This post will focus on my trip to Chiang Mai back in 2014 and will give you all a little taste of muay thai in Chiang Mai.
In December of 2014 I visited Thailand for the third time.
But for the first time I decided to travel up North to Chiang Mai.
I had researched muay thai gyms to train at for a while and had already visited Bangkok so I was interested in experiencing something new in the Northern region of Thailand.
The gym I decided to visit and train at was Sit Thaharnek gym in Chiang Mai.
This was after I had researched the gym and made contact and looked for suitable accommodation that wasn’t too expensive nearby.
After about a week of training at Sit Thaharnek I accidentally found another teacher and a gym that I decided to train at for the rest of my stay in Chiang Mai.
This gym was Happy Muay Thai Chiang Mai.
But first a little about Chiang Mai as a city and the sights and sounds that attracted me there in the first place.
Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand
Chiang Mai is in the Northern part of Thailand.
It is the largest city in mountainous Northern Thailand and is the capital of Chiang Mai Province.
Recently in the news (around July 2018) you may have heard about the young boys soccer team who were trapped in a cave in Thailands North.
The Wild Boars soccer team members were between 11 and 16 and following their rescue they spend some time at Chiang Rai hospital.
Chiang Rai is not be confused with Chiang Mai but it is also in the North of Thailand and not too far away from Chiang Mai. Just to give you an idea geographically where Chiang Mai is in Thailand.
There are many attractions in Chiang Mai that attarct up to 10 million tourists per year to the city.
Attractions include the many temples, night markets, elephant sanctuaries, tiger park and national park.
But apart from the various tourist attractions, my main interest in visiting Chiang Mai was to experience muay thai in Chiang Mai.
Muay Thai in Chiang Mai
The first gym that really attracted my attention to the North of Thailand was Santai Muay thai.
Santai Muay Thai
I had heard only good things about Santai Muay thai after doing some online research and was set on spending my entire time out at San kamphaeng.
However after doing more reading and research I decided a gym closer to Chiang Mai would be better for me as I wanted to experience the city itself.
Santai Gym is located in San Khampaeng which is about 13kms from Chiang Mai. And there really is nothing else to do out there except train muay thai and eat and recover.
Santai is perfect for muay thai fighters who want to train without distractions out in the country.
Santai is also known for having good high level trainers with regular fighters training at the gym.
As this was my first trip I decided I wanted to see more of Chiang Mai and settled on Sit Thaharnek gym in the old city.
You can check out Santai gym here :
https://muay-thai-santai.com/location-santai-muay-thai/
Sit Thaharnaek Gym
The Sit Thaharnaek gym is run by Thaharnaek Chumpaetour. Thaharnaek was at one point ranked #2 at Rajadamnern stadium.
I found the gym to be very helpful and responsive when I got in touch by email and they had suggestions for accommodation nearby.
In terms of accommodation, the gym is located very conveniently in the night Bazaar area with easy access.
The gym was very welcoming and I made some good freinds there and enjoyed the training. I trained twice a day at the gym.
A lot of people who stopped by for training mainly wanted to experience muay thai in Chaing Mai and were not interested in long term training.
The gym itself is great for beginners and really caters to the muay thai tourism scene. Though they also do have fighters who compete in Chiang Mai and around the country as well.
You can check out their FB page here :
https://www.facebook.com/sitthaharnaek/
Happy Muay Thai Gym
After about a week training at Sit Thaharnek as I was coming back from watching fights at Thapae Staidum and I crossed through Loi Kroh road, no I wasn’t stopping by the go go clubs and girlie bars.
I was wearing a thai boxing t shirt.
A tuktuk driver stopped me and asked, “Hey you like Muay thai?”. I said yes and he pointed to another tuktuk driver who then stood up and walked towards me and asked again if I like muay thai. I said, “Yes!”.
He said okay let me see your stance. So I showed him and he came up to me and just gave my arms a little push and my stance buckled.
This was my first muay thai lesson from Mr Happy right on the side of Loi Kroh road at a tuktuk stop at around 10pm at night.
He said, “Muay thai, first thing stance. If you want to come train with me take my number.” He gave me some info about his gym and some videos on YouTube about his gym.
That very night I looked him up and watched all the videos on Youtube and decided to give him a call.
Check out the Youtube videos that were published the month before I visited Chiang Mai.
I think this was a great decision for me to take private lessons from Mr Happy. As the saying goes,:
“When the student is ready, the master will appear.”
It’s funny I thought I had done a lot of research but I had never heard of this guy! Needless to say I spent the rest of my remaining one week in Chiang Mai at his gym training one to one.
So in short I basically learnt more there training one on one than in the normal group training at Sit Thaharnek and other gyms.
A lot of the normal group training involves a lot of conditioning exercises which take up a lot of time. This is fine if you’re an aspiring fighter. However in my situation since I had limited time I really wanted to learn good technique with someone who took the time and care to teach me.
I found that with Mr Happy.
This was about 7 years ago now and I still look back fondly at my time in Chiang Mai. I have been back to Bangkok and Pattaya but Chiang Mai has a special place in my heart.
I hope you enjoyed my post and sharing of my little experience of muay thai in Chiang Mai.
I have great respect and appreciation to Mr Happy for his teaching me and I look forward to going back and experiencing muay thai in Chiang Mai again soon.
Ill be sure to post about it here!
