Jim Algie

by Bizarre Thailand Tales of Crime, Sex,and Black Magic

  There was something very primeval going on here that reminded me of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, which provided the framework for the film starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The satirical depiction of a man so bored of being an office lackey—and stressing out over the purchase of a new living room set—that his only safety valve and sense of satisfaction comes through physical violence, may put a more human face on the perennial appeal of blood sports and martial arts.

  But is it cruel?

  Precha, the businessman with degrees in philosophy and computer science, paused for a long time and looked down at the dirt. Many of the people posting messages on his website have levelled this accusation at him. “I don’t consider it cruel, but I consider using cheap labour, breeding pigs and selling drugs very cruel... that’s the way of this fish. People breed pigs to eat. So you have to kill them. We breed fish to fight, so they have to fight. And why do you Western people not think boxing or wrestling is very cruel?”

  Asked the same question, Sandit, the province’s biggest breeder, shrugged it off.

  “Some people are cruel and some aren’t.”

  And other people just like reading and writing stories about cruelty, so we can close the book and leave it between the lines and the covers.

  The Water Buffalo’s Tombstone

  In Thailand, buffalo may bear the brunt of jokes and insults about their stupidity, but some people are convinced that they’re far more useful than some human beings. One such person is the abbot of Bangkok’s ‘Buffalo Head Temple’ (Wat Hua Krabeu), located on the outskirts of Bangkok near Samut Sakhon province, the only district of the city with an ocean-view and a beard of mangrove forest.

  “Buffaloes help us in the rice fields and their manure is good for the soil. Even when they die, their skins and horns are still useful. But bad people contribute nothing to society,” said the elderly Phra Khru Wiboon Pattanakit at his temple on Bangkhuntien-Chai Taley Road. “Why do people call buffaloes stupid? Bad people are much worse.”

  The temple’s abbot is planning on building a pagoda out of buffalo skulls as an epitaph for this dying breed.

  As a tribute to these once ubiquitous beasts of burden, who served as steeds for Siamese soldiers to ride into battle, the abbot is building an eight-metre-high pagoda of buffalo skulls with a tunnel at its base so that cars can drive through it. So far, the 260-year-old temple has collected about 8,000 skulls, but they need 10,000 to construct the pagoda and tunnel. Many of the skulls were donated by villagers in the surrounding district of Buffalo Head. They are scattered around and piled up in front of one of the main halls of worship.

  The memorial could very well serve as an epitaph for what is already a dying breed in Thailand. According to the government’s Livestock Department, the buffalo population has plummeted from around 6.7 million heads in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2008, as farmers rely increasingly on the gas-powered ploughs introduced to Thailand in the 1960s. Sharpening the horns of this dilemma is the fact that around 300,000 animals are butchered in the name of protein every year, while only 200,000 calves are born. Most of the beasts that end up in the slaughterhouse are females, an unhealthy number of them pregnant. What has further reduced the population is the fact that the males, favoured for their brawn, are castrated to make them even brawnier.

  A few projects have bulked up the thinning herds. His Majesty the King established a seminal ‘Oxen and Buffalo Bank’ which loans draft animals to villagers, who have to give back some of the offspring after the females give birth. In the northeast, several monks have started similar initiatives.

  In tourism, the most prominent festival keeping the animal off its last legs is the annual Buffalo Races, held every October in front of City Hall in Chon Buri province. Using a bamboo switch for a riding crop, the jockeys ride their charges bareback down a 100-metre-long course. In every heat, five or six of them compete for a grand prize of around 20,000 baht.

  Or at least that’s the premise. But some of the beasts are content to mill around the starting line. Most of the races have a minimum of three or four false starts. And a fair number of the bovines buck their riders off only a few metres down the track. Once they get running, however, the buffalo charge down the track with a velocity that could be measured in double-digit horsepower, and watching the riders dismount near the finishing line with breakneck leaps from their backs is an act of dare-devilry. To keep the crowds on their toes, now and then a buffalo runs amok, charging into the crowd so people scatter like pool balls after a break.

  The competition is more than 130 years old. When it was first held, Chon Buri was the biggest market place on the eastern seaboard. After ‘Buddhist Lent’, when the farmers came to town, the races first began as an informal joke, spurred by booze and macho bravado. In the decades to come, more events were added to race day: a beauty contest for the beasts—their fur dyed with different colours and horns bedecked with flowers, and a ‘Miss Farmer’ beauty pageant for young women. Now, it’s a full-fledged spectacle attended by thousands of locals and a few hundred tourists.

  Running a distant second in the bovine tourism sweepstakes is the Buffalo Villages near the capital of Suphan Buri province, a few hours north of Bangkok. During the bus trip there, Anchana and I scanned the ride paddies and farmyards but didn’t spot a single buffalo.

  The village itself is a déjà vu of Siam’s bygone days—minus the squalor and the machetes that villagers used to keep beside their sleeping mats—with wooden houses on stilts, carefully coiffed gardens, a fortune teller’s abode and a Siamese merchant’s place of business. The signs and brochures impart history lessons in animal husbandry; archaeologists have unearthed evidence that farmers used the domesticated breed of water buffalo in the area some 1,300 years ago.

  The twice-daily ‘Buffalo Shows’ take place in a dirt arena with a grandstand overhung by a thatched roof. On a weekday afternoon in the soggy season, I was the only Caucasian in a ‘crowd’ of seven or eight people, mostly older women. The first buffalos were led into the arena, ambled up a wooden stairway, and then, in a death-defying feat, continued ambling along a wooden beam through a couple of hoops nailed to the platform.

  Another man, wearing the blue cotton outfit favoured by rural folks, led a brown beast by a rope through its nostrils. After much coaxing and pushing down on its neck, the animal knelt on its forelegs to the astonishment of absolutely no one.

  For what was supposed to be the showstopper, a young boy laid down on the dirt and a bovine performer, lured by a handler with a fistful of bananas, walked up, ate a few of them, nosed around in the dirt, flogged some flies with its tail, ate a few more bananas and then… defecated. But wait, the show wasn’t over yet. The buffalo then wiggled its ears, looked around and, following the bananas in the trainer’s hand, walked over the boy without actually crushing him to death.

  The choreographers of the show have their hearts in the right place, but not their minds, because these animals are never going to replace dancing bears and leaping tigers in circuses. Unlike elephants, they can’t be taught to play football and wiggle their rumps and flap their ears to the tune of the ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ like they do at other tourist distractions in Thailand. Unless buffalo are pulling a plough, or served on a plate, they are sadly and tragically useless. To think that any tourism spectacles (even the Buffalo Races) are ever going to save herds of them from the abattoir is futile.

  My disappointment with the show was diminished somewhat by getting to feed them out of my hand afterwards and laughing when they licked me with their sandpapery tongues. Not even fawns have such large, liquid eyes. When one of the male staff members helped to prop me up on the back of a beautiful albino female for a ride, I was leery of getting bucked off, but buffalo lack the skittish temperament that marks all equines as ‘dark horses’.

  On occasion, the creatures have unwittingly saved lives. Shortly before the 2004 tsunami struck the coast of Ranong province, the local press reported how a group of
buffaloes stampeded for higher ground. The villagers followed them and managed to outrace the water.

  At the Buffalo Villages, after feeding time, an old rice farmer with a conical hat and plaid shirt took Anchana and I for a bumpy ride in a buffalo cart. As he urged his two animals onwards with a bamboo switch, we bantered about the 2001 historical drama Bang Rajan, starring the most famous Thai buffalo of them all, Boon-lert, who acted as the ‘warhorse’ for the film’s hero. The historical settlement of Bang Rajan is not far from here in Sing Buri province. Outside the town is a monument to the battle and slain heroes.

  Set in the 18th century, Bang Rajan is based on a real-life story of heroism, in which a rag-tag group of Siamese villagers, fighting with homemade weapons, staved off eight different attacks by a total of 100,000 Burmese soldiers before finally going down in defeat. The film garnered some impressive plaudits when it was released in the United States in 2004 and presented by Oliver Stone. One American critic called it ‘the Saving Private Ryan of ancient Thailand’. Another compared the climactic battle scene to Colonel Custer’s last stand at the Alamo.

  At the age of 32, Boon-lert died only a few months after Bang Rajan was released. One of the film’s leading men, Bin Banluerit, paid credit to his co-star, saying that his incredible three-metre horns and huge presence helped to make the movie a blockbuster in Thailand. The actor arranged a funeral for the buffalo, during which crowds of mourners came to see the corpse held upright with a rope and draped in white cloth. As an elegy, Bin arranged for a troupe of Thai classical musicians and dancers to perform in front of the corpse. After the cremation, rock star and energy-drink pimp Ad Carabao (his surname is the Filipino word for buffalo) offered to buy the beast’s horns, but was shooed away.

  Bumping along in the cart, the old rice farmer told us that he remembered ceremonies called phi tee su kwan that paid tribute to living buffaloes when he was a boy, but that hardly anyone performs them nowadays. After the farmers had reaped another rice harvest, they would wash and comb the fur of their draught animals, attach flowers to the horns of the females, and put out special food for all of them.

  In a voice as craggy as his face, the farmer and Anchana did a duet of an old Thai country lament called ‘Tui Ja’ about a young girl who loses her buffalo during a flood; and then a verse from another old song that translates as ‘The rice liquor and buffalo are my only friends’. Never content to play ‘the hind legs of the elephant’ (as the Thai expression about a woman’s place in society goes), Anchana sang twice as loud as he did, their voices ringing and clattering together like a beggar sifting through garbage for cans and bottles.

  A monk holds up a skull at the Buffalo Head Temple.

  The farmer claimed that Boon-lert was actually a wild water buffalo. These animals are much bigger than the domesticated breed and have the largest horns of any bovine. While wild water buffalos were once found all over India, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia, conservationists speculate that there may now only be 4,000 of them left in the wild. Around 40 to 50 are believed to remain in the Huay Ka Keng Wildlife Sanctuary in Uthai Thani province near the Burmese border. Mostly placid, they use their horns, which can span up to four metres and are shaped like a sickle, as shields or battering rams when attacked by tigers; their only enemy other than humans.

  Within a few years, the wild water buffalo will be extinct. Their domesticated cousins probably have another few decades before they die out too, or so Phra Khru Wiboon Pattanakit, the old abbot, believes. “This area used to be full of them,” he said, before pointing towards the jumble of skulls in front of Buffalo Head Temple. “Now these are the only ones left.”

  The pagoda of horned skulls he is planning to erect in their honour may end up as a kind of tombstone for the dying steed, as well as all the rituals, songs and history yoked to these gentle creatures.

  When the US cavalry rode out to exterminate the American bison (a related species) in the 19th century, they knew that not only would this deprive the Native Americans of their most important source of food and shelter, it would also tear out the very marrow of their animistic creed and culture.

  In this spirit, the abbot’s memorial-in-progress is similar to the altars of buffalo bones built by Native American hunters who bowed before them and intoned this prayer:

  “Let us honour those who gave their flesh to keep us alive.”

  Reptilian Ménage à Trois:

  COBRA VILLAGE

  Outside of Thailand’s national parks, only in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen are you likely to see road signs that read, ‘Warning: King Cobra Crossing’. It’s a sure sign that you’re on the right track to see the ‘Cobra Village’, where most of the villagers breed and raise snakes for a living. At Ban Kok Sa-nga, they also put on daily shows of derring-do where snake-handlers wrestle with king cobras up to five-metres long.

  The majority of the 700 villagers raise snakes, and some even keep them as pets, said Sirisak Noi Lek, the president of the village’s Cobra Conservation Club. “The tradition started back in the 1950s when a man named Ken Yongla from this village began travelling around the countryside selling herbal medicines. To attract more people, he started doing regular shows with cobras, but these snakes were too dangerous because they can spit venom for several metres. So he used king cobras instead. They’re still dangerous, but the venom is delivered through their fangs. Ken trained many of the locals to do the performances and how to raise snakes.”

  The chiming of cow bells heralded the arrival of a shepherd directing her charges down the dirt road as Sirisak led us to the back of his house. Curled up in a wooden box was a python as thick as a fire-hose. The locals catch them in their gloved hands when the snakes are sleeping during the day. Every few days, Sirisak feeds the python smaller snakes or a frog. Some of the serpents have their gall bladders removed for Chinese potions—even mixed with whiskey for an aphrodisiac. Others are cast as performers in shows that pit man against serpent.

  Far from the sinister figure in the Garden of Eden that encourages Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge (thereby bringing about the downfall of humankind), the seven-headed ‘Lord of the Serpents’ (Phaya Nak) opened his hoods to protect the Buddha from the elements as he attained enlightenment while meditating under the sacred ficus tree. For many Thais, Phaya Nak, whose long body forms the balustrades of many Buddhist temples, is a figure of reverence.

  So it’s not a revelation that the monks incubated a special laboratory to breed king cobras in the Buddhist temple near the zoo and the venue for performances. On this afternoon, sitting in the bleachers surrounding the stage, was a group of Buddhist monks draped with orange robes, among a smattering of Thais and tourists. Behind the stage was a gigantic billboard for Pepsi, framed by photos of the King and Queen of Thailand.

  To the tape-recorded tune of hand-pummeled drums, the clink, clink, clink of finger cymbals, and an Indian oboe playing melodies serpentine enough to charm a cobra—the same traditional tunes played live during muay thai boxing matches—three dancers took centre-stage. Dressed in pink sarongs, each of the young ladies wore live garlands of sinuous pythons, jaws wired shut with string. Shooting off flashbulb smiles, and moving as gently as palm fronds in a breeze, the dancers’ slow-motion body language spoke volumes about the tranquility of traditional Thai culture, and its nature-borne birthright.

  At the back of the stage, a snake-handler used a long metal pole with a hook to pull a writhing king cobra out of a box. Black with silver bands, the three-metre-long serpent slithered towards the front of the stage. In the crowd, spines straightened and a hush descended. The venom of a single king cobra bite is enough to kill a man—or a hundred rodents—unless treated immediately. Many of the snake-wrestlers take herbal concoctions daily to lessen the possibility of fatalities. Just in case, a local medic equipped with anti-venom attends every show.

  On his knees, the snake-handler crawled towards the king cobra. The snake reared up into the s
triking position, its forked tongue flicking the air. (Snakes use their tongues for sniffing out their quarry and their enemies.) Quick as a whip, the king cobra lunged at him. The snake-handler dodged the attack. Distracting the snake with one hand held in the air, he crawled beside it, lowered his head and kissed the cobra on its head.

  TORTOISE TOWN

  In Asia, few creatures are mythologised like the turtle, partly because of its longevity, and the symbolism of its shell in the Chinese vision of the earth and the cosmos. Turtle soup is enjoyed by many East Asians as an anti-ageing tonic and delicacy, but it’s usually the soft-shelled kind, because the hard-shelled variety have too much spiritual significance.

  In Vietnam, the mascot for its many wars of independence is a turtle that still lurks in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake. To this day, Vietnamese schoolchildren learn the 15th-century legend of a rebel soldier named Le Loi whose troops repelled Chinese invaders. After he became the emperor of a dynasty named after him, Le Loi was boating on the lake when a turtle snatched his sword and dove beneath the waves to protect the weapon for future battles.

  Nowadays, there is only one turtle left in the lake, weighing around 200 kilos. The so-called ‘Turtle Professor’, Professor Ha Dinh Duck of Hanoi University, is the foremost expert on the reptile. He claimed the turtle has surfaced some 400 times since the early 1990s, often coinciding with state visits by Chinese presidents and even the unveiling of a Le Loi statue. “It’s something we can’t explain,” the academic told AFP, adding that every appearance of the creature has caused an upsurge in crowds.

  The government spent US$2.4 million to clean up the polluted, algae-plagued ‘Lake of the Returned Sword’ for Hanoi’s 1,000th anniversary celebrations in 2010.