UNESCO Courier: May the betting man win… - Thais addiction to gambling

Thai boxing fans are hooked on gambling as much as the niceties of their favourite sport

For the past 20 years, Sialek Chanarak, a 53-year-old shop-owner, has spent nearly every Friday night at Bangkok's Lumpini Stadium, one of Thailand's two top arenas for Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing. "I don't like boxing," Sialek insists as he leafs through a wad of baht, Thailand's currency. "I come to gamble. If there was no gambling here, I would never come." Sialek is not alone. Of the 10,000 people who jam into the ramshackle stadium, nearly all are betting on the battles in the ring. "Only the tourists don't bet," Sialek says, pointing to the ringside seats occupied by Japanese and European visitors. Many of the foreign women are cringing as the boxers pummel each other, digging knees into their opponents groins and launching rapid-fire kicks cracking against skin and bone.

Muay Thai is Thailand's national sport. A martial competition developed from the hand-to-hand combat techniques of ancient Siamese soldiers, it seems similar at first to international boxing. Fighters wear gloves for three-minute rounds held in boxing rings. After that, the similarities end. Kicking, kneeing and elbowing your opponent are all legal, as is pushing and throwing him to the canvas. Then there is the music: a three-piece band comprised of drums, cymbals and the java pipe plays frenetic, ancient Thai battle music to urge the fighters on.

A fatal attraction

Muay Thai has been deemed so integral a part of Thai character that the National Culture Commission oversees its promotion. The Ministry of Education runs a Muay Thai Institute to teach the intricacies of the sport. And the army runs Lumpini Stadium and the World Muay Thai Council, the sport's governing body. But Muay Thai pales in popularity beside another national pastime: gambling. Simply put, Thais love to bet. Police have estimated that billions of baht are wagered by Thais each week on English Premier League Football alone. Underground casinos operate with impunity in Bangkok. And the country's most famous Buddhist monk attracts thousands of devotees who believe that if he whacks them on the head with a rolled up newspaper, they might win the national lottery.

Still, millions of Thai boys and young men have a passion for Muay Thai. Like boxing anywhere, it provides a flickering hope they can fight their way out of poverty. A major match at Lumpini can earn 100,000 baht, or about $2,500, with boxers fighting on average once a month. A purse that size is a fortune to the young farmers and factory hands dreaming of kicking their way out of hardscrabble fields or the squalor of Bangkok's slums. But it's nothing compared to the money changing hands in the stands at Lumpini and other stadiums.

"I've won as much as 800,000 bart (over $20,000) on one fight. But I also once lost a million ($27,000)," says Chatri Kanchanamanoon, the 50-year-old owner of a gold shop. But Chatri's losses are relatively mild compared to that of his best friend. "He bet a huge sum of money and he got too excited," says Chatri. "He was cheering his fighter and suddenly fell on the floor. He had a heart attack and died."

Most bets these days, however, aren't as heart-stoppingly large since the country's economy crashed in July 1997. And the gambling fatalities are not all from natural causes. Chatri says that some gamblers who couldn't pay their debts have been killed.

As the fighters knee and elbow each other, screaming fans stand atop wooden benches or surge against the green chain link fences that separate the different ticket sections. It's in between rounds, though, that the action really heats up. While the boxers catch their breath, the gamblers wave their arms and wiggle their fingers in an intricate system of signals that lets the bookies know how much they want to bet on which fighter at what odds.

There is a slim minority of fans like Paisan Phakdeesunthorn, who abstain from betting. "I like Muay Thai," says the 32-year-old civil servant, adding that he used to fight as a teenager. "I don't have money to waste," he says, on the "bad habit" of betting. Paisan cheers on the boxers, but like so many other fans, he doesn't have a favourite fighter. Paisan seems too wrapped up in the sport to focus solely on the career of a single boxer. Gamblers like Sialek agree. "You can't have a favourite. . . . That would only interfere," he says. "You have to bet with your head, not your heart."

Robert Horn and Thaskina Khaikaew, Journalists in Bangkok, Thailand