Tourists fight the flab at Thai boxing camps

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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.

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.

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 kilos when he arrived in Thailand a year and a half ago, but has since lost more than 100 kilos.

"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 metres 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."

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 beginner 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."