wo young Thai men face each other on the fighting mat. Their gloves raised just below their sharp-as-tacks eyes, they wait for their opponent to make a move. They circle each other, bouncing lightly on the balls of their feet to a boppy tune issuing from a loudspeaker. Suddenly, one boxer shoots forward, lightning fast, with a knee aimed straight for his opponent's face. Welcome to the arena of Muay Thai kickboxing — a martial art that turns elbows, fists, knees and feet into deadly weapons.

Muay Thai is attracting ever-growing interest worldwide as a serious sport and fitness activity. And Thailand's national boxing style is drawing international visitors to Phuket to train in the deadly traditional art. A number of training camps on Phuket cater to the international market, and regular fights in rings around the island attract large audiences of foreign men and women fascinated by these colourful battles of mind and muscle.

Records show Muay Thai dates back about 2,000 years to when Thai men and women developed the martial art as a defence against impending Burmese invasion. They didn't use weapons, opting to dip their linen-wrapped hands in glue which would then be rolled in crushed glass, making their punches potentially lethal.

These days, exponents of this popular martial art form do not go to such extreme lengths, but the sport still pushes people to their limits. It offers a gruelling workout, conditions the body and turns mediocre fighters into serious opponents.

The two Thai men fighting in the ring are Eam and Feen, brothers based at the Phuket Muay Thai Kick Boxing Camp. This establishment is now taking in as many as 120 foreigners each year for intensive, personalized training. Drawn to Phuket for a change in lifestyle three years ago, German-born Steve Illyes initially joined the camp as a fitness programme. He is now managing director in charge of overseeing expansion of the centre to meet the growing demand from foreigners. The trainer's life is a far cry from when he travelled the world for computer company Intel as an electrical engineer. He nearly settled instead on Fiji as his long-dreamed-of paradise, but his business partner was killed there over a water bill.

"But it is a safe place here in Phuket," he says. "And the people are polite and have a lot of respect. I lived down the road from the muay thai gym. I drove by every day, and decided to begin training here. They took me for five rounds in the ring and I nearly died. It is a very demanding sport."

Steve has since developed the gym into a training camp, and says the sport is exploding: "Now that this has developed into a camp, a lot of people want to study and live here. Muay Thai has become very popular, and I think that's because it's one of the purest forms of martial arts."

The 47-year-old says people aged from 8 years to 58 have trained at the camp, but he stresses that, even though the sport is deadly and people have died from it, there is a strong focus on safety in the ring.

Still, practising the true art of muay thai is not for the faint of heart. The morning begins with 25 rounds of fighting for three minutes per round; ropes and weightlifting for about an hour; 5 to 10 rounds of technique training; and then a 15-kilometre run. The afternoon follows the same schedule except the run is 20 kilometres and, instead of taking one-minute breaks between rounds, there are no breaks, and fighters have to take on three trainers.

The camp's trainers Eam, 18, and Feen, 20, tell their own stories in halting English, describing the intense training schedules. Both have held the junior Muay Thai championship of Bangkok during their teens, and each started the sport, as most Thais do, before the age of 10 years. Eam still fights professionally, while Feen has retired. "I trained in a gym for Thai people," says Eam, who has won 2 belts and 10 trophies from 100 fights. You get taught for free, and then you have to pay back everything when you win. I enjoy muay thai because I want to show other people what I've learned, make friends and meet people from other countries."

While training hard for the junior Muay Thai Bangkok title, Feen jogged the hilly Phuket landscapes behind a motorbike. If he became too tired and stopped for a rest, his trainer would force him to do 100 push-ups. Such is the level of fitness achieved by Eam and Feen that a standard warm-up before training or a fight involves 100 kicks per minute on each leg, and kneeing the bag 1,000 times over 10 minutes.

The Phuket muay thai gym has already set records. Phuket's first muay thai fight between two foreign men was staged last year. A Norwegian, who Steve identifies as John, travelled to Phuket after he was turned away from fighting professionally in Chang Mai, in Thailand's North. Steve and his trainers took John on, putting him through a rigorous four-week training schedule prior to the fight. "We matched him up with another fighter his size, a French man from another gym," Steve says,"so they were both equally matched in the 95-kilo heavyweight division.

When the fighters were getting ready in the locker room, all the Thais went in there, and they just couldn't believe the size of them. John knocked the French man out in the third round. The Thais were just absolutely stunned by the fight."

Meanwhile, Steve is fighting to put Phuket on the muay thai map along-side Bangkok and Chang Mai. "Make no mistake," he says, "this is a very, very intensive sport, and it is now also recognized as a great workout. It's not designed to look pretty — it's designed for fighting."