We arrived at the bull fights covered in sweat, dust and a major sunburn. It was I who lead us astray. I took a wrong turn and half an hour later, we were in another village, having missed the cattle sale and bull fighting ring entirely. The fights went all day, so we didn's miss much by being late.Actually, the cattle yard was only about a ten minute bike ride from my house. It was a pleasant ride in the bright sunshine through the rice feilds and beside the lotus ponds with their pink flowers reaching up against the blue sky. It's rainy season so most days are gray and the sunshine seems all the more brilliant and beautiful when the clouds lift.
I was wearing Burmese slippers, the flimiest kind of flip flop ever made and not the most appropriate footwear for picking one's way through the mud and cow paddies.
The spectators arena is divided into two sections: the big wigs and the rabble. There is no discernable difference between them. They both have equal sections of seats and shade. The big wigs pay 250baht for their ticket, however, and the rabble only pay 150. We didn't pay anything, because, being completely oblivious to everything but avoiding cow paddies on the ground, we wandered into the big wig section without even realizing that one needed to pay money to see big animals get bloody.
Having grown up in a culture so saturated with animal rights and trying so hard to remove itself from any sense of real savagry, the fights hold a kind of fascination for me. I watched the big beasts circling each other, wondering what drives them? What goes on in their thoughts and bodies to make them sniff the mud instead of charge, or lock horns until their eyes are almost gouged out? Why do they sometimes turn and run and why do they sometimes fight for hours in the sun?
Like Thai boxing or watching the cock fights, by far the most entertaining element of the day are the spectators. To begin with, all the dust and heat and cows make it feel like the Calgary Stampede or a local small town Alberta rodeo. Men wandered around in jeans, checkered shirts and big cowboy hats. Women were a minority in attendance, making up for perhaps 5% of the spectators and crowded together in a corner of the stands. They were, however, one of the loudest contingents when the fighting got tough.
The screaming, rafter-shaking passion was riviting to watch, but more interesting was the large amount of money changing hands after each fight. When one of the bulls admitted defeat, the bull handlers in the ring would turn cartwheels and dance in joy in the mud, then parade the winning bull towards the judges stand to be wreathed with bright flowers and baggies full of thousand baht notes. Those bulls made more moeny in ten minutes than I do in ten months. And they aren't the only ones. In the crowd, people are cartweeling and crying as they whip out their wallets and peel off the notes, laughing and cursing and screaming in frustration. In the fight in the picture, I put my money on the brown bull who I dubbed "Mean Boy" and my neighbour put his on the black and white bull, "Pretty Boy." After the fight, I was down one beer, I'm afraid. I'll stick to making my money in a refugee camp and leave the bull betting to the pros.
