Thailand is remarkable in this. If there were an Olympic event called playfulness, Thailand would win gold, silver and bronze every time. And it’s not just the children. Is it possible for a day to pass without seeing young men hunkered down on a city sidewalk playing a variation of checkers with bottle caps, or kicking a woven rattan ball called a takraw around during a work break that others elsewhere would use to smoke cigarettes? It is as if the Thai sense of play were genetic.
Father Joe, a kind of, well, father figure to more than four thousand Bangkok school children, believes it is in the playgrounds—and truck parking lots—where much of this creative frittering away of leisure time begins. So where better to look for evidence than on Father Joe’s turf in Klong Toey, one of Asia’s largest and bleakest slums.
Here you can see a game played in many countries, the contest using a fist, an open hand, and two moving fingers to signify stone, paper, and scissors. Two children throw hand signs at each other simultaneously—a fist representing a rock, a flat hand paper, the first two fingers extended and opening and closing like scissors. If both throw the same sign, they try again until they are different. The rule is: stone breaks scissors, but scissors cut paper, and paper covers stone. It is the child’s way of deciding who goes first, of tossing a coin when there are no coins.
The form of many games played in Thailand is defined by such economy. When a child’s pockets are empty of cash, he or she doesn’t pitch one baht coins, instead rubber bands are placed on a flat surface and blown with the breath to move them toward a designated line or wall. Thus a game is improvised with something found without cost wherever rubber bands are used to tie off bags of food sold on the street.
In another game, coconut shells are cut in half with a hole drilled in the middle. A piece of string connects the shells together with knots inside each one. Players stand on the shells holding the string with their toes and hands as they move toward a finish line. If your feet touch the ground, you’re disqualified and the first two to cross the line race again.
Sticks and stones play a leading role in traditional games. In another race, wooden stakes are driven into the ground an agreed distance apart (usually eight to ten meters) and players form two teams, lining up behind the two stakes. A smaller stick, or baton, is given to each team and when a signal is given, the first player of each team runs around the opposite stake, returning to his team and passing it to the next in line.
In another, players place a small rock on the back of the hand, toss it into the air, then catch it, then do the same with two, catching each rock separately as they fall. Then three, then four, then five if they can, until the players are unable to catch all of the stones before one hits the ground. Miss one and you are out of the game. This continues until a single player remains.
Still other games involve no more effort than drawing a line in the dirt. To play one, it must be a sunny day when a circle is drawn on the ground large enough to hold all the players. One child is selected to be the “giant” and he or she chases the others, trying to step on their shadows. When the giant treads on someone’s shadow, that player becomes the new giant and play resumes until everyone decides to play a different game. As is the case in many traditional Thai games, there are no losers and winners. The play is for the sake of play.
In a second game in the same category, players of one team sit on the floor or ground in pairs, back to back and feet to feet, making a circle. Players from a second team try to jump over the first team’s legs and into the circle, while the sitters kick up their feet to try to touch the jumpers. If one of the jumpers is successful, his team wins and the two teams change places.
Sadly, such games are not played as widely as once they were, replaced by computer games in the home, video parlors in shopping malls, and other amusements involving expensive equipment. Today, many Thai children race on roller blades, or compete with a machine instead of another child.
It is in the countryside and among the urban poor where sanuk in play remains affordable.
The King Swings
When the original King of Swing, Benny Goodman, jammed with the King of Thailand in 1960 in New York and was asked to assess the monarch’s talent as a saxophone player, he said His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej apparently already had a career worth hanging on to, but added, “If he needed a job, I’d hire him as a member of my band.”
Similarly, the great jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton once said, “He is simply the coolest king in the land.” So it is no surprise that to mark his fiftieth year on the throne, a number of the world’s finest musicians traveled to Thailand to pay tribute by performing His Majesty’s musical compositions. In 1996, Bangkok hosted concerts by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Thelonius Monk Jr. and Benny Carter, saluting what the Guinness Book of Records called “The Longest Reigning Monarch in the World.” In addition, two compact discs were released featuring Hucky Eichelmann, a German-born classical guitarist who emigrated to Thailand in 1979, and the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.
It was at age ten when the future monarch started playing the clarinet on an instrument that was purchased—according to his official history—with savings from his allowance, earned while attending school in Switzerland. At that time, his brother, older by only two years, was king, also living in Switzerland and ruling in absentia.
The young future ruler was formally trained in classical music and on his own played along with gramaphone records imported mainly from the United States. Soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, one of the Dixieland pioneers from New Orleans, and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges of Duke Ellington’s swing era band were among his favorites.
His cousin and brother reportedly encouraged him to continue his musical studies and urged him to compose songs in addition to playing them. He wrote his first in 1946, the same year he ascended to the throne, following his brother’s death.
For many years, the King gathered some musical friends together for Friday night jam sessions in the palace, broadcasting them on the radio. Usually he performed on the saxophone, less frequently on the clarinet, piano or, rarely, guitar.
In the 1960s in New York, on a cross-country trip to America, he played not only with Goodman and Hampton, but also Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa and Jack Teagarden, and then went on to California to meet—but not play with—the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Many photos of that meeting, on the set of Presley’s G.I. Blues, are prominently displayed and sold as souvenirs in Bangkok today.
Later, during the war in Vietnam, when American Bob Hope played for American troops, His Majesty invited the comedian’s bandleader, Les Brown, and vocalist Patti Page, to play with him at his palace home. His music was also included in a Broadway revue in the 1950s and in 1964, following the introduction of a three-movement ballet, he was named to the Institute of Music and Arts of the City of Vienna, the first Asian composer to be so honored.
Of course, his music was best known at home. Every day at eight a.m. and six p.m., all local television stations in Thailand played the national anthem, which was composed by the King. It was also played before most concerts, movies and sporting events. Joggers in Lumpini Park, Bangkok’s largest park, halt when the anthem is broadcast and everywhere, the citizens of the Kingdom stand.