Muay Thai Fight

On the evening of our second day in Bangkok, Jules and I attended a Muay Thai fight. Muay Thai is the national martial art, and it involves using a combination of kicks, knees, punches and elbows to try and bloody your opponent.


To get ourselves from our hotel to the arena, we decided to roll in style. Riding in a tuk-tuk (the Thai version of an open air tricycle).


Before entering the arena, we stopped by a street side vendor to munch on some bbq'd chicken and pork at a cost of 7 baht each (that's like 20 cents!)


We had to choice of purchasing 1st class seats (basically ringside where all the tourists sit), 2nd class seats (where all the locals go and where people stand up and get rowdy) or 3rd class seats (nosebleed seats pretty far away from the action). We chose to mix with the locals.

Its interesting to note that the arena has a pricing fixing scam for tourists. Tourists are aggresively led to ticket booths with signs above written in excellent English explaining the price differences between 1st class (2,000 baht, $60USD), 2nd class (1,500 baht, $45 USD) and 3rd class (1,000 baht, $30 USD). Locals never buy tickets from these tourist booths, instead they go to the booths down the line that conveniently do not have prices publicly listed. I wish I woulda figured out this scam earlier.


We saw seven fights in all, but I was disappointed that there was only one knockout.


Nevertheless, it was pretty intense sitting in the hot, sweaty, beer-soaked stadium, feeling the energy of the crowd amplify after seeing a knee drive into the opponent's ribcage, or an uppercut daze the competitor. The Muay Thai fight was definitely overpriced, but it was worth seeing it.