After a 3 hour flight from Honkers I arrived in Phuket on Friday at lunchtime. It took about 30 minutes from the airport to get to the bottom of Phuket Island, my destination and home for the next couple of months is an area of Phuket known as Rawai. The southern part of Phuket is very different from where most have holidayed in either Patong, Kata or Karon. Rawai is semi rural which is obvious each morning when I look across the road to the large vacant field filled with palm trees and cows.
Rawai Muay Thai camp is made up of a number of buildings in a grassy surround. They have the main training building with a number of heavy bags and full size rings. There is a separate dormitory building which makes up about 6 shared rooms. Further back are the bungalows where I am staying. My bungalow has a queen size bed, tv, dvd, air-con and private bathroom. I will stay here for now although I think a kitchenette might be useful given the length of my stay.
I have rented a Honda Click 110hp scooter to get around the island and I can fill it up for around $3 aud. It does seem strange to pull up on the road side and buy petrol from reused 1 litre bottles rather then go to a petrol station. I also need to find a decent road map as the lack of English road signs has already had me a little lost a few times.
The small street the camp is located in has a number of small cafes, a mini-mart and a few houses. There is a laundry about 100 meters down the road which today quoted 100 baht ($3 aud) for wash and dry a bag of clothes.
After some earlier discussions with the camp manager I have decided to start off on a one week detox before commencing my Muay Thai training. It is probably a pretty good idea as there is little doubt I have enjoyed the fruits of my labour over the years and living with Hong Kong, with it's abundance of great food and drinking partners has only added to this.
The detox has come at quite a surpise and I am sure it will do me some good. I am however super keen to start training. Rawai Muay Thai has a number of very experienced trainers and some current and ex world class fighters. I have no doubt that the fighter training will be tougher then anything I have done before. It starts with a 10 km run at dawn and is then followed by 3-4 hours of hard training. I then get middle part of the day off (as it is too hot) before a 2 hour session in the afternoon. This is the routine 6 days a week with Sunday's off.
