- A few questions I'm gonna answer,
relating to getting there, so how you get there,
safety, scooter hire, and budgeting for the trips.
So there's four things I'll be covering off real quick.
(gentle music)
Hi everybody, welcome back.
It is Brad here, again, 1st of May, 2019.
I've been receiving a lot of questions from you
about Tiger Muay Thai, Fitness Street, Soi Ta-ied,
and about training there, what it's like,
and a whole bunch of questions.
I get questions every day now.
Ever since I put out those videos
around my training experience
that Robyn and I are sort of training together three,
I've just been inundated.
I get probably a dozen questions a day through DM alone.
And I'm just so busy now
I thought it might be easy just to shoot another video
just to answer some of those questions.
So, this is hopefully gonna be a short video,
five, six, seven minutes.
But I've been actually, just a side note,
been really busy with getting ready to
jump back in a plane again,
I'm doing my pilot's licence renewal training.
I haven't flown a plane in four years,
and I've got some maps here and things.
So I've been studying away
just to get my pilot's licence renewed.
So right now, my focus is to get that sorted out.
But I will be going back.
I'm not sure exactly when.
I'm hoping by the end of this year some time
for four weeks or so,
but I also have an injury,
a lower back injury.
I have a spinal injury,
so I haven't been able to train for two months,
but that's another topic for another video.
Basically, the physio is like you can't train,
and I haven't been training for two months,
so it's breaking my heart.
But anyway, I can answer your questions.
So, a few questions I'm gonna answer
relating to getting there.
So how you get there, safety, scooter hire,
and budgeting for the trip.
So there's four things
I'm gonna be covering off real quick.
The first thing is getting there.
So, obviously, most of you watching this
may know this already.
Tiger Muay Thai is located Phuket, Phuket Island
in Thailand.
It's Fitness Street.
I like to call it Fitness Street,
but it's actually Soi Ta-ied.
Tiger Muay Thai is in the same street as Soi Ta-ied.
So, getting there is pretty straight forward.
You just fly into Phuket International Airport.
I'll throw the maps up.
I'll also link some articles below in this video.
So, you can click on those articles.
I have maps, I have all the information you need as well.
So go and check those articles out on medium.com as well.
Anyway, so, getting there is very basic.
Fly into Phuket International Airport.
And then once you're in Phuket International Airport,
say to the driver that I wanna go to Soi Ta-ied.
He's not gonna understand what you're talking about.
If you say, "I wanna go to Tiger Muay Thai."
It's in Chalong or Shalong,
or however you pronounce it.
C-H-A-L-O-N-G.
Just write it down and give it to him.
They know exactly where it is.
They know where Tiger Muay Thai is.
Tiger Muay Thai is in the same street
as all of the other fitness camps
or most of the other fitness camps in that area.
So, just make sure before you arrive,
just take a little map with you,
just like a print out from Google Maps.
Write it down, Tiger Muay Thai in Chalong.
It's on Soi Ta-ied.
Just give them the piece of paper.
They'll take you straight there.
Safety.
There's no issues of safety whatsoever.
A few solo travellers,
a few of you guys solo travelling there.
- How quick is that?
- Mandy in the house.
How're you feeling, Mandy?
- Good, good, refreshed Monday morning.
- Yeah
- Pumped.
- What are you doing now?
- Doing a little cardio workout.
- Right now.
- Right, Oh, now I'm talking to you.
- Afterwards
- Afterwards, I'm gonna do five rounds of skipping,
five minute rounds,
and then I'm gonna do staircases five times, five rounds,
and then a lap around the whole
- Everybody's a machine here
I just said this earlier
(laughter)
Have asked me about safety,
personal safety is it an issue?
I've touched on this in other videos
there is absolutely no issue with personal safety
around this area of Thailand whatsoever.
I've travelled all over Thailand
from far north to far south, all of the islands
over the past five or six years.
Guys, guys c'mon
(laughter)
Made in France
What was your name again?
- Luke
- Luke, Luke from France
We're about to spar each other
and he's been here for 4 months
and I've been here for 2 days so uh...
End of round 2, how do you feel mate?
- Yeah, a bit hot but uh
- How long have you been here for?
- 1 week now
- 1 week
- And yeah, getting used to it
- Do you recommend it?
- Yes for sure, it's a really really nice place here
and they really take care of you.
- I've done maybe 8 or 9 trips to Thailand in total.
I've been to some of the sh*ttiest parts of Thailand
and some of the most beautiful parts of Thailand.
I've never at all felt unsafe.
It's easy for me to say that, I'm a guy
but I've met lots of people,
girls, guys, you know, couples
and I've had no one complain about personal issues,
not that it doesn't happen, I know it does happen
you know you could be terribly unlucky.
It can happen anywhere in the world.
It happened in Melbourne.
Where you, you know, your wallet can get stolen,
you can get mugged, it can happen anywhere in the world
but in Thailand absolutely no issues
I've never felt unsafe anywhere.
I've been to Joburg in South Africa,
felt very unsafe
I felt unsafe in parts of Rio and Brazil.
I've felt unsafe in parts of India.
I've felt unsafe in other parts of Asia
but Thailand is completely fine
I've never had any issues so,
especially this area, like if you're a woman
that's looking, like, solo travelling to fitness street
or So Ta-ied or Tiger Muay Thai or whatever
then you should have no, there's no issues whatsoever,
met other solo travelling females in this area
that have never had any, like,
they've never felt uneasy or unsafe so,
there's absolutely no issues with personal safety whatsoever
in travelling to this area of Thailand so, you're fine.
You don't need escorts!
And also I'll follow up on that by saying that
people have asked me about passports and storing cash
and the hotels, is it safe?
How do I store my passport and my cash?
I'm a little bit of a ninja
when it comes to how I store my cash and my passport
and things like that in my room.
I usually like to take my cash
and actually break it up into small amounts
and I put some in sort of some of the most unusual places
that you will never ever think of like,
I'll hide money, where I can't,
If Robyn is watching this she'll know
exactly what I'm talking about.
When I checkout,
as I'm about to checkout I actually look
under, like, the most unusual places
just to see if I've left any money behind
because I hide money, like, behind TV sets, crazy.
I think to myself:
Worst case scenario, if someone where to break into my hotel
and they find my money,
I mean they are going to go to the safe first, right?
I don't want them to take all my money, so,
if they find some money
they're not going to take all my money
because I'm gonna have money stashed in other places
so that's how I do it,
but I also take a photocopy of my passport.
That's really important.
Take a photo of your passport.
Take a photocopy of your passport.
Store that somewhere separately in the room.
But anyway this is advice irrespective
of where you're travelling in the world,
I'd give the same advice.
Otherwise, in terms of safety of your belongings,
in your rooms, in this area of Thailand
I've never had an issue
I've never heard of anyone complaining.
Not to say that it never happens,
that things don't go missing.
You just gotta be smart.
Don't leave your wallet out when the cleaners coming through
like just be smart.
Anyway next one is scooter hire.
This one is really straight forward.
If you feel comfortable riding a scooter
then I recommend hiring a scooter or a motorbike
it's gonna be the easiest and most cheapest, most affordable
way of getting around this area of Thailand
if you're there for 1 or 2 or 3 months.
Definitely consider it, if you're comfortable
riding a scooter or a motorbike.
If you're not comfortable then,
you will have to either walk to the training camps
which means you have to stay in accommodation
that's relative close, within walking distance
and along fitness street or Soi Ta-ied
there are so many different places that you can stay
that are within walking distance
that if you're staying for 2 or 3 weeks
you can literally just walk everywhere
and that's completely fine.
But if you are looking at staying for several months
and you know, you want to explore more of Phuket Island,
then its going to be cheaper, more affordable
if you feel more comfortable on the scooter or motorbike
to just hire that
so you can have the freedom and the flexibility
to get around
for no more than 60 Australian dollars a week.
I think I paid, I'll have to check the price
but it was like 60 or 70 Australian dollars a week
to hire a scooter with like a few dollars for fuel
I can't remember how much but it was not expensive
and it's very cheap compared to if I were to hire a taxi.
The taxi's are very expensive in Phuket.
You pay like 30 bucks, 30 Australian dollars
for a one way fair that is like 30 minutes away.
So the other side of the island
It is not worth it, it is so expensive
and there's no way you can bring down the price
because all the taxi driver's have, cards,
laminated cards with all the prices
and so if anything is listed as a price
you won't be able to budge on the price.
So consider hiring a scooter or motorbike
when you're there as well, if you feel comfortable.
The last one I'll talk about is budgeting for the trip.
I get this question a lot.
This is hard to answer because everyone is different
in terms of how they spend money when they're travelling.
For these trips to fitness street
I don't really keep a strict budget
because I like to try different things,
take, you know, film all the content,
give it to you guys,
to give you insight to what to expect
so I've trained most of these camps
which is not the most cost effective way of doing it
but its been the best way for me
to get all the content I need
so I can create the videos for everyone to watch
to give you guys an insight to what these places are like.
But honestly, budgeting, if you are super conservative,
there's components to budgeting.
So I'll break it down real quick.
You've got your flights to Phuket.
You've got your training cost.
You've got accommodation,
food, transport and the cost to get to and from the airport.
So flights to Phuket,
you can figure that one out, its pretty basic.
Cost to and from the airport is super expensive.
You will pay about 60 Australian dollars,
one-way to get to fitness street.
It is so crazy expensive.
So factor that in too.
The cost of getting a taxi from the airport
to fitness street and back again.
That's expensive, you've got to factor that in.
And the other ones is the training cost.
Now this depends on where you're training.
A lot of these places have packages
where you can train on a week to week
or a month to month basis,
or you can do private sessions.
It just depends on what your goal is
and what your ambition is.
If you want to go there for just 1 week
or if you're only going for 2 weeks,
then you might want to do a week to week package
with 2 or 3 private sessions thrown on top.
A private session will cost you 700 Baht
per session, there abouts.
700 Baht is how much I paid.
If you are there for a month or 2 or 3 months
then you would go on a month to month package.
And then maybe you would have more privates,
I don't know, it just depends on your ambition.
Just go to their websites,
these training camps most of them have websites
and you can figure it out from there.
Then you've got the accommodation component.
Accommodation is broken up
into short-term and long-term stay.
I talk about this in other videos but real quick
if you are looking to stay there for several months
then you are long-term accommodation
which is where you pay rent on a month to month basis.
The best I could come up with
is about 15,000 Baht per month.
I'll link it up again.
Never stayed there, can't personally endorse it,
but I've had friends that have stayed there
and they liked the place.
It's not fancy but what do you expect,
its 15,000 Baht a month
or 20,000 Baht, I'll check the price on that as well
and that's directly across the round from Tiger Muay Thai.
Then you've got short-term accommodation
and there's plenty of those options around
you just go to booking.com and just have a look around
and then you can work it out
based on how long you're staying for.
The next one is food.
This is a common question I get in terms of budgeting.
How much is food?
To give you an idea,
I didn't bother weighing the articles that are linked below.
You'll see photos of the menus,
most of the menus, with all the prices
and also photos of the food as well
just to give you an idea of the portion sizes
and how much it costs for each of the portion sizes.
It just depends on how much you eat
and everyone is different right?
Some people are more fancy than others.
I like to eat, I'm a bit of a, I like saving money,
so I like to go to Tony's Restaurant
which is, you know, very very basic bare bones
but he serves amazing food
definitely go and check him out.
It's on fitness street.
The one I usually get, is the large
it's a big piece of chicken, steamed chicken
with steamed vegetables on the side
and I think there's salad on the side as well.
And I order a coconut and then I have a shake.
So all of that costs about 7 or 8 Australian dollars
and that's enough for me.
It is day 4 of our trip here to Phuket, Thailand.
Our journey, training journey at Tiger Muay Thai.
We're at a restaurant called Tony's Restaurant
here right now and its about,
thanks, thanks a lot.
Look at that, check that out.
That's Papaya salad right there.
Look how amazing that is.
Anyway so we just ordered all of this food,
just show everybody,
literally,
490 Baht or 590 Baht.
The whole thing, everything here.
Which is about 20 Australian dollars
for all this food, I'll give you a breakdown.
All of this food, literally,
we just ordered this maybe
like 10 minutes ago, 15 minutes ago.
Grilled fish, sweet potato, we got coleslaw on the side
and if you look down here we got chicken larb,
or pork larb I think it is,
which is like bits of chicken and soy sauce and shallots.
Really really amazing.
If you ever come here, to Thailand
or if you ever come to Tiger Muay Thai
come to Tony's Restaurant.
This is all fresh and the chicken is all like clean chicken.
Just a nice steamed piece of chicken, sweet potato.
Just can't beat this, can't get much better than this.
You know, some guys need more, some guys maybe need less
I don't know, it just depends
on who you are and how much you eat and how fancy you are.
If you want to eat more Western type food
then its going to cost you more.
But typically the way I budget it
is that each of your protein shakes off the street,
if you like protein shakes costs around 80 Baht each.
So about 3 Australian dollars right?
Per shake, 3, 3 dollars 50 something like that.
3 of those, or 2 of those so let's call it 7 dollars.
Call it 10 dollars, call it 10 dollars a day
in protein shakes if you love your protein shakes.
3 of those a day, off the street.
If you have Tony's like twice a day or three times a day,
depending on how you eat, if you don't have breakfast.
I'll let you figure that out.
But basically you might be paying anywhere
from 10 to 15 Australian dollars for your mains
from Tony's, maybe 20
and then 7 to 10 dollars for your shakes
so call it 30 Australian dollars per day.
I'm just thinking out loud here.
30 Australian dollars per day is a reasonable budget
for food for someone who is eating normally
but maybe 40 dollars a day, I don't know
but have a look at the links,
look at the menus that I've included
and then you can figure it out for yourself.
Yeah, if you have any questions,
definitely shoot me a message.
I apologise if I take sometimes a week
to get back to people I really do apologise.
I've got a lot going on.
I'm trying to get my licence renewed
but if you are looking at training there send me a message,
let me know where you're from,
just introduce yourself
and I might be around the area when you decide to go
so I mean I'm hoping to go back end of the year sometime.
But I don't know for sure
because I have to get my licence sorted out first.
Robyn, if you're wondering she is
she is back in South Africa.
She is like wrapping up her life there.
So she's in Cape Town at the moment
and we're doing a long distance
international relationship which sucks.
I don't like it, she doesn't like it.
It's short term but I won't see her for another 3 months
so its really really hard
but what can you do?
It is what it is.
I've just gotta put my head down, focus on this,
try and get my back, try and fix my spine
so I can train again.
Anyway, where are you from?
And how long were you thinking of going there for?
To fitness street.
And I'm really curious to connect with some of you guys
and maybe one day meet with you as well.
Hope you enjoyed the video.
Hope it has answered of your question.
Otherwise have an awesome day and Happy 1st of May.
See you guys.
(outro music)