I'm going to Thailand soon.

[Ozpunker]

I'm going to Thailand in April for a few weeks. I've trained in Karate for 2 years (Blue Belt) and dabbled in a fair bit of JuJitsu and small amount of Muay Thai.

While I'm in Thailand, I'm kinda keen to check out some Muay Thai training gyms. I'll mostly be in Phuket and Bankok and I was wondering if anyone was able to recommend somewhere that welcomed foreigners. I'd really love to have a training session but at the very least just be able to watch. I've seen a few places online but I'm not sure how reputable they really are.

Any help is much appreciated.

[mma_magic]

I've never actually been to Thailand but I hear very good things about the Legacy Gym in Ubon Ratchathani.

I imagine it may be a more modern set up as opposed to some of the traditional schools because it incoporates MMA.

I'm pretty sure they have an ex - K1 champion that teaches / trains there.

[tallgeese]

I've got no advice really, but it sounds like a cool trip. Keep us posted on how it goes.

[Toptomcat]

There's this huge two hundred page thread that's all Q&A about training in Thailand over at Sherdog. There's a lot of inanities about the night life, but a lot of useful information: it's well worth going through in its entirety if you're going over there.

[moriniuk]

I've trained at a few gyms in Bangkok but never in Phuket, and I'm also going on another trip to Thailand in April/May. There are lots of gyms now that are very welcoming to foreigners. Particularly in Phuket there are lots of almost exclusively foreigner gyms.

Bangkok is a big city and it can take some time to travel around it. Do you know what part of the city you'll be staying in?

Ubon is a long way from Bangkok and even further from Phuket

A good site to look at is https://www.muaythailand.com. It has a good active forum with lots of contributors who have a lot of training experience in Thailand.

[Toptomcat]

If a gym caters to foreigners exclusively or nearly so I think I'd be worried about the quality of the instruction. The only reason to go to Thailand to train is to train like the Thai!

[joesteph]

I wonder what it would be like to train in the land of Muay Thai with Thai instructors . . .

Looks like living in Australia has its advantages when it comes to the martial arts and travel.

[moriniuk]

There's no need to worry about the quality of the instruction at most gyms. There aren't any exclusively foreigner gyms. It's just that so many people go to train in Thailand now, particularly in Phuket and Koh Samui, there are more foreigners than Thais training. When there are world championships in Bangkok every gym appears to have a national team training there.

I first trained and fought in Thailand in 1988 and it wasn't so easy to find gyms that would accept foreigners but now it's quite easy.

You can still train like a Thai. You're in a Thai gym in Thailand with Thai trainers. Does it really matter if the person training next to you is not from Thailand?

What's it like to train in Thailand with Thai instructors. It's great, get yourself out there you won't regret it. Get yourself in top physical condition before you go to get the most out of the training.