This is my muay thai coach Rit, holding a picture of himself on the cover of a Thai kickboxing magazine. After his boxing career came to an end he worked as a cop for 10 years, then retired to teach muay thai from his ratty house on the outskirts of Mae Sot, where he lives with a shifting menagerie of cats, dogs, birds, fighters, and miscellaneous relatives.
Once we asked Rit if he had kids, and in reply he pointed to his preternaturally placid retriever, which is always wandering goofily through whatever ultra-violence is going on in the ring. Rit has trained the dog to shake hands when he saws 'Sawadhee krap' to it, and also to block kicks.
There's a major language barrier at the gym. Rit speaks almost no English, and I've made no effort to learn Thai, given that everybody at my work speaks Burmese exclusively. My Thai is very utilitarian, extending only as far as the words for 'five', 'ten'. 'knee', 'water', 'slowly' and 'push-up'. So I don't know anything about the little boy above, except that he's Karenni, he lives at the house, and Rit is training him to be a fighter. His parents are presumably in a refugee camp, in Burma, or dead. He trains every day, grunting ferociously as he hits the bags. Here he gives one of Rit's many relatives a massage:
This 15-year-old kid is the most terrifying of Rit's students:
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