Friday night (The 6th) Some of us went to se a Muay Thai event. I laughed to myself on the song tao ride over because before I left SLC my friends and I thought we would watch the movie "Ong-Bak Thai Warrior" with Tony Ja, which was a hilariously entertaining movie. Muay Thai for the western audience.
We didn't stay for the whole thing but we watched 9-12 different fights as a group, and a few of us wondered around alone to get the feel of the place. There was even a guy from Iceland who went up against a Thai boxer. He did not fair too well.
From the point of view of a tourist, the two most interesting fights where the youngest boxer who looked six years old and couldn't have been more then eight and another fight that was labeled in the program as "The Big One."
As I looked away from the fight, I saw a very clear distinction between what farang were doing and what the Thais were doing. Most of the foreigners sat and looked intently at t
he fighters, laughed loudly, made sound effects, and only looked away from the fighting in between rounds. All of them were sitting in the chairs provided. The Thais were more spread out. some wondered around for the best view, and while their focus was on the fighters, of course, they would tap each other in the arm and make what I assumed were jokes (about the fighting and the farang) But most of the Thais were centralized on the left side of the ring (in relation to the entrance) where all of official betting was taking place. There was not a single non-Thai in the bunch. This has been the first time I have seen Thai people get as animated about anything as I would expect an American. Those who were not betting though, seemed as reserved as the sitting farang. Who would have thought farang to be the reserved ones?
It was hard to tell who actually worked at the place, with the exception of the door guard and the two men who were wondering from the food stand to sell beer and chips.
Even the idea of respect plays out in Muay Thai, and not just for the opponents. Before each fight the fighters would ritually warm up as they wore what I can only describe as an oversized ping pong paddle that was hollowed out to make space for their head. There was rope decoratively wrapped around the frame. I asked someone what it was for and he replied "to show respect to their teachers and the training camp they come from. Respect and the head."
I saw no religious symbols in the are, but about half the Thais that I saw had a Buddha or pendent with a monk on it around their neck.
A interaction between two people I saw was between two of the three people I could identify as workers. One worker carried a bucket with ice and beers in it while the other carried chips in a small plastic basket. The area in which I was sitting had a lot of foreigners. The two did not yell over the crowd though to communicate. The language they used was much more with their eyes. While they seemingly (and I assume some of the time really did) just wonder through the crowd seeing if anybody stopped them for drinks I also saw one look at one person then look at his co-worker. His co-worker would either nod, shrug or shake his head. If they nodded their heads or shrugged they would go in the general area of that person and spend an extra two minutes asking people around the person they looked at if they would like any snacks or drinks. While it may seem like a silly example, it reminded me of the importance of body language and facial expressions and how Thailand is the place of many smiles, with many meanings.
There was a shop outside the actual building where the fighting was taking place but it had boxing magazines in it along with overpriced boxing shorts, jerseys and other things that I can only assume a Thai would not buy. I briefly looked at the cover of the magazines and they all had fighters standing alone in a fierce pose, looking directly at the camera. While I did not get a photo of any of them, some of the magazines had English headlines with Thai written underneath it.
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