Well, I’m not going to lie. The first morning I woke up to the bustling noise of Bangkok, I was pretty intimidated. The sweltering heat and humidity, the traffic, the people everywhere! It was all so overwhelming. Boy was it tempting hide in the air-conditioned comfort of my hostel and avoid facing that city. So I was surprised as anyone to find myself ringside at a Muay Thai boxing match with two girls I’d met that same evening.
Overall, my first day in Bangkok was like any other. I had breakfast and spent a bit of time wandering the local neighbourhood looking for things to do. I checked out the tiny Bangkok Museum down the road, stopped into a shopping mall for the wonderful air con when I got too hot, and tried a bit of the street food that is literally everywhere in Bangkok. Just normal stuff, nothing worth raving about.
When I arrived back at the hostel I met Jade and Eva, two Canadian girls traveling through Thailand on their way to Burma. After chatting for a bit, they mentioned they were going to a Muay Thai boxing match across town that evening, and asked if I wanted to join them. Having nothing better to do I figured why not, and grabbed a ticket from the hostel reception for 2000 baht.
Of course, never seem to be that simple in city the size of Bangkok. We immediately learnt a very important lesson – do not go anywhere by road between 5.30pm and 8pm on a Friday night in Bangkok! Not unless you want to spend an hour and a half in a taxi for a 30km drive! Fortunately for us, the taxi was on the meter, and they seem to run on distance rather than time here. So the trip there still only cost us 250 baht – about $10 NZD.
When we finally arrived we were over an hour late, but there was still plenty of fights left so we weren’t overly concerned. We walked into the stadium and the crowd was going crazy. The Thai spectators were all on their feet, screaming their encouragement to the fighters and struggling to make their bets heard over the roaring crowd. As the stadium was well outside Bangkok central, the majority of the people were locals, making us some of the only foreigners in a crowd of a few hundred.
In the ring, two Thai boys were circling each other. That first round we saw featured relatively young fighters, probably in their mid-teens. And while they were reasonably small, they were pure muscle and fast hell. Certainly not someone I’d like to get in the ring with. As the night progressed, the fighters got older, only slightly bigger, but certainly more experienced. And the fights became more intense.
At one point, two of the larger fighters were hammering into each other, exchanging vicious blows. Their legs were flying, smashing into elbows and ribs and heads, all without pads. As someone who spent six years practicing Taekwondo, I know how much it hurts to kick someone in the elbow. These guys didn’t even flinch.
And then, all of a sudden, one of them was down and the crowd went insane. On the big screen you could see the blow being played over and over, showing the larger of the two connect with a massive punch to the side of his head. It must have had some power behind it, because he stayed down until he was helped from the ring.
After that the remaining fights were fairly plain, and we were had it. So we called it a night with a few rounds to go, and headed back to the hostel in a taxi. While we couldn’t find a metered one, we still got a reasonable deal of 300 baht that avoided the toll road.
While this was definitely an experience I would recommend, I suggest you save the money and go check out the fights at MBK in Bangkok Central first. I found out the next day they hold fights there with free entry on a Wednesday night!
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