Report from Asia: South Korea and Thailand 2013

Hey Everyone,

I am here in Asia on a two week vacation, and have had a really good time with friends here. I spent a few days in South Korea to see my good buddy Tyson Dewees who is a former Lei Tai fighter and does personal training in South Korea. A friend from a forum "Andy S" gave us a guided tour around Seoul. We didnt really train in martial arts, but had good conversation about who is who in terms of Chinese Kung Fu, Taijiquan, Pakuachang, and the upcoming MMA schools in the area. I got to go to the really nice Korean spas and relax in the sauna, steam room, mineral baths, etc. and use the gym.

In Korea they also show the UFC fights for free and we watched some fights.

Ok now on Thailand: being jet lagged, somewhat (Korea allowed me get great sleep and recovery) I payed a visit to Lumpinee park where thousands of Thai and Thai-Chinese exercise. The most popular Qigong you see here is 18 Taiji qigong. click here to watch 18 taiji qigong videos at bottom of page.

I met up with a Yongnian Taiji group there. Yongnian Taiji was established about 70 years ago after the death of Yang Chen Fu, by Fu Zhong Wen. The group here does some standard warm-ups, fajing training by taking one movement of the form and drilling it, the Long form 2x and then some shorter competition forms. They will also do some Taiji sword. I showed them some pictures of my teacher Weiqi with Fu Zhong Wen, and they leader introduced me as former Secretary of the USA Yongnian Association. I showed them a 8 exercise warm-up we did that was supposedly taught by Yang Chen Fu. After their class they did a pretty intense version of Yi Jin Jing that was excruciatingly uncomfortable the first time. It involved holding some intense postures for a period of time and then flowing to the next one. The heat in Thailand didnt help as I sweated a bucket of water. I felt great afterwards and the Yi Jin Jin was closed with Taoist practice of rubbing hands for face massage, building and swallowing saliva, patting massage, etc.

I trained at Jitti gym and Fairtex Muay thai schools about 4x so far. They are pretty much the same when I came to training:
10 minutes jump rope
-shadow boxing
5 x 4 minute pad work with a pro trainer
-bag work
-end out with stretching of the yogic variety.

On the good side, they said I had a lot of power, on the bad side, I have been super slacking on fight training and taking a relaxed approach as I am 40 and cannot train like the youngster I used to be. Maybe the relaxed allowed me to have that power.

I got to hang out with a fighter that I did a seminar with in the USA, Farnam Mirzai, please check out his video. He is a great fighter and wants to do more tours in the USA, He has the true spirit of a martial artist. He started with Karate, did a few Sanda fights and moved on to Muay Thai. He lived and fought in Thailand in the big fight stadiums. He had the first spinning elbow knockout in the big stadium in like 30 years!



Probably the most impressive lesson I have learned here has not come from training and friends, but rather a book given to me by Troy Roy. I have time to read "Searching for the Way" by Nigel Sutton. In this book Nigel writes on insights gained from living and training in Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. It is a really good read and I highly suggest it!! It comes down to relaxing! SUNG!!

So if you are ever in Thailand I suggest take advantage of the Thai boxing gyms. ALso get plenty of Thai massage. A two hour traditional Thai massage is about $12 USD compared to in USA is about $90 an hour. My wife and I have gone about every other day full body or foot massage cause you cant get a deal like that back home.

Matt

There's a good chance I'll be moving to Bangkok in summer (fingers crossed). Do you know of any good bagua happening in the city?

The only Bagua I saw was in Lumpinee Park. there was a group doing some really slow walking the circle, some linear work, and staff. Also a Bagua weapon similar to deer hook knife but more like a deer hook sword.

To be honest, I wasn't really impressed with their bagua. I was working on my own once in 2011 in Lumpinee park doing some neijia (Bagua, xingyi, and Taiji) on my own and a older generation man talked to me. He liked what I was doing and I told him I had trained some in Shanghai.

Also i didn't mention that i did see a few people doing some push hands. However only one guy from the Yongnian group knew some push hands, but we only went through the 4 square 9pung lu ji an pattern and walking). I have seen a few people here and there doing push hands. One group looked like they were Cheng Man Ching style.

Sadly 97% of what goes on in the parks in Thailand seems to be just form work for health and people with no interest in the history or fighting work and applications. I think there are some Chinese martial arts studios that might be having other kinds of training, but i haven't searched them out since really there are plenty of Thai boxing fight school in Bangkok.

some of the videos are at:
click here to go to youtube of mine

old video from 2010 visit




matt

Thanks Matt

Looks like I'm going to be stuck in Germany for the forseeable future, so no Bangkok for me.

i need to go and find some small children to push over now, to make myself happy again.