The Muay Thai Bee of Pai Valley

Photos by Matthew Yarbrough

When I was younger, in my twenties, sometimes I would fight twice a day.

We would go back to Isaan, find festivals, and bet on ourselves. One time, I got cut from an elbow at a temple festival in Surin, but the fight wasn't stopped and I still won 30,000 baht.

Same day, later that night, I fought another guy. He saw I had been cut and said he wanted to fight, so we bet 50,000 baht, winner take all. I won that one too.

If you ask him about his early Muay Thai career, 41-year-old Roekngam "Bee" Chomthong will tell you, "I started Muay Thai when I was 10 because there was no money."

There's a bit of money now though, which Bee owes to his perseverance with Muay Thai. Thirty years after Bee first began fighting, he now owns a successful business: a gym he named Charn Chai after his grandfather, also a fighter. Located in mountainous northern Thailand, Charn Chai Muay Thai receives a steady stream of hobbyists and professional fighters from around the world. Many of the students come back to Thailand and to Charn Chai, year after year. Why? "Because we're like a family," Bee says.

It's true, Charn Chai is something of a family operation. Bee's wife and children are common sights around the gym. Bee's father, Kak, walks around the grounds with cell phone and coffee cup in hand, talking slang in English with the foreigners, retreating to the outside kitchen to cook large meals for the students twice a day. It's fitting for Bee's father to be there with him. After all, his father was his first trainer, the one who took him to his earliest matches, and the one who taught him about heart.

Like so many of Thailand's Muay Thai fighters, Bee came from a poor family in the country's largely agrarian region of Isaan.

We had to go fishing for extra food. Sometimes there was nothing fresh to eat, so we ate a lot of salted fish and rice. Sometimes we didn't even have salted fish, nothing for me to bring to school for lunch, so when I had lunchtime break from school, I had to walk home and eat rice with fish sauce. That was all we could afford.

At 10-years-old, Bee jumped into the local combat sport, hoping to earn money for himself and his family. For his first fight, he earned 30 baht (just over $1, by historic conversion rates in the mid 1980s).

Of course, the first few fights were experimental, at times even frightening for the young fighter. Early in the young boxer's career, it was Bee's father who had to give him a lesson in what it meant to be a fighter.

It was just my second fight. You just swing and swing at that level; you don't have much technique. I was 10 still and I was scared of the other kid. He was way bigger.

My father was my cornerman. After the first round finished, I went back to the corner and my father slapped me on the face and told me not to be scared. So I went back in and tried to beat the kid and fight. But then Dad slapped me again during the second break. So I got back in to fight, and yes I was still scared of the other kid, but I was even more scared of my dad, so during the third break, I didn't go back to the corner, just stayed in the center of the ring.

Then I thought I was winning. My dad called me to the corner during the last break, between the fourth and fifth rounds, but this time he didn't slap me. He said, "Good! Good!" and gave me water.

Your heart has to be really strong for the fight. If you get a little scared, you're going to lose, it's fifty percent of the battle. If you think like that, if you're scared in your heart, you've already lost fifty percent. So after that I wasn't scared, even of bigger people.

Bee credits that fight, and his father's tough-love coaching, for teaching him about heart. He laughs now when he tells the story, 30 years on.

He dedicated himself to the fighting life after that. Muay Thai became a way for him to contribute to his family, to feel some control and agency in his life, especially in light of difficult circumstances at home.

When I was 10, my brother moved to Bangkok and I missed him so much, I cried everyday alone in secret. Dad was a taxi driver in Bangkok and my real mother was in Khon Kaen. She remarried, had a new family. Her new husband didn't want me so I couldn't stay with her.

My parents broke up because my father found someone else, and Dad's new woman became my stepmother. She was a rice farmer, so we lived in the countryside. I lived alone with her and my younger half-brother. Dad sent money from his job in Bangkok. Sometimes Dad would come home, but only once a year.

I started fighting Muay Thai because I wanted a better life. You can take care of your family if you have money.

On the rare occasions Bee saw his father, Kak, who was usually away in Bangkok driving taxis, the two would train Muay Thai together. Bee would look on excitedly as his father unveiled the new training pads he had bought in Bangkok. "We'll use these after you run," Kak would promise before the two embarked on a warm-up run, Bee on foot, followed by Kak atop a motorbike with switch in hand.

Bee's emerging talent and dedication made an impression on his father. Soon after Bee started fighting, Kak quit the Bangkok taxi-driving business to come home and train his sons full-time, shuttling them to fights around the region.

We fought every week or so. When I was young, I could fight 11 times in one month and never have an injury. My brother and I were making money. We got fight purses from all over the area.

More and more local promoters contacted Bee's father, asking for his sons to fight. Bee was building a reputation.

I fought all over, three times in Buriram, K.O. each time, and then no one there would fight me after that. In Udon Thani it was the same thing, on and on.

At age 14, Bee landed an opportunity to move to Bangkok, Sit Bowan Gym. He arrived with a record of 30-2. When he hit 42kg (about 93 pounds), he was put on cards at Rajadamnern, one of Bangkok's top stadia. Becoming a Bangkok fighter was something he'd been dreaming about since he was a little kid, watching matches through the tracking on TV.

I used to watch my cousin fight on Channel 7 when I was only five or six. He was a good Bangkok fighter, and it was always my dream to be as good as he was. When I watched him on TV, he was in his early twenties. And you know what? When I was in my early twenties, I started fighting on Channel 7 too

By the time he was 21, fighting under the name Mongkoldej Sitthepitak, he was ranked No. 1 at both Lumpinee and Rajadamnern. It doesn't get much better for a fighter than that, but Bee, despite his dominance, was never given a title shot.

I never got that chance because my boss was mafia, and everyone hated him. Never got a title shot even though I beat a lot of the title-holders in non-title fights. The promoters worried that working with me or my boss on a title fight would cause problems.

However disappointing it was to be denied a title shot, Bee found that there were some advantages to lesser fame. His face was relatively famous in Bangkok's rings, but not so much in his home region of Isaan. So he started hustling.

One guy who fought with me in Rajadamnern, I already beat him there before, but when I went back to Isaan he didn't remember me, maybe because I wore dirty clothes and smoked. He picked me to fight with, said he wanted to bet 20,000 baht. I won by K.O. After, he said, "Why did you lie to me? Why didn't you tell me we already fought?" He was really angry. He said, "Now I have to work really hard as a farmer to get back the money."

Sitting at his gym in the picturesque valley of Pai all these years later, Bee doesn't seem too bothered about never being given a chance at a title.

Would my life be much better if I'd gotten those title shots? I don't think so. I'm a teacher now. Some famous fighters, even those with titles, don't make good teachers.

And now, teaching is the priority. It's clear that it comes naturally to him: he's meticulous with his students, cares that they learn proper technique. Bee has put almost as many years into his craft of teaching as he put into fighting: he's on his thirteenth year of instructing, having moved from fighting to coaching when he was 29. For Bee, Muay Thai hasn't been a just blip on his life map, but rather a lifelong career, something he wants to pass on to the next generation. He discusses with pride the budding career of his 16-year-old son, who fights in Bangkok.

Bee's father, who first taught Bee about heart and perseverance, is still a large presence in Bee's life. The two have a relaxed rapport, laughing and joking easily. Bee calls his father the Coffee Man, says he always has a cup of it with him and doesn't consume much else. Kak is visibly proud of his son, and understandably so. This kid he raised up in the countryside, this fighter he taught to have heart, has gone and built himself a life in the mountainous northern Thailand, half the country away but still connected to his roots in the flat farming fields to the east.