Crime
Tourists Fight Flab at Kickboxing Fitness Camps
PHUKET – Thailand has become home to a flourishing Muay Thai training industry that welcomes thousands of guests every year, thanks in part to the popularity of mixed martial arts.
In a sweltering training camp on a tropical Thai island, sweaty tourists wearing oversized gloves and baggy shorts slam their fists, knees, elbows and feet into a row of heavy bags.
Jordan Henderson already shed about 20 kg.Welcome to the latest craze in extreme fitness – Muay Thai boxing.
With worries growing about the world’s bulging waistlines, many foreigners are flocking to Thailand to spend their holidays not on the beach, but following a punishing regime of training in Muay Thai and other martial arts.
Some are going to even more extreme lengths, quitting their jobs to spend weeks or months training in an effort to win their long battles with obesity or hone their skills in the hope of becoming professional fighters.
Jordan Henderson, 26, left behind his London lifestyle of long work days, parties and overeating after the doctors warned him that he faced looming heart problems due to his weight of nearly 184 kg.
After one month at a training camp in Phuket off Thailand’s southern Andaman Coast, he had already shed about 20 kg.
“You’re in an environment where it’s hot all the time, surrounded by people doing fitness,” he said after an early morning workout.
“It’s about taking yourself out of the box that you live in and just focusing on one thing – and that’s to train and lose weight.”
The first few days were far from easy.
“It was horrible – the heat and the training, the aches you get and the dramatic diet change,” Henderson said.
“I’ve gone from eating whatever I liked to grilled chicken, steamed vegetables and brown rice,” Henderson added.
But despite the grueling regime, he never considered packing his bags and leaving early.
National sport
Thailand is home to a flourishing Muay Thai training industry that welcomes thousands of guests every year, thanks in part to the popularity of mixed martial arts, which combines striking and grappling techniques.
Don Madge with TMT Director Will Elliott (Right)“Mixed martial arts is the fastest growing sport in the world, and Muay Thai is an integral part of that,” said Will Elliot, director of Tiger Muay Thai, one of more than a dozen such training camps in Phuket.
“It’s definitely extreme to travel halfway across the world,” said Elliot, whose camp welcomes hundreds of guests each month paying up to about $100 per week for group training.
“But we’re in the tropics. It’s hot. We’re in Thailand, the birthplace of Muay Thai, so it’s about immersion,” he said.
Muay Thai, Thailand’s national sport, is known as the “Art of Eight Limbs” because it combines punches, kicks, elbows and knee strikes.
Anyone thinking about signing up should be prepared for the challenge.
“It’s very physically intensive. At the end of a workout you’re going to be exhausted. So if you can maintain that twice a day in combination with a diet, your fitness is going to increase rapidly,” Elliot said.
It worked for James Mason, 29, a former used car salesman from Britain who weighed 200 kg when he arrived in Thailand a year and a half ago, but has since lost more than 100 kg.
“The doctor told me that if I didn’t do something drastic to change my life in five years’ time, I would be dead,” he said.
“When I first got here I couldn’t walk 200 meters without my back hurting. I had to sit down and take a breath. I’d be dripping with sweat because of the heat and the humidity.”
Three months into his training in Thailand, he caught a flesh-eating bacteria and required three operations, narrowly avoiding having his leg amputated.
But he recovered and returned to his regime, and recently completed a 900 km charity bike ride from Phuket to Bangkok.
At the Tiger camp, about 20 students from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Egypt and Russia sweated their way through a recent beginners class under the close watch of muscular former Thai professionals.
“One, two, duck, body punch,” shouted one of the instructors as the students, of varying levels of fitness, practiced their moves.
After warm-up exercises involving jogging, stretching, jumping jacks and shadow boxing, the students paired up to spar, punching the air within a whisker of their opponents’ ears.
“You’re meant to duck!” one girl reminded her friend after a near miss.
The main goal of most of the trainees is not to become a boxing champion but to lose weight, said instructor Phirop Chuaikaitum, better known as Ajarn (Master) Dang.
“They run for a long time, stretching, punching in the air for a long time. That makes it easy to lose weight,” he said.
“But we don’t make it hard, because they will get hurt. We do it slowly but non-stop for two-and-a-half hours. They only have a three-minute break.”
There is no slacking off, even for royalty.
“There was one guy who was a prince from Dubai,” Phirop said.
“He came for the beginners class. I hit him with a stick, and he told me that he was from a royal family. Whether you’re a construction worker or member of a royal family, when you come for boxing training, you are all equal.”
As the session neared an end, sweat dripped from the students’ foreheads and they grimaced with pain. And for the knockout blow, 100 push-ups to finish, for those with the energy left.
“It does hurt. You’re sore everywhere. Sometimes it’s tough to walk,” Henderson said. “You’re dripping in sweat, but once you get back, have a shower, a swim in the pool – you can’t buy that feeling.”
Police in Northern Thailand have arrested a fellow officer as he was being ordained at a temple in Ngao district of neighbouring Lampang province.
Pol Lt Col Bandit Khonkan chief inspector from the Hang Dong police station was disrobed and taken to the Chang Puak station in Chiang Mai. He was arrested on charges of running a call centre scam gang in Chiang Mai Province.
According to Thai Media Chiang Mai Provincial Police Region 5 obtained an arrest warrant for Pol Lt Col Bandit on Friday from the Chiang Mai Provincial Court for procuring illegal telecom equipment, setting up a station and using public airwaves to run a telecommunications business without permission.
Pol Lt Col Bandit reportedly told investigators that he was not the ringleader and was only a member of the gang with Chinese partners.
His arrest followed the apprehension of his 26-year-old daughter, Miss Wanuchapond, 26, and three others during raids at three housing projects in Chiang Mai on Friday, Pol Maj Gen Weerachon Boontawee, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 5 told Thai media.
During the raids police police discovered around 12 GSM gateways, or SIM boxes, which are devices used for converting cellular networks into mobile phone numbers used domestically.
The chief inspectors daughter Miss Wanuchapond told the arresting officers that she was paid 8,000 baht a month at each of the three locations for renting thr rooms and monitoring devices.
She claimed she had no idea what the devices were and accepted the job because the pay was attractive.
Police investigators working with telecom regulators used a special tracking device to monitor the gang’s communications and learned that its base was in Myanmar opposite Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai.
The call center gang used the GSM gateways to make calls over the internet to scam people in Thailand out of million of baht.
The GSM gateways transmitting signals via SIM boxes to convert them into domestic phone numbers, duping victims into thinking they were being called from Thai government agencies.
Pol Maj Gen Weerachon said that each SIM box held 32 SIM cards, with a capacity of up to 300,000 calls a month. The seized devices had made fraudulent calls over 3.6 million times.
He said the their investigation is ongoing and they are working to track down the remaining conspirators, including Chinese and other Thai suspects.
Authorities are still deciding whether Pol Lt Col Bandit will be dismissed from the force, he said, adding that so far, no other officers are known to have been involved.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin has authorized the establishment of an emergency cyber center operated by the Royal Thai Police to combat transnational crimes committed by call center gangs along the Thai border in Chiang Rai province.
On July 19, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin directed the Center to combat information technology crimes. The Royal Thai Police (Royal Thai Police) will crack down on call center gangs in Myanmar, Laos, and along the border.
His directive comes as call center gangs ratchet up their scams to defraud people of their money, causing concern among Thais and jeopardizing the country’s economic and social stability.
Related Police News:
Machete Wielding Man Shot an Killed by Police in Chiang Rai
https://www.chiangraitimes.com/chiangrai-news/machete-wielding-man-shot-an-killed-by-police-in-chiang-rai/
Immigration police officers have arrested four Colombian nationals in connection with a series of home burglaries at luxury housing complexes in the Bangkok metropolitan area and Chiang Buri Province.
Pol Maj Gen Panthana Nuchanart, deputy commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, told a press briefing that three of the suspects were apprehended in Nonthaburi Province and the fourth in South Pattaya, Chon Buri Province.
According to the Bangkok Post, the Colombians were charged with stealing conspiracy and seized around 3 million baht (US$82,500.00).
According to Pol Maj Gen Panthana, the criminals rode motorcycles through housing estates, scoping out the properties and waiting for the owners to depart before committing their crimes.
He stated that all four of the accused denied any involvement in the home break-ins, but the arresting squad discovered evidence that implicated them.
Police called to home invasion
Meanwhile, police were dispatched to a luxury housing development in Tambon Nong Prue, Chonburi Province, after a Chinese man was attacked during a house invasion.
When they arrived, they discovered the house owner, Mr. Qian Peng Yi, visibly scared and with marks from being tied up with a cable. He informed police that three Chinese males broke into his home at 9 p.m., one of whom brandished a gun at him and directed him to his bedroom.
They bound his hands and feet, gagged him with fabric, taped his head, and forced him into the bed. The intruders then attempted to compel him into transferring 10 million baht in cryptocurrencies to them, endangering the life of his 33-year-old cousin who was in a second-floor bedroom.
While they scoured the house in search of riches, Mr. Peng Yi managed to flee and hide; he subsequently observed them leave with his cousin. Officials investigated the property and analyzed security camera footage from the incident and surrounding areas.
Around 9 p.m., a 30-year-old van driver came at the Bang Lamung police station after being contacted by an agency to carry Chinese customers from Pattaya to Suvarnabhumi Airport.
The driver informed authorities that he was supposed to pick them up at a motel about a kilometer from the Chinese businessman’s home. He then drove them to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, arriving at 1 a.m. and receiving 1,800 baht.
The driver took a snapshot of the group smoking at the airport gate and identified one of them as the victim’s cousin. Police suspected coordination between her and the three suspects in her cousin’s heist, who all departed Thailand on the same aircraft.
Other Bangkok News:
Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel
Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel
Crime
Son of Thailand’s Leading Legal Scholar on Corruption Arrested for Running Online Gambling Network
The son of a former senator and leading economist and expert on corruption and gambling in Thailand has been arrested for on charges of running an online gambling network and its payment system.
Police from Thailand’s Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) have confiscated assets worth more than (US$ 11.1 million) 400 million baht.
Narote Piriyarangsan, 33, was arrested following crackdowns in three sites around the city, according to Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the police Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD).
Mr Narote’s father, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, is an economist who has written articles and books about corruption and gambling. He was one of the appointed senators that were investigating the government’s intention to legalize casino gaming before their terms expired.
Police also detained 39-year-old Narayut Narakaew, the owner of the gambling website 69pgslot.com. The Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the couple for operating an internet gambling service and money laundering.
According to the Bangkok Post, police seized two desktop computers, one laptop computer, 14 mobile phones, 21 bank passbooks, 53 ATM cards, and four high-end cars — a Ferrari 926 GTS, an Aston Martin, a Lexus, and a Subaru — totaling more than 400 million baht.
Police launched the inquiry after discovering the online gambling site, which accepted funds via an automatic deposit-withdrawal system through bank accounts and deposits in the AskMePay system. Players scanned the VPay QR code as well as the QR codes for Heng Online 888 or Heng Pay Company.
Police also discovered that payments received via QR code scans were transferred to the account of Heng Pay Co and then to the gambling website’s mule accounts using AskMePay, which did not use banks’ face recognition scanning. An inquiry indicated a monthly turnover of approximately 5 billion baht.
According to investigators, the website has been up and running for around four years, with the payment mechanism in use for roughly eight months.
According to Pol Maj Gen Athip, Mr Narote owns the gaming website’s payment systems and is the director of Heng Pay Co. After gathering evidence, authorities requested arrest warrants for 14 people.
Thailand does not allow almost any kind of gaming. Even though the law doesn’t say anything specific about online gaming, it is still considered gambling. The country has pretty strict rules about gambling. Thai punters can bet on the national lottery and horse races, but they can’t bet on any other types of games.
But it’s not a secret that there is a huge illegal gaming business in Thailand, even though it’s illegal.
The illegal casinos, online betting shops, underground lotteries, and pop-up bookies that take bets on everything from cockfights to Muay Thai make a shadow economy that is worth billions of dollars every year.
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Thailand’s Cyber Crime Police Raid Top Cops Home Over Gambling Websites
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