10 regions
Where to train in Thailand
The region decides what your trip feels like more than the camp does. Each of these is good at something and costs you something else.
We list 44 Muay Thai camps across 10 regions of Thailand. 26 of them print what a month of training costs, 3,999 to 18,000 baht, and 10 print no rate at all. Every figure here was read off the camp's own site and carries the date it was read.
A month, region by region
Bangkok
กรุงเทพฯWhere the professional Thai fight scene actually lives, alongside Rajadamnern and Lumpinee stadiums. Gyms are city gyms rather than resort camps, so on-site accommodation is rarer and you commute. The commute is the part to plan for: the camps we list run from Thaweewatana in the far west to Prawet out past the eastern suburbs, and the wrong side of town can put an hour of traffic between your room and the gym. It holds more camps than any other region on this list, and three of them publish a week rate, none of it cheap by mainland standards. Best fit if you want authentic stadium-adjacent training and city life over a training holiday.
11campsPhuket
ภูเก็ตSeven camps on one island: five in Chalong and Rawai at the southern tip, the other two at Thalang and Bang Tao up the west coast. The only island on this list with its own international airport and no ferry at the end, which is most of what makes it an easy first trip. It holds one of the two camps we class as large, and four of the seven publish rooms on site. Not the cheap option either, and not a uniform one: no camp here prints a month anywhere near the cheapest on the mainland, and the gap between its own cheapest and dearest is wide.
7campsChiang Mai
เชียงใหม่Northern city with a long-established camp scene and a lower cost of living than the islands. Cooler months from November to February make training more comfortable. Air quality drops sharply during the northern burning season, roughly February to April, which is worth planning around. The camps sit closer together than anywhere else we cover, two of them inside the old city walls and the furthest out at San Kamphaeng, so visiting two in a morning is realistic. The catch is how little gets published here: only two print a month rate, and both print the same figure.
5campsKoh Phangan
เกาะพะงันNorth of Samui and in the same province, with no airport of its own, so everybody arrives by ferry from Samui, Surat Thani or Chumphon. The scene is small, relaxed and heavily crossed over with the long-stay yoga and wellness crowd on the Sri Thanu side of the island. That means fewer camps and fewer training partners than Phuket or Samui, and progress that depends a good deal on who else happens to be in camp the month you are. The Full Moon Party at Haad Rin fills the ferries and moves room prices once a month, which is worth checking your dates against whichever way you feel about it.
4campsKrabi
กระบี่Mainland province on the Andaman coast, across Phang Nga Bay from Phuket and served by its own international flights. Arriving here does not mean routing through Phuket first. The camp scene is small and a lot of the draw is what sits around the training rather than the training itself: Railay and Tonsai are limestone walls reachable only by boat and a climbing destination in their own right, and the ferries to Koh Lanta and Koh Phi Phi run from the town pier. Quieter than Phuket in every sense of the word, the party one included.
4campsPattaya
พัทยาGulf coast city in Chonburi province, two hours from Bangkok by road, and the closest cluster of long-running competition gyms to the capital that is not in it. The town has a nightlife reputation that arrives before you do, and the training scene sits beside that rather than inside it: the gyms are in their own compounds, long-stay accommodation is cheap and plentiful, and U-Tapao takes enough regional flights to skip Bangkok on the way in. It suits people who want a serious room to train in and do not need the surroundings to be pretty.
4campsHua Hin
หัวหินCoastal town in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, roughly three hours south of Bangkok by road and on the southern rail line. That makes it the easiest stretch of beach in Thailand to reach without flying. It was a Thai holiday town long before it was a foreign one and still reads that way: families and long-stay visitors rather than backpackers. The camp scene is correspondingly small, a few gyms around the town rather than a strip of them.
4campsKoh Samui
เกาะสมุยThe larger of the two Gulf training islands, in Surat Thani province, with a scene built around a holiday rather than a fight camp. That makes it the easier place to bring somebody who is not training. Getting here is the cost people underestimate: the island airport is privately operated and fares into it run well above the mainland, so the cheaper route in is a flight to Surat Thani and then the bus and the ferry. A shorter list of camps than Phuket, and a shorter list of trainers to work with.
3campsPai
ปายA mountain town three hours north of Chiang Mai by minivan, with one serious camp rather than a scene to shop around in. That is the trade: you commit to a gym before you arrive, and in exchange you train somewhere cheap and quiet where the road out takes most of a day. The burning season settles into the valley and sits there, which makes February to April the months to avoid.
1campIsaan (Northeast)
อีสานThe biggest and poorest part of the country, and the part that produces a disproportionate share of its professional fighters. Most gyms here are built for Thai kids fighting for purse money rather than for visitors, so English and comfort vary enormously between camps. The few that do run foreigner-facing programmes tend to sit outside any town, with the room and the food included because there is nothing to walk to. Flights serve the north and the east of the region, while the Khorat end is close enough to drive from Bangkok. Come for immersion, not for a cheap month: the rates published here are not noticeably below the islands.
1camp
Before the region
Thailand does not have one rainy season
Narrower
A region read for your situation
- Phuket for people who have never trained
- Phuket for competitive fighters
- Phuket for people staying for months
- Chiang Mai for people who have never trained
- Bangkok for people who have never trained
- Bangkok for competitive fighters
- Bangkok for people staying for months
- Pattaya for people who have never trained
- Pattaya for people training to lose weight