Despite the kids never having been in the ring, not knowing how to do the wai khru or even enter the ring properly the kids loved it. Whattanaya handed them their purses (without deductions) and “they were like, what is this? We get paid to fight? It was brilliant! They were all back at training the next day.”
For most of the kids at the camp the story is all the same. They are children of poor local farmers who might have a small plot of land and a few cows or parents who went off to work in Bangkok. Money isn’t made in Isaan it is shifted around. Thailand rice farmers are the lowest paid in South East Asia and falling deeper and deeper into debt. A lot of the” villagers just go day to day, catching fish, eating them for dinner. They more so shift money around as opposed to actually making money. So you sell a cow to pay off a debt to take out a different debt.” While the parents are able to sometimes help the children the kids are mainly left to fend for themselves.