Fairtex Pattaya Part 1
Posted in Blog on May 20, 2010
After the departure of Brock, I packed my bags and was set on heading down to Phuket for some training at the well known Tiger Muay Thai camp. Then opportunity came knocking on my door in the form of Tussanna Hill Martdee. She’s the daughter of a well known fight promoter and gym owner in Australia and told me she had the hook ups at Fairtex Pattaya for cheap accommodation and training which suited my budget way more than Phuket did.
Every time someone asked me where I was going, I’d hesitate just before saying Pattaya. Mostly because every time I said it, people would say “Oooh Pattaya” and give me a bit of a wink due to the fact that Pattaya is known as ‘Sin City’ for all it’s sex trade workers and dirty old men everywhere. I was expecting to see beautiful Thai girls walking around with fat, old, balding perverted men on every street. To my surprise it wasn’t what I expected and a lot more toned down compared to the back alley sally scenario I had pictured.
GoGo Girls
The Image in My Head of Every Street in Pattaya
To get there we jumped on a 130 baht bus from bangkok and before we knew it we were at the Pattaya bus station where Keaw Fairtex gave us a lift to the gym. Had an early one that night and then got up for training bright and early the next day.
Fairtex Pattaya’s Muay Thai camp is located within the Fairtex Resort. They have tennis courts, basketball courts, a large pool and even a rock climbing wall! No wonder the price tag is massive.
I found that most morning training session, Tussana and I were the only Falang training. The afternoon is when more people would train, but you were lucky to even see 4 to 6 other people come in and train. Now I’ve heard a lot of people say that this place is too commercial and i even wasn’t sure what to expect from the training session. Was it going to be slack and aimed at tourists and not fighters? Was i going to end up doing some Tae Boe with a tight little Thai man in lycra?
To put all the speculation to rest, the training was absolutely……Top Notch. I was very impressed in the training i received during my week there. I found the sessions to be structured like 13 coins. No one was on your back to run or even skip. My trainer Daeng was a fantastic padholer that pushed me to do 5x4min rounds even if I was dyeing of exhaustion. The first 4 rounds would be all on the Thai pads and the last being strictly boxing with focus mitts. The only difference I found compared to 13 coins was that when it was time to clinch I wasn’t just thrown in with the Thais to practice what I know, but I was personally taken aside by my instructor to go through and learn 10 individual clinching techniques over the week I was there.
Me and Daeng
The other thing I noticed was an instant connection with my trainer. He would push me through my rounds, work my technique, power and speed, get me water in between rounds and give me a massage after all the rounds. He helped me improve my clinch 10 fold and gave me countless amounts of advice and tips on my Muay Thai.
Kicking Pads with my Muppet Face
Though there was one moment that was abit scary with Daeng. Just so you know if you ever have to go with him for pads, Daeng apparently has a problem with his brain. He explained to me that it doesn’t get enough blood or oxygen at times. During one session of pads he sort of froze up and stood there doing nothing. I waited like a dumbass and then said “Daeng, what are we doing?” and he had a lifeless stare and mumbled something then pointed his hand to the floor. I looked up at the timer and thought “oh only 30 secs left, he’s giving me a break till 20 secs and we’ll do speed punching” Being the dumbass i am, 10 secs go by and i look at Daeng and notice he’s dribbling everywhere. Hmmmm that’s not right. So I called one of the trainers over and i took his focus mitts off. He stood there staring into nothing for about 30 secs while i got him some water. He finally snapped out of it and walked around slightly dazed trying to get his head right, while I thought to myself damn i feel like a douche for not doing something earlier and waiting for my mystery speed punching session. Luckily it only happened once while I was with Daeng, and he’s still a damn good trainer!
Oh and if you haven’t noticed, i bought a new damn nice digital SLR to take some wicked pictures at Fairtex. Hence the tighter budget.
More to come in Fairtex Pattaya Part 2
This post is written by Michael Galvin
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Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!
Hi Michael. Looks like an awesome training session.
The incident w/ Daeng sounds scary. My wife had a seizure once, and I almost panicked when I saw her go blank like that.
Love the photos. What kind of DSLR did you get?
Hey damage control MMA.
Yeah it happened to Daeng a few times while i was there. He’s going to the Hospital soon to get it all sorted out thankfully. He’s a great trainer and i plan on going back to Fairtex Pattaya again later this year.
I bought a Canon 550d, i believe it’s called the Rebel Tx2 in America. Cost me about half the price i would have payed back home and takes some amazing pictures. Will post some of Yod and Kaew Fairtex hitting pads on my next blog post.
I heard good things about that camera. Doesn’t it have video capture too?
Hope all works out for Daeng. Looking forward to photos from your future posts.
Takes excellant footage. Pretty much on par with the canon 7D and all the other footage on my website but with more manual control.
Fairtex Pattaya topnotch mate! I wast there in March, planning to be back in Dec.
How long will you be there for?
I might be heading down maybe February next year and staying in the fighters quarters.
Nice one, trained with Daeng when I was at Fairtex. Great trainer and a top bloke… glad to see him back at Fairtex!
Nice one, i’ve trained with Daeng before and he is top notch!
Great teacher for the clinch aswell, good to see him back at Fairtex.
went my self for one day training it was shit. Was to expensive for 5 hours training we got 5 rounds of pads really not worth it could have done it home, better going and doing just privates you can ask the dudes in the boxing bars and theyll take you cheaper and one on one much better i thought
you have to stay in pattaya a few weeks to see all the baldheaded motherfuckers with pretty thai ladys…..