Kornography

In today’s increasingly globalized—and thus shrinking—world, I am always excited to be exposed to things that I not only haven’t seen/tasted/done before, but things that I never even knew existed. With some things—food, or card games for example—there are seemingly infinite variations, so it is therefore to be expected that one will encounter something of which one was previously 100% ignorant—e.g. Burmese fermented tea leaf salad, or “say eight, say nine”, a Thai variation of Baccarat—but there are other categories, which for whatever reason are more finite, and it is the moment of discovery of something totally new within these, that I truly relish (I remember rushing to Wikipedia half way through the Olympic opening ceremonies when a single proud athlete marched under the flag of Nauru). That is why my discovery of takraw, a sport completely novel to my consciousness, was such a big deal.

Within a few days of coming to Thailand—and my mom and brother can attest to how easy it is to find people playing it, if one knows where to look—I first saw people playing takraw, and since then everything I have learned about it has contributed to my first impression of the sport: that it is awesome. The pureness of my almost instant love of this sport has been tempered only by the occasional displaced anger of only just having learned of its existence.

The easiest way to explain sport is to compare it to others (e.g. lacrosse is sort of like hockey in the air with a ball instead of a puck), so takraw takes two distinct forms, joined together under a single name, by virtue of using the same ball—similar in size to a softball, but made out of extremely hard woven rattan—and both resembling the “juggling” done by soccer players on the sidelines or hacky-sacking done by stoners in front of suburban convenience stores.

The first version combines this juggling/hacky-sacking with basketball. Two goals, each with three nets—that look uncannily like lobster traps—are hoisted 20 feet into the air, and a team forms a loose circle underneath each one, keeping the ball aloft with their shoulders, elbows, heads and either the instep or sole of their feet, all the while trying to sink their ball in their goal. Different points are awarded depending on which part of the body the goal was made with, and the team with the most points at the end of the allotted time, usually 45 minutes, is the winner. The result is a coordinated, methodical game, wherein team members work together, and there is no direct interaction between the two teams.

The second version is a combination of juggling/hacky-sacking with volleyball, and is basically volleyball (with a really hard ball) where you cannot use your hands. The rules are very similar to volleyball, where each point begins with a serve—where a teammate standing by the net lobs a ball to his teammate standing in a circle about 15 feet from the net who kicks it over the net—which is followed by three touches to a side, and each possession usually ends with a spike. Because one cannot use one’s hands, a spike consists of a leaping kick where the player ends up with his foot above the 5 foot net, striking the ball downwards into his opponent’s side of the court.

Needless to say, it is the latter that is more infused with takraw’s inherent awesomeness.

I have been asking around among friends of friends for someone to teach me takraw, but most people I meet say that they can play, but generally don’t. It was in a tiny village way up near the border with Shan State that I discovered my teacher had been right in front of my eyes. I found out that one of the interns I work with almost every day, is an avid takraw player. When our workshop at a small village school finished, we went out under the searing afternoon sun to the dusty field in front of the flag pole, and played barefoot until the tops and insteps of our feet were glowing red through the layers of sweat and caked dirt. At this point, while we sat gulping water and rubbing our feet, one of the soldiers who runs the school—the school is located in an area frequently plagued by violence as a result of the simmering Thai/Shan/Burmese conflict, and thus run by the Thai military—walked by, on his way to the local takraw court. He was wearing the unofficial uniform of takraw players—a shirt with padded shoulders, Chuck Taylor-style shoes, and a headband—designed to counteract the extreme hardness of the ball. The soldier-teacher invited us to come with him, and we dutifully followed along. The court was described, as “just over there” with a casual wave of his hand, but indeed the trip involved fording a small river—which did wonders for our burning feet—and tactfully circumventing a group of local women doing their laundry and bathing in the river, to bursts of pseudo-embarrassed giggles, and hushed words peppered liberally with “farang”.

At the court, the game was already in full swing, and these guys were good. Every possession ended in an acrobatic flip-spike, most of which were met with blocks—a la volleyball—from the other side. So, every thirty seconds or so, two, and sometimes three, men were leaping, flipping upside down, and sweeping their feet mere inches from one another.

That is, except when some of them used their heads instead.

Two separate times, as a misplaced “set” came down right above the net, two men (one from each team) headed the ball at the same time, giving the impression that extending above the net was a giant mirror, and, as their heads coiled backwards, that the mirror was fastened to a very sturdy wall, leaving both men on sitting on the concrete, rubbing their foreheads. As a result, I dutifully added takraw to the growing list of things in Thailand whose existence is paired with constant wonderment at the miracle that hundreds, if not thousands of people kill themselves every year doing them.

When the game finished, a new team came on to play the winners, and was short a man. They looked in our direction, and the intern from work turned to our other coworker (the only one of the three of us wearing shoes) and quickly uttered “give me your shoes”. The Chinese rip-off shell-toed Adidas were a solid 3 sizes to big for his tiny Thai feet, and without saying a word, he passed them on to me. For whatever cosmological reason, they were exactly my size, and with that, I was playing takraw.

I’d like to say my first foray into the world of takraw was a shining accomplishment of grace and athletic ability, and that I triumphantly spiked the ball with such a forceful flip that it buried a few inches into the concrete, and was left there to fuel both the legends of the children of the village about the white boy who came from far away, and the late night drunken arguments among my teammates about who set up that fateful spike. As it was, I was happy that I could hold my own, and that I didn’t make my teammates curse the fact that my friend has small feet. Although there were no flips from me, I did set up quite a few, and even had a digger that elicited a murmur of approval from the rest of the people on the court. More important than how I faired, was that I got my first taste of takraw, and I knew that I wanted more.

I have resolved to learn to play it well, and my intern friend has already started teaching me the finer points of the spike, although the fact that he can do a standing back flip is less than encouraging while he explains that spikes are easy and anyone can do them. Also, if my friends growing up are anything like a representative sample of the population—with the combination of a love of anything competitive, and a childhood chock full of summer evenings playing town soccer—then I think there is the real possibility of bringing takraw home. I can just imagine years down the line, takraw making its way into the ultimate challenge.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 7:16 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.