with tribal ink, or recommending aloe vera, mosquito repellent and prescription grade painkillers in the pharmacies. 

Couple that with the fact that every restaurant offers a comprehensive English/American menu alongside local fare (Andy went on a quest to find the best breakfast fry-up) and it’s like Thailand without too much of the Thai side of things. 

Less “authentic travel experience” and more like a steroid-amplified real-life and ongoing episode of “The Ultimate Fighter”…