Word: phanom
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...have become geriatric lately. Arnold is Governor, Sly is about to become a reality-show host, Jean-Claude Van Damme toils in direct-to-video. Jackie Chan is almost a creaky 50, and Jet Li doesn't work much anymore. The genre needs another hero, and Jaa (Thai name: Phanom Yeerum) is the fellow to fill the void. He's young--28--and good-looking, with a quiet élan to match his athletic skill. He's also a throwback to kung-fu film's early days, when stars and stunt men alike took a licking and kept on kicking...
...whose real name is Phanom Yeeram, grew up in Thailand's rural northeast, a region most notable for its poverty and, in the early 1980s, the occasional mortar round fired across the Cambodian border by the Khmer Rouge. "Some days we'd be sitting down to dinner and the mortars would explode in the village, blowing out our windows and doors," Jaa says. He escaped these grim realities by viewing the films of Chan and Lee on outdoor screens at temple fairs. "It was powerful for me to watch," he says. "What they did was so beautiful, so heroic...
...barely spoken since. "He's torn up inside," says Phanom, his uncle. Tough measures are needed to battle drugs, Phanom agrees. "But killing people in the streets is just too cruel...
Still, thousands of Indochinese continue to flee to Thailand. About 12,200 Laotians are being held in a detention center at Nakorn Phanom. Another 4,800 Vietnamese are in indefinite limbo at Si-khiu Prison. The boat people are also seeking asylum in other Asian countries. About 15 a day arrive in Hong Kong, half of whom would be considered ineligible for resettlement in the U.S. under the new policy. What will happen to these immigrants is still unclear. An American diplomat in Bangkok explained that the new U.S. policy is meant as a warning for potential refugees...
Each August the residents of the hamlet of Baan Nabua, 30 miles south of the Mekong River center of Nakhon Phanom, stop all work and open their stilted houses to visitors for a celebration. Government officials gather for a feast and an all-night spectacle that features classical Thai dancing and Kung Fu movies. The holiday is called the Stop the Gunfire Festival: it commemorates the government's success in quelling a Communist insurgency that once infested most of Thailand's 16 northeastern provinces. This year the eight-man band that played popular tunes at Baan Nabua...