children in muay thai camp and more

[newrmdmike]

since i enjoy martial arts and such i joined a muay thai camp here in bangkok for professional fighters. kao si and kao guy both fight out of this gym. kao guy is considered to be one of the best technical fighters in thailand, and is a super nice guy. (he doesn't fight in thailand, but flies around the world to fight, pulling 40,000 us a fight . . . only getting 2000 of after paying all the promoters) anyways, during training i took this shot and thought it was fun.

the kid on the left is training to be a professional . . . the boy on the right would be amazing, but is scared to fight, and my trainer is like family to him, they don't let family fight. (my trainer is khao guys trainer, and was on the us team at one point)

i think this is kao sai(k1 boxing champ), there is another guy who looks just like him, and i can't tell from this photo

and heres a kid playing soccer on a seawall in prathup kuri khan, south of hua hin.

yay mamiya! all taken with 645af, 80mm lens. sharpened in photoshop from iq lab scan. no photochopping.

 

[newrmdmike]

and heres a crop of the last one for the riz-oad so you can see some detail up close...with some photo - CHOPAGE

 

[LaFoto]

These are interesting, more so since they open up an all new world to me of things I know nothing about...! The "gym" does not really look like the kind we would be used to, now does it? And why are they standing on the truck tyres?

Of the boy kicking the ball, I much prefer the more symmetrical uncropped version.

Actually, that was instantly my favourite of the three in your first post, and I was a little disappointed to see the second, the cropped version of that photo.

 

[newrmdmike]

yup the uncropped is definatly my favorite as well. we jump on the truck tires, its a great calf workout. the gym is pretty bare bones, and the bags all have holes. the canvas is uneven. ITS GREAT.

thanks for commenting la foto!

 

[mysteryscribe]

If I remember my days in Thailand and if Things haven't change too much nothing is what it is anywhere else. From floating markets to blacksmiths that work with a charcoal fine in what for all the world looks like an old back yard barbeque grill.

Walk away from your westerner hotel and you are back in time. One of the best experiences of my life.

 

[newrmdmike]

haha, no hotel here for me, unless i'm out travelling around the area, in which case i stay where the thais stay (unless chevron is paying my way)

yeah its pretty awesome, i ride a bike about 10km to muay thai practice and pass up rice junks, markets, long tail boats, EVERYTHING imaginable. including modern bridges, malls and so on. its weiered to have that stuff side by side.

 

[mysteryscribe]

It's a land that is full of contratictions for sure. But lots of things to make photos of.

 

[The_Traveler]

Not contradictions, visible developing. Thailand is the classic developing country - more modernity than most but still lots left of the past.

I home that NewrmMike gets over into Laos. Night bus to Nong Khai and then bus to Vientiane. Now, that's 3d world.

 

[mysteryscribe]

You say tomato ect....

 

[newrmdmike]

what kills me about the development is that its not thailand developing. its other nations taking advantage. it saddens me to see that the thai working class doesn't understand that they would be better off poor working for a thai company than poor and working for a first world nations companies, or even for a thai company contracting out labor to first world nations co's.

it further pains me to see the shrimping industry here, and to see the wwf wrongly endorsing shrimp farming across areas affected by the tsunami under the guise of a way to speed finacial recovery for those people. when it was the world bank who financed the study. the rich get richer until the poor get educated. soon i'll be travelling to a town in a forest . . . all squaters now, on land the forestry dept claimed. if people around the world understood globalization they would think twice before buying beef on sale from across the world jumbo shrimp gap clotheing etc.

lots of greencoating going on these days to keep people in developed countries from realizing these things. in fact wal mart and red lobsters owner recently created a 'standard' that supposedly keeps them buying from only authorized shrimp farmers, but when you read the standards you realize its crap, more greencoating.

-kind of like those labels on the back of tuna cans saying they don't hurt dolphins, lots of those aren't legitimate and don't support fishing practices that save dolphins. enough about all that, if your interested i'll start a thread about it all.

 

[newrmdmike]

in other news the thai baht is higher than its been in the last decade. the economy is growing a bit faster than expected. looking good right? not really, sketchy stuff going on, the outlook is iffy.

inside chevron sources have told me chevron won't be staying in thailand for many more years. lots of jobs will leave. per engineer or foreign worker a driver and maid +some nannies will lose jobs, many housing developments will fail . . . these are just the jobs immediatly that i can see will be effected by that.

cost of opperating in this country is raising, companies will go somewhere cheaper, and if thailand doesn't have enough of its own businesses booming there will be problems.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Fifty years ago countries were raping thailand maybe not to the extent and now but it was happening. Everything modern belonged to someone else. There was very little industry but it was mostly local. I read recently there was light manufacturing for export to the us. Cheap labor I suppose.

Baht used to be 20 to the dollar what is it now Im curious..

 

[newrmdmike]

34.25 baht to the us dollar. phillips has a factory here i'm hopfuly going to photograph beforei leave. they pay their workers 5 bucks a day. they makechips at that place. (including paper for digital passports)

i'll make a thread in a few days talking about the globalization, hopfully that doesn't count as politics.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Who knows what is what around here these days. Relate it to the price of digital cameras and they should allow.

 

[The_Traveler]

A can of coke is 7-40 baht - depending on where you get it.
T shirts are 70-100 baht ($2 up)