A Portrait of a Legend

Thought i write a piece about one of my best friends SKYLAB.

Lets start with his name,even that has a story,the same week as he was born the first international Spacelab ,that was in orbit around earth,crashed down in the gulf of thailand,so his parents ended up naming him after the Spacelab wich was called SKYLAB.

He is born in a small village in the norteast of thailand,and started with Muay Thai when he was just a boy to help his family with money,I once asked him how old he was when he had his first fight,he dont remember the age ,only that he was 28kg!!!After some time he and his 2 brothers starting make a name for themselves in the Muay Thai scene,their fightingname beeing Chuknalai,at this time skylab used to change his name to get easy fights in small fighting venues,and when he fought he put his shorts on inside and out,because he had his real name on the shorts,but one time he forgot,and when they were gonna start fighting,his opponent glanced down at the shorts,and then turned around and climbed out of the ring:)

But at the age of 18 and over 150+ fights he stopped fighting,and he became head of his village and shortly over 2 nearby villages to.For those of u that dont understand what that means lets just start explaining about the life in the countryside of norteast thailand,its very tough,a life isnt worth as much as back home,and there is still killings between the villages,mostly over land disputes,and the head of ones village is like a godfather,sure the police comes if someone has been killed,but its the family of the involved that has to set the record straight,it always come down to money.

EXAMPLES:

ok,here is some stuff i experienced from my time up there.

1.Bad boy Ded boy

There was a young teen that got caught stealing motorbikes,he went to prison and once he was out,he got caught again,for the same thing,he got back in jail,and once out,the cops went to his home and found once again stolen bikes,they shoot him right there,in his home,there was some people that wanted the cops to go to prison,but the whole village voted about it and the cops went free....

2.Cash is King

a young boy in my village shot another young teen in the head,and their families had a big meeting the day after and the only subject was money,it ended up with that the family of the murdurer,had to pay the ded teens dad 150 000b(30 tusen kr) and 50 000b for the police,and one week later the dad of the ded teen drove in our camp,with the new car he bought,and he was actually smiling and showing of his new ride...sick

So the content of this is that the people are tough,and mostpart of the top Thaiboxers come from this poor part of thailand.

Ok,here is another story for u,Sometimes they have molam parties in thailand,and its just crazy,let me explain,take a ricefield,build a stage,book some bad perfomers,and invite all the nearby villages and u got a molam party,I`ve been to several and the record is 58 minutes...,thats how long it took before they started fighting,and i dont mean rallarsvingar and stuff,these guys got axes,knifes u name it..its really scary,im pretty sure some of the guys i`ve seen afterwards didnt make it,but now back to the story(skylabs sister told me this story at a party,they think its a real funny story)

ok,molam party,and one guy wants to fight with skylab and take over as head of one village,and they start. Skylabs weapon of choice is a machete,his opponents prefer an axe,not long into the fight skylabs slashes his opponent with a bad cut on his head,and he backs of,but at the next molam party,some guys come to skylab and says that the guy want a "rematch" and here is the funny part,when he walks up on skylab,he is wearing a big motorbike helmet,this was the end of the funny storie,and everybody was laughing,and i asked skylab what happend in the fight,and he said:aha,that funny to,because he had helmet but i cut him in the stomach!!i asked if he died,and the answer was maybe.

Wow this turned out to be a long post,and i havnt got far in my portrait of my friend,but maybe i will post a part 2 if soméone is intrested to know more.

time for bed i guess

henke