# Sor Vorapin Muay Thai



## Damian Mavis (Jan 28, 2003)

Here I go starting another thread in this section....ok we all know you Muay Thai people are out there!  How come nobody but me posts here? haha

Anyway, I have been training a bit at Sor Vorapin Muay Thai camp in Banglampoo in Bangkok.  It's near all the creepy foreigners....The training is pretty good, the best part is if you stay with all the other foreigners the club is right there for you to train at a couple times a day.  This week I have been training here, at the Thai Japan Muay Thai gym and at Asia Pacific Tae Kwon Do.  It's a pretty good combination.  If anyone ever decides to come down to Thailand this info will be invaluable I'm sure but if none of you ever come..... guess this is meaningless heh.

My website has 3 sections of photos of Thailand and the training here if anyone is interested.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## muayThaiPerson (Jan 28, 2003)

Can you rate all the traingin rates($) you know. Thanks...


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## arnisador (Jan 28, 2003)

How much weight have you lost?


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## Damian Mavis (Jan 28, 2003)

I don't know about the weight I've lost... I haven't weighed myself but I wouldnt be surprised if I'm exactly the same as usual.  I've trimmed down some fat but I've been doing wieghts here regularly and probalby got a little bigger in the upper body...not to mention with all the running my legs are bigger than they have ever been too.  My body looks better than it has in oh....8 years....I'm getting old...ugh.  The trick is to keep this up and stay in shape once I'm back in Canada... I think eating icecream before going to sleep is out of the question from now on.

I think you wanted the rates?  Ok:

-Fairtex $30 Canadian ($20 U.S.) per day includes lodgings, 2 great meals day and 2 training sessions with ex champs as your personal trainers.  The grounds are beautiful and they have a nice pool to lounge in during the hot afternoons.

-Lamai on Koh Samui ($11 Canadian) per day for 2 training sessions.  Food and lodging are up to you to find but you can live at the camp but I have no idea if he charges people or if he lets you stay free if you fight for him.  I will find out once I go back in a few weeks.

-Thai-Japan Gym ($1 Canadian per year) includes access to the whole facility (weights, pool, Muay Thai, Judo) Muay Thai training is 5pm to 7pm every night except Monday.  Find your own food and lodging.

-Sor Vorapin ($20 Canadian per day) includes 2 training sessions...however I think it's much cheaper if you pay per week.  Find your own food and lodging.

**Fairtex and Lamai are more serious than the other 2.  But training is training and if you are in the neighbourhood its all good.  Thai-Japan Gym can be serious if you have some skill and want to spar shin on shin with a pro.

The only other new camp I hope to visit while here is in Chang Mai which is a 14 hour train ride away....I'll let you all know if I go of course.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## muayThaiPerson (Jan 29, 2003)

> -Thai-Japan Gym ($1 Canadian per year) includes access to the whole facility (weights, pool, Muay Thai, Judo) Muay Thai training is 5pm to 7pm every night except Monday. Find your own food and lodging.



like sound of that ALOT.
i dont understand the $20 dollars a day. why are the rates so high? i used to pay 80$ a month.


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## Damian Mavis (Jan 29, 2003)

For Sor vorapin you mean?  2 reasons... one is it is located near the foreigner area so people will pay more and they know it and the other reason is because the per session rate will be more expensive than per week or per month.  It gets alot cheaper if you pay up front for a certain amount of time.  I like to move from camp to camp right now so am paying more.  

In case anyone is considering coming over here, keep in mind the cost of living is very cheap.  You can get hotel rooms for $7 a night and a good meal can be $3 - $5.  You can get cheaper but quality suffers.


Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## arnisador (Jan 29, 2003)

I'm surprised you have such consistent net access.


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## Damian Mavis (Jan 30, 2003)

Not as surprised as me.  Before I got here people warned me I might not find an internet cafe...... talk about an uneducated thing to say haha.  There's at least 3 on every block.  Most are slow but I found one that actually has DSL and is fast as lightning.  Even the Fairtex camp rents internet time.  EVERYBODY rents internet time.  It's quite the little industry here.  I'm on the internet every day at least 2 times daily in order to keep my school running and smooth out any problems with emails. (I have to make sure 3 different instructors are ok and doing everything right - I'm a bit of a worryer when it comes to my school alone without me!)

Some days I just dont have time to log on or I am travelling but the past 2 weeks in Bangkok I have been on everyday.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## blackdiamondcobra (Jan 31, 2003)

The reason for the higher costs? Alot of the popular muay thai camps like all those mentioned above
are meant to cater to the "farang" market which yields them
good money for little work.  Fairtex has realized this and has jumped on the
bandwagon as well.  They got hip to the Western market. Sor Vorapin has two camps one for the 
farangs and one for their boxers and serious fighters.  The farang
camp is situated in the banglampoo area and the other in another place.
I have seen this situation grow over the last fifteen years since I have
been training there. In the more disciplined, hardcore camps they
make the "farang" adjust to the training and the rigors of it and dont
cater to him at all.  In the farang friendly camp, they ease up on them and
let them move into pad work without really working hard at basics.  In Chiang Mai, I felt
the camps were especially easy going as opposed to the rigors of the 
top notch bangkok camps.  If you dont believe me, befriend a good thai
fighter or trainer and he will tell you point blank.


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## muayThaiPerson (Jan 31, 2003)

Are you saying Thailand is an un-modernize and cheap country? Sorry for the words but I'm getting that vibe


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## Damian Mavis (Feb 4, 2003)

I found that if you have the ability you get the serious training.  I see plenty of foreigners doing exactly what BlackDiamondCobra said : taking it easy and getting psuedo Muay Thai training.  Those people are usually beginners with no fight experience.  If you are doing well, at least in my case, they always put me in with the fighters.  And I wouldnt have it any other way...I'm not stupid, I can tell when I'm not getting serious training (kind of like at Sor Vorapin).  As for Fairtex, you train side by side with their top pro fighters... so only an idiot with no observation skills would be able to see if he was not getting the exact same kind of training.  The first 2 days they treated me like I was fragile and it was disapointing me.  But without me even complaining they brought my training up to the level of their fighters and I was happy as poo by mid week.  

The Lamai camp in Koh Samui is totally geared towards foreigners...but it's also geared towards pressuring them to fight.  They have several people fighting from that camp each week.  That is actually some of the hardest training I have experienced here.  Not so much for the hard workouts but just from limping home covered in bruises and all beat up.  We kick the crap out of eachother there and you really learn alot about fighting at that camp fast. 

Anyway I agree with what BlackDiamondCobra said but think it was a little to broad and generalised.

MuayThaiPerson:  I wouldnt call Thailand unmodern, the big cities are modern....dirty but modern, but definately cheap.  You can go to really expensive places here and pay more than you would at home or you can live cheap as dirt.  Meals for $0.80 and hotel rooms for as low as $1 a night (Canadian).  I personally mix and match my living styles.  One week I might stay at the $3 a night hotel and another at the $30 a night one.  Sometimes I eat at the Sizzler for $10 and sometimes I have a big bowl of soup on the corner for $0.80.  There is plenty of places at all cost levels.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## blackdiamondcobra (Feb 4, 2003)

I stand by my post and it was very clear in re-reading it.  I dont
think any farang is going to get the in depth training in any
camp until he becomes part of the camp. It comes down to
understanding how a camp works and over time if you stick
with a top notch camp you will see this revealed and why. Trust
and understanding by both sides is essential. So Mr. Marvis has his
views based on his short time there and its interesting but
as long as you stay on the farang road you remain stuck there.
"The years see what the day will never know"


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## Damian Mavis (Feb 6, 2003)

Well I have to disagree with you a bit still, I trained with the pro fighters....with them and right beside them, I see what they are doing and I see what I am doing, it is identical with one small exception.  They have more staying power.  Whereas I wither after about 5 rounds they seem to be just as strong as their first round.  

I totally agree with you, I simply didnt experience that myself.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn but I did get treated differently than the other foreigners.  Whether it was my ability and experience or the way I push myself until I'm going to drop dead I don't know but they did treat me differently than the other foreigners in my group.  There was one other foreigner that lives at the camp and is very good who was training like me and the fighters.  The rest of the foreigners didn't train anything like us.

Are you willing to concede that maybe things happened the way I'm saying it or am I still blind in your eyes? heh.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## blackdiamondcobra (Feb 7, 2003)

Like I stated previously I think your insights are shallow and all the posts seem at best self aggrandizing and insolent. You seem to be wanting to insist that you have gained something beyond norm in a very short amount of time (without taking the time to understand how a camp works and how information is dispensed).  I'm not going to continue your polemic.  There's no sense wasting my energy here.
Good luck with your training and the depth of it.


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## arnisador (Feb 7, 2003)

He's actually there, now! I suspect he has some idea of the "ground truth"!


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## Damian Mavis (Feb 7, 2003)

Haha, I have no clue where your hostility comes from.  I thought we were having a light hearted debate about the training here and you come back all uppity.   I don't know what else to say to you since you seem to take it all so harshly...I thought I was doing a good job of agreeing with almost everything you said!!! hahahahaha

Uhm..it's not me that is "self aggrandizing and insolent", it's you!  You are trying to cut me down to make yourself look good!  By cutting me down you infer that you HAVE had the real training and that you are somehow better trained than anyone else and that only you know the truth when training in Thailand.  This whole thing with me trying to placate you a little wasnt good enough for you because you are only after one thing: to make yourself feel better by ridiculing others.  You are basically a bully and exactly the kind of guy I warn my small students about. 

Ah well, I don't need some keyboard warrior yipping at me, I know what I am going through here and what kind of training I am receiving.  I hang out with pro and ex pro fighters every day on a training and social basis, they are getting me ready to fight.  I have 2 fights scheduled shortly and I guess I'll find out then just how wrong I am.

By the way, I post all these posts while I am here because I'm hoping to help someone that is planning a similar trip.  I wish someone had posted all this information before I got here so I wasnt wasting time looking around so much and getting lost.  If the consensus is that these posts aren't wanted or needed then I will stop wasting my time.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## tshadowchaser (Feb 8, 2003)

Keep the post comeing.  I haven't made any comments befor about them but I do  read them and enjoy the knowledge and insite .  
Anyone who makes a trip to train at a profesional camp and really  works out gets atottaly diffrent insite into what the art is about.
 Please keep the posts comeing  and lets hear about your fights, when they happen (win or lose)  and what you gain from that experence.
tshadowchaser:asian:


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## thaiboxer (Mar 4, 2003)

" This week I have been training here, at the Thai Japan Muay Thai gym and at Asia Pacific Tae Kwon Do.  It's a pretty good combination.  If anyone ever decides to come down to Thailand this info will be invaluable I'm sure but if none of you ever come..... guess this is meaningless heh."

How does this work for you Damien? You are a MT convert as I remember from last time I was here. TKD and MT are totally different of course. TKD being more karate orientated. So how do you go about fighting, do you primarily use your MT stance and equipment now, or the TKD stance, which would hinder some MT techniques stance positioning wise? 

Just thinking about it. (I dont know why you would now you know how to kick MT style) But I guess you could use your TKD roundhouse and sidekicks from a MT stance. Your TKD punching would be a bit dangerous with hands down around your waist though. Any other techniques you can use in the others stance etc? Bearing in mind that ultimate proficiency in MT is letting it flow from one technique to another through the hips and pivoting on the ball of the foot, to gain max. power and technique.


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## Damian Mavis (Mar 5, 2003)

Hey there Thaiboxer, I'm not a MT convert... I'm just a lover of all information, ideas, philosophies and styles of martial arts.  Muay Thai is definately one of my favorites though.  I still train TKD along with everything else I can get my hands on.  These past 2 years though have been dominated by TKD and MT with Kali and Gracie JJ getting less attention but still lots of training.

If I am going to spar against a TKD guy that is good.. like take my head clean off my shoulders good.... then I stick with straight up TKD stance and movement.  If I am better then him I will flow from alot of different stances.  Sometimes I go into a boxing stance and mess around with hand techniques alot and sometimes go to MT and the a side stance etc...I like to mix it up when I get the chance.  When fighting MT guys I am strictly MT stance unless I get a little risky and want to do something special.  I usually use the appropriate equipment for each art but I have been wearing boxing gloves for both for along time now.  

 "Your TKD punching would be a bit dangerous with hands down around your waist though"  That's slightly insulting but I will help inform you a tiny bit.  I practice ITF TKD which is similar in rules to American Kickboxing....meaning we keep our hands up and box to the head and torso when within that range.  I do not practice Olympic style sport TKD very often but I have an open mind so don't mind training at Olympic style schools occasionally.  You probably didn't know there was a difference in TKD styles so I forgive ya! haha

Before I came to Thailand I was always very "leery" of using any non - MT type techniques when I was sparring in Canada at the academy.  I just would stick to turning kick (low or high) and teep kick.   The reason for this is people's attitudes was that the other stuff wouldn't work or was too risky or people just didn't like the idea of me using something they had never seen before so I just didn't throw anything different.  That was silly of me because since coming here I have discovered that there is no such thing as a technique that won't be used in the ring.  If you have it, use it.  You should be expertly proficient at something though if you are going to throw a kick that isn't common.  The Thai guys here walk right into a turning sidekick so easily it makes that kick an excellent technique.  To not use it would be stupid of me.  I might only use it once in a fight but if I land it I'm rocking.  It's like a teep kick times 10.  It can end a fight right away.  Of course you could ricochet and slide along his sweaty body and miss, it's up to you to recover immediately.

There's times when I throw a technique TKD style and times when I throw it MT style in both TKD and MT sparring.  Sometimes it just feels right to do it one way over the other.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## thaiboxer (Mar 25, 2003)

"That's slightly insulting but I will help inform you a tiny bit.  I practice ITF TKD which is similar in rules to American Kickboxing....meaning we keep our hands up and box to the head and torso when within that range.  I do not practice Olympic style sport TKD very often but I have an open mind so don't mind training at Olympic style schools occasionally.  You probably didn't know there was a difference in TKD styles so I forgive ya! haha"

No dont get me wrong I wasnt being insulting at all. I have been to a few ITF TKD schools, and they have their hands beside their waists. No hands up. Even boxers I wonde rat times what they are doing with their hands down even at chest height, but anyway each to their own if they are quick enough to move.
So what you are saying is that you use boxing in TKD sparring plus TKD kicks, you sound like an american kickboxer to me. 
yeah I do know there are sport rules I guess in WTF and none in ITF.

Do you use the thai jamb kick? (like a front kick instead the foot splays and jambs into the hip socket and bends the opponent over, not to mention jambing him backwards.)


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## Damian Mavis (Mar 28, 2003)

Just like the boxers you saw that is their personal choice to keep their hands down, it means they are cocky and need a good smack in the head to remind them they aren't as good as they think.  

A few ITF schools isn't enough to make that kind of judgement, I've been to tons and seen so many different things going on at different schools.... some ITF schools look exactly like WTF schools, some look like Karate schools, the majority are taught to keep their hands the frik up though.   You visited a few and state with absolution " they have their hands beside their waists. No hands up."  I run an ITF school and know what the curriculum is, and it's get your damn hands up NOW.  A student of mine drops their hands I hit them in the head.  It's how I was taught and it worked wonders for me.

I just trained at some really good WTF schools while in Thailand but even their instructors will agree that the majority of WTF schools are all about sport.  Majority doesn't mean all though.  ITF is a martial art with competition as an extra on the side.  The competitive side is as sporty as all the other forms of martial competition (boxing, WTF TKD, kickboxing etc..) Like I said earlier though, I've seen ITF schools that only care about sporty winning... and I cringe every time I think about it.

Thai jamb kick?  You mean teep to the hip?  Of course I use it, during my fight I used it but missed and got his groin... oh well.  I gave him a quick "Y" to apologise and kept going.   Truth is I prefer teep to the torso as they are launching an attack.  It's an easier target for me to hit square when under pressure and people are all sweaty and slippery.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD


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## sakuraba (Mar 25, 2008)

Hi Damian,

My first time on the site.I read your thread about farangs not getting reel training like the thai;s in camps in thailand.Im going to sor.vorapin 2 but dont want the easy life,Is this gym as bad as you say or if I work hard will I get the rewards.Im a total novice to muay thai  but still want to train for reel.

Kind regards



Damian Mavis said:


> Here I go starting another thread in this section....ok we all know you Muay Thai people are out there! How come nobody but me posts here? haha
> 
> Anyway, I have been training a bit at Sor Vorapin Muay Thai camp in Banglampoo in Bangkok. It's near all the creepy foreigners....The training is pretty good, the best part is if you stay with all the other foreigners the club is right there for you to train at a couple times a day. This week I have been training here, at the Thai Japan Muay Thai gym and at Asia Pacific Tae Kwon Do. It's a pretty good combination. If anyone ever decides to come down to Thailand this info will be invaluable I'm sure but if none of you ever come..... guess this is meaningless heh.
> 
> ...


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