A solid hit...

Recognizing that Geoff had been very accommodating of Beth's desire to visit many a night market during our trip, Beth agreed to indulge Geoff in one of his travel requests - to go to a Thai Boxing Match.

The Bangla Boxing Stadium in Patong is one of the biggest Thai Boxing stadiums in Thailand. The stadium itself is large and tacky, glowing multiple strobe lights while blasting loud music and boxing announcements to the surrounding crowds.

Likely one of the few people ever to actually order these boxing tickets online (it turns out that everyone just buys them at the door), we were unexpectedly greeted at the entrance by the event organizer, Sak, who personally walked us into the stadium and actually tried to upgrade our seats to VIP.  Knowing that the closeness of the VIP seats to the actual ring can frequently mean being hit by flying sweat or blood from the boxers, we politely declined his generous offer and made our way up the stairs to our bench located at a much safer distance away.

Thai boxers are wildly talented - physically and mentally strong.  You could see the concentration, strategy, flexibility and power in every round.

Every child takes Thai boxing at school and, as such, the evening started off the evening with a couple of teenage fights.  Worried that one of the kids would suffer a life-changing concussion, or worse, Beth spent most of the match with her eyes shielded from the ring. Geoff watched studiously but clearly hadn't read enough about the rules and guessed incorrectly (but with confidence) the expected winner of each match.

Clearly not a lucrative sport for teenage boxers, two of the boxers actually shared a pair of boxing shorts -  stripping down to their underwear and trading off shorts to one another between their matches!

For the male boxers, they generally used the first round to get their bearings and then got more intense as the rounds continued, ratcheting up to full force by the 5th and final round.  In each round, they are brought back to their corners and washed down with ice and cold water.  Many of the fights ended with someone being knocked to the ground, but luckily they seemed to recover quite quickly.

The exception to all of this was the one woman's fight, which saw a match up of a woman from Germany versus one from Australia.  After the Australian woman did an odd and uncomfortable self-promotional hippie-type dance for about 5 minutes before the fight started, we were sure that the match was going to be a one-sided knockout. Until they started fighting.  These women were vicious and, unlike the men who spent the first couple of rounds playing defence, these women went for the kill from the first moment of the match. Clearly spent by the end of five rounds, the Australian woman actually won the match and naturally concluded the event by completing another few minutes of a dance routine.

Thai boxing is the national sport here and people are obsessed.  You can strike up a conversation with any local and they all know the most intimate details about the sport and its latest happenings.  Whether you walk into one of the thousands of 7-11 convenience stores around the country or talk to a local cab driver, everyone is watching the matches whenever they have a free moment.

A national sport that blends power with precision and focus -there could be worse hits!