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Kollawach Doklumjiak was on his way back from school in Bangkok when several teenagers wielding knives set upon him. They spotted him on the street and sprang into action.

Kollawach was studying at a technical school, and for these youths from another school the mere sight of him was reason enough for an unprovoked attack. "They wanted to stab me," recalls Kollawach, a soft-spoken, hulking young man in his twenties with frizzy hair, who is now studying political science at a university in the Thai capital. "They could have killed me."

He escaped by jumping into one of the fetid canals that criss-cross the city. Reeking of putrid water, he sought refuge inside a Buddhist temple.

Monasteries, he says, are among the few places recognised as out of bounds by warring gangs of vocational school students, whose skirmishes often take place in broad daylight on Bangkok's streets. They routinely use knives, machetes, handguns and home-made grenades.

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