Chiang Mai Walking Street and Muay Thai Fights

Earlier this week we went to the fun but very tourisy Night Bazaar here in Chiang Mai.  Tonight is Saturday night, when they hold the weekly "Walking Street" market.  It seemed to us to be more of a fun local thing to do on a Saturday night; we saw lots of families out and about and there were definitely fewer obvious tourists.

There were lots of musicians playing everything from traditional music to singing karaoke on portable machines.  This little girl was very talented.  I think she is playing a khim, which is a hammered dulcimer.

We enjoyed walking up and down the street, checking out all the booths.  But the main reason we came here was for dinner, to try some local foods.  Of course we started off sharing an order of phad thai.

Then Kevin had a local sausage (kind of like the ones shown here, but shaped differently and from a different stall).

This lady sold all kinds of good-looking things; we bought a delicious grilled banana skewer to share.

And for dessert there was a tasty ice cream square.

There were a few delicacies that we just weren't adventurous enough to try.  Normally, Kevin loves calamari, but this squid on a stick just didn't appeal for some reason.

And not even the low, low price of 20 baht (about 65 cents) was enough to tempt us to try these fried insects.

After our street-food dinner, we took a tuk-tuk to the Thai boxing stadium.  Our driver was a lady, which I thought was pretty cool.  We haven't seen any female tuk-tuk drivers here.  She also had the most tricked out tuk-tuk in town.  The rear passenger seat sat on top of a thumping bass, and the ride was equipped with speakers that could be heard down the block. Very fun!

We arrived at the Thapae Boxing Stadium just in time for the start of the fights.

Muay Thai is a style of boxing/fighting that originated in Thailand.  It is nicknamed the "Art of Eight Limbs" because fighters are permitted to use fists, elbows, feet, and knees.

The stadium had an interesting setup.  Most of the spectators were farangs (foreigners) although there was one section full of Thai people, most likely friends and families of the fighters.  There were several bars selling overpriced beers.

Bookies competed with each other to convince the foreigners to wager on each fight.  Here are a group of tourists placing bets.

Traditional music accompanies each fight, getting faster as the rounds progress.  The clarinet-style instrument is called a Pi Muay, Pi Java, or Pi Kaek.



One of the fights we saw was a championship fight for the 85 lb weight class.  These were some tough kids!

For intermission, they also had a "special fight" -- five guys blindfolded and forced to duke it out with each other (no kicking allowed).  Things got interesting whenever they mistook the referee for a combatant.



Afterwards, the blindfolded guys came around asking for contributions and taking photos with the spectators.