One of the more colorful personalities in the Thai gems and jewelry business, “Rung” by his nickname, is often likened to the dashing hero of an historical romance. The man who keeps tigers (because “I like them”) is also an astute gem cutter, who got his start at the age of 12, cutting stones of the family’s ruby and sapphire mine in Chantaburi.

            “I grew up with gems they are in my blood. When I was just a few months old, my mother gave me colored stones to play with.

            “We were living in Chanthaburi where my family had a ruby and sapphire mine and you have to know that it is a miners’ town. Everyone is in the gems’ business; my mother and father too.

            “It was actually my elder brother Daeng – my father had left the family when I was eight years old – who taught me how to cut stones, I was just 12, and going to school; every night he would make me sit down next to him and cut stones for an hour or two – earned spending money that way and also picked up a talent and skill for it that has never left me.”

            Vanchai settles back in his comfortable office on the third floor of the Prestige Gems building on Mahaesak Square, in midtown Bangkok’s gems and jewelry section. The décor, a dramatic black, has glass enclosed tropical fish bank wall dividers. He can look down at the street below and there is also a closed circuit television camera monitoring the comings and goings.

            His work space is surrounded by the tools of the trade. A mammoth safe is within arms reach just behind him. There is a platter of fruit; mangoes, purple grapes and pickled tamarind at hand. All the desk accessories – lighter, ashtray, pen and pencil holder-bear his logo; the graceful tiger.

            He is obviously the big man and can command what he wants. Outside, in an adjoining office are the helpers and his beautiful wife Prisna, a former beauty queen and runner-up in the 1978 Miss Thailand contest.

            His two children, Drive, 14, and Rosy, 9 run in and out, giving their father a spontaneous hug and whispering something in his ear.

            At 47, Vanchai or “Rung”, is a very successful self-made man. The company he started-up 14 years ago, in 1976, is one of Thailand’s major exporters of sapphires, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, cat’s eyes, yellow and pink sapphires, with a turnover in excess of US $30 million a year.

                It’s a far cry from his early days, he will tell you, when business, mostly local, earned him about US $2.4 million.

            Rung, revealing traces of his Spanish grandfather’s ancestry, carefully examines the blue sapphires that he has grouped in five small piles on his desk. A large rectangular-shaped one that he singles out is very good, he says.

            His brother Daeng, older by 14 years, listens to what he has to say; packaging some of the stones and letting Rung keep the rest. There is friendship and trust between them; Daeng and his disciple; the younger brother, he taught the rudiments of the gem trade when he was barely out of short pants, so very long ago.

            As Rung will tell you, there is a lot that has happened in between: “I left Chanthaburi to go to Thammasat University and study political science. But after less than one year, I gave it up; it wasn’t for me.”

            What did he do? “Gems; buying, selling, cutting, and traveling,” he smiles.

            But, that’s only a small part of the story; dashing Rung, - the “playboy hero”, is what one popular Thai magazine called him-at 20, wash into motorbike and auto racing.

            “Yes, I won many trophies. Now, I am too old; I only play tennis, golf, squash and snooker.”

            His interests have also changed and matured. First of all, there is Prisna, the young beauty queen he met and pursued assiduously for 30 months, before she would agree to marry him on August 1, 1974.

            Certainly, a reason for celebrating and re-dedication. As a serious “family man to-be”, he put his mind into the business; studied English and began to travel, looking for stones he could bring back to Thailand, cut, polish and sell.

            His interest in the “big cats” wash already there. He liked them because they lived the way he did, “dangerously”. “You can try to tame them but you are never sure.”

            And then, he says, “they were so intelligent, sensitive and graceful; choosing their friends so carefully, knowing instinctively those whom they can trust and those whom they can’t.”

            His first big cat, a tiger, came from the north of Thailand and he kept it as a household pet for nine years. After that, there was a big Thai bear. “Very friendly”, says Rung, who stayed with him as a close companion for almost seven years.

            “I love all kinds of animals,” he says, admitting that his predilection if for the big cats, who live caged on a terrace adjoining his office. There is friendly “Mee-ow Joe”, the three-year-old female lion; “Lai”, the treacherous five-year-old Thai lynx, and “Dam”, a stalking onyx-black panther, too dangerous to get close to.

            There are still more animal companions; seven Chihuahuas that are his children’s pets, living upstairs in the top two-floor penthouse, and the five or six big cats that he keeps on his 70-rai fruit farm in Chanthaburi.

            “Sometimes, I used to leas them on a leash and walk with them around town. My customers always liked to see them,” he says, with a roguish grin.

            Prisna jumps into the conversation, adding that Rung’s morning rituals always begin with a visit to the animals. She doesn’t mind particularly, she says, because she knows he is a good family man and very protective of her and the two children. “We do come first.” No, he is no longer the “out every night playboy”. Those times are past.

            Rung agrees that one wife is enough for him. He’s happy the way things are. Business is good and he is traveling a lot; Hong Kong, Geneva, Antwerp, New York and Sri Lanka, for the auctions.

            He is very proud of the reputation Thai craftsmen have earned for the country; “they are very dexterous and skilled.” There aren’t too many secrets about colored stones; cutting, heating and polishing them that they don’t understand, he believes.

            He likes the idea that he came into the gem business as one of these craftsmen. “No nation can produce gems better than Thailand,” he says.

            As to the country becoming a world gems and jewelry center, he is convinced it has already happened, enjoying his and Prestige Gems’ status as one of the pioneers.