The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand (Patreon article) (Patreon)

Kevin and I have been driving around for about an hour at night, looking for the venue of my fight. This promoter notoriously gives me vague directions to wherever I’m fighting, but that has become part of the adventure. We’ve wound through these completely pitch-black roads, guided only by the 10 feet of headlight in front of us, sometimes aided by the single red eye of a motorbike’s taillight as it flits to and fro in front of us, helping us discern the bends and twists of the road - or to move around a phantom cart or truck that has no lights on it at all and you’d never see until you’re right up on it; seeing the motorbike bobbing taillight swerve first allows you to miss those as well.

When we finally ask someone at the side of the road who happens to know where this venue is, she tells me she’s going to be coming to the fights and will see me there. This tiny woman in her 40s, probably, holding a laundry basket half the size of her, telling me to go down the road about 300 meters and turn left, then just adds in, “I’ll come cheer for you,” as if she’s known me for years. Amazing Thailand.

It’s the narrow road that leads back to the temple that really begins the night. Kevin and I park on the side and get out of the car. Immediately, my ears pick up the familiar sound of people saying, “falang” (foreigner) to indicate to one another our presence. The locals are painstakingly inching their trucks and motorbikes to the very edge of the street as well, allowing enough space for only one vehicle to pass through in either direction, surely. Everyone is parking a ways from the temple grounds and walking together with their mats - like how maybe you’d see families headed to the beach - so that’s why we decided to park here as well. We’re quite a sight, the only non-Thais anywhere to be seen and Kevin is huge, I’m tiny, and we have a leashed dog as well. The few people who spot the mongkol on my shoulder start to get extra excited at the recognition that I (or at least one of us) is a fighter.

At the mouth of the temple grounds is an arch, on either side of that is a folding card table. The guy I approach tells me admission is 100 Baht, so I tell him I’m a fighter. The word nakmuay is repeated by a few of the others sitting at these tables, somewhere between sounding the alarm and repeating it to themselves in a statement of surprise. The man tells me to go to the other table and I repeat myself to another man who has a pen hovering over a stack of printed programs for the night. I’ve seen the program already - the promoter sent it to me and thankfully my photo is on it, so I could just tell them “that’s me” - but I just say my name and tell the guy koo tee see (“I’m the 4th fight”). “Sin-wee-uh,” he says, as his pen lands next to my name on the program and he gives it a little slash mark next to it. He directs me to enter under the arch just behind him, but there’s a clot of people waiting to get through the narrow passageway (narrow because of the tables; the archway itself is, like, 20 feet wide). There are also fighters with their mats and ice buckets. In front of them are some ticketed attendees, folks coming to the temple fair for the festivities. 

Temple festivals are awesome. The temple is a social space anyway and just like in small towns or back in the day in the US, going to Church was where you went to meet people. It’s a community event. And these festivals are exciting and boring at the same time, because they’re kind of all the same, but it’s also where young folks go to oggle the opposite sex and be seen (politely), play carnival games that win big plush toys, and a favorite pastime of Thais: eat. I would be walked through the festival to the showers after my fight and get to take in all the different options. There were maybe 50 food stalls spread throughout and they all offered the same meats on sticks or sticky rice inside a bamboo shoot. No variation in selection, price, or sauces. Between these stalls were drink carts, all offering the same drinks. And everything else was either a tossing/shooting game to win toys or a clothing stall, selling either T-shirts or pants, but never both. There’s no space between most of these stalls, but the naked bulbs that illuminate them make it seem like they’re individual stars in a constellation. Young couples or same-sex friends, holding hands, inspect the selections carefully. When I approach to buy some hotdogs on sticks for Jaidee, there is a sudden excitement and simultaneous stress about my presence. Someone gets to see a falang, but that someone might have to interact without verbal communication, which is terrifying for a lot of Thais. When I actually speak Thai, they look relieved.

Upon entering the fairgrounds, Kevin and I found an area away from the enormous speakers to put our mat down. We’ve made the mistake of being too close to them before - it’s so loud. We lay out our mat and I step behind Kevin to loop my mongkol over the sawed-off limb of a tree, so it hangs high up above everyone’s heads. Just in front of us is the outer wall of the main temple which is elevated beyond a rampart; it is shimmering in the night as various light sources hit it: stage lights from the lee-keh show that hasn’t started yet, searchlights that reach into the sky like a beacon to the festival, and of course the lights from the Muay Thai ring. I tell Kevin I’m going to find the promoter and tell him I’ve arrived, then turn and leave him on the mat with a number of Thais staring at him and the dog (and me) as I walk toward the ring.

It’s still empty around the ring. It’s always like this before a show - completely empty and then very suddenly full and the show is going. There’s no gradual accumulation of people; it’s just nobody or everybody, like how tropical storms gather. I see some referees fussing with papers on the near side of the ring and wai to them as I pass. They smile at me, these huge smiles from over their snappy, royal blue uniforms. I follow along to the far side of the glowing  ring, where I think the announcer is. He’s reading off the matches, one by one, into the microphone and it’s blaring through the speakers on either side of the VIP stage, which is behind the ring. I recognize a man who is standing beside the table where the announcer is seated. He’s a soldier (this promoter is miliary) and he’s enormous. To me, anyone over 5’5” seems “big,” but he’s actually huge, especially for a Thai. He’s near Dieselnoi’s size, maybe 6’1” or 6’2” and close to 200 lbs. He’s been in my corner for many fights and always urges me to wrap my hands immediately, even if I know I have hours before actually getting in the ring. He’s wearing jeans and a plaid shirt (last time I saw him, he was in uniform), but he has this round face that looks like the Cheshire Cat when he becomes the moon. He’s not looking at me, so I gently touch his upper arm to get his attention and he turns around. I smile and wai to him to say hello and his face just erupts in this enormous grin. He reaches his long arm out and wraps it around my shoulder, pulling me into his barrel torso - my face pressed against the edges of the amulets he had under his shirt, “Sin-wee-uh!” he bellows. He’s never hugged me before and it's kind of not a Thai thing, but it vaguely indicates to me that this guy sees me as a little girl. I’m kind of resisting and performing the hug at the same time, but he’s so massive and I just tuck right under his arm; again, it reminds me of being hugged by Dieselnoi, who does hug me quite a lot. “Som dee mai?” (“Have you trained well?”) He’s asking for gambling purposes. Yeah, I tell him, I’ve been training hard. He’s very pleased with this and I wai to the announcer before heading back to my mat. A few vendors who watched this whole thing unfold are twisting their heads as I walk by, getting an eyeful of whatever it is I appear to be to them. I just make eye contact and smile, and every single one smiles back, a few offering thumbs up as well. I’m going to be fighting a well-known local champion who has about 10 lbs on me.

Before my fight there are a series of characters that appear. First, the woman who gave me directions on the street about a half kilometer away stops in front of my mat to wish me luck, then disappears into the festivities. A middle-aged man says something to Kevin before moving a motorbike that was parked next to our mat and Kevin uses this panicked, urgent voice he likes when someone speaks Thai to him, “Sylvie!” he says, “why don’t you answer for me? He’s speaking Thai!” He just said he’s moving the bike and as I look over I see a young woman with a heart-shaped face, smiling at me. I know her, it’s Muangsingjiew, who I’ve fought 4 times over the last 5 years; the man moving the bike is her dad or trainer and they’re moving it so they can lay their mat down next to ours. I enthusiastically say hello to her - I never recognize her in “civilian clothes” but she’s wearing blue Muay Thai shorts and I tell Kevin who she is. His face lights up and in response to that the faces of her whole team kind of light up. They lay their mat down so its edges touch the edges of our mat; that’s a big deal. It means we’re one group; I have no corner, so I ask if Muangsingjiew’s people can be my pee-liang (cornermen) and they say “yes,” as though it was obvious.

As things unfold, after I’ve wrapped my hands and gotten my massage Muangsingjiew’s father tells me to go get my gloves on at the same time she does (her fight is just before mine), so we walk over together. I’m in the red corner, with red shorts on, and she’s in the blue corner for her fight. So we look like we’re matched up, and honestly we might have been and likely will be again. People are looking at us, assessing the match, and a few people come up to take photos with me. I might be the only female western fighter they’ve ever seen in person. We’re in a small town below Khorat. They’re very excited. There’s another female bout taking place in the ring as we’re getting our gloves laced up and I stand watching for a minute. The girls are young, maybe 12 years old, and they start clinching from the opening bell. There are gamblers perched atop step ladders, maybe 4 feet tall, and some of them stand up on top of them to signal their bets to a bookie across the ring. There’s a lot of shouting and the announcer is yelling into the microphone for every point. It’s only the first round.

I head back to my mat to wait and warm up a bit. I’m standing, Kevin is lying on the mat with Jaidee kind of spooned into his belly. An old woman, probably 70 years old if she’s a day, appears in front of me. She can’t weigh more than 80 lbs and she’s wearing a traditional wrap skirt and a linen, sleeveless top. Her hair is white and cropped short around her ears, her face is wrinkled and her grin reveals a full mouth of red-black teeth from decades of Bettlenut chewing. This is the most stereotypical Isaan granny I’ve ever seen. She’s bent at the waist with a deep hunch in her back from decades of whatever work she did, in the field or crouched over laundry. If she could stand upright she might be my height - maybe - but with her hunch she’s only up to my shoulder. She’s grinning at me and talking, but I can’t fully understand her. Part of it is that she’s speaking a Lao dialect, but many of the words are the same. Just a few important ones are different and I can’t quite keep up. But she’s pointing to my ice bucket. I offer her a bottle of water, unopened, that I had on the mat and she’s happy with that. She tells me I’m going to win, then sits herself down on the edge of our mat, while I sit on the edge of a little wall that encloses the roots of a tree. She’s babbling delightfully about how I’ll win for sure, her black-red grin never even moving as she forms words. I have my gloves on, so I have to ask Kevin to help her open her water, as her old hands have no chance at the little plastic wrapping around the cap. She’s so sweet and happy, but very witchy at the same time. She definitely can cackle. And she keeps talking to Kevin, even after we both tell her he doesn’t speak Thai. She doesn’t care; she’s got things she wants to say, it’s not her problem if he doesn’t understand her. It was a bit odd to see her alone; usually a woman this old would be with her family - I mean, how did she even get here? - but she seemed at once disconnected from the crowd and still absolutely integrated into the possibilities of the atmosphere. 

A group of three men came over to me and very urgently asked me if there was a side bet on my fight. There is, I told them, but I don’t know how much and it’s not up to me. They asked me where my trainer was and craned their necks to examine the crowd. I told them he was over by the ring. One of them, in a bucket fishing hat and army jacket, asked me a million questions to assess my abilities. Not things like, “how many fights do you have?” but really important things like, “how long have you been in Thailand?” There’s a distinction there that is actually really important and demonstrates his finesse as a gambler. The group was very annoyed that I didn’t know where my “trainer” was, who really is this enormous military guy in charge of my side bet, and not my trainer, but why split hairs. Even though Muangsingjiew’s gym was going to corner for me, the military guy made it clear he was going to do the business with my mongkol, which is reserved for the high ranking folks (generally) and is a chance for him to be seen with me on the ring, indicating that I’m his monster by association. It’s weird. They’ll have kids do it, or they might have the governor of the town do it… totally depends. Finally, the military guy comes back to check on me and tell me I have to go sit on the VIP stage to be “on deck” during the fight before mine. This group of three gamblers get all excited when I point to him and say this is the guy. They talk to him urgently, wanting to put a few thousand Baht down on my side bet but the head honcho just waves his hands and shakes his head, like “no, no, no,” because he doesn’t want to split his potential winnings. It’s actually a wonderful display of his belief in me and the three men are super disappointed by this outcome. The little old witchy lady is still babbling that I’ll win for sure and she’s grinning at me as I stand up to head over to the ring. Jesus; I love festival fights so much. 

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• Patron Only Articles - These articles are written specially for my patrons and are my attempts to expand as a writer. They are full of richer descriptions, and take on themes not always talked about in the experience of being a fighter. At least one is published a month, if not two.

 Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 

A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 

Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here 

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