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Post 2013
- 7 years and 17 days since I started this blog -
- 7 years and 17 days since I started this blog -
There wasn't time to get to Tikky Cafe after my massage, so I stepped into the nearest coffee shop, did yesterday's quick rehash, and went to the lobby to wait for my guide From Lanna Country Elephant Sanctuary to pick me up.
On the dot, my guide, Alex (he seemed to really like that I told him my son was also named Alex) showed up, put my backpack in the back of the SUV, and drove to two very swanky hotels to pick up two couples, one from Switzerland, one from San Diego.
Alex speaks good English, tells us he's never been out of Thailand. He is a good driver, Thai style: He tailgates, like everybody else, and, like everybody else, seems inured to the possible consequences. Riding shotgun, I reflect again on how this Thai attitude would be beneficial for me to get used to... while I'm in Thailand.
It's nearly a two-hour drive into the mountains to the North of Chiang Mai. Once we clear the downtown area, we hit suburbs, then countryside. there's pretty agricultural views, with the always hazy mountains in the background.
Just before we hit the mountains, the terrain turns to jungle, and that is what we'll see, more or less, the entire rest of the ride, until we get to the sanctuary. By jungle, I mean old Hollywood movie jungle back-lot jungle.
It looks familiar!
We get to the public part of the Sanctuary. It, too, looks like a clearing in the jungle, although with tourist amenities. We are led to the shower-changing area, are given traditional Lanna pants and shirts to change into.Lanna is the North Thailand regional identity - the Lanna were the rulers of the united North and South Siam, for about four hundred years, and the capital was Chiang Mai. We are also given traditional Lanna straw hats, which just look like sombreros to me.
We've been forewarned we're going to get wet and dirty and both.
A short lecture on the work of the Sanctuary association of which this is part during which, the cost of elephant care is explained. It is crazy expensive. At the end of the lecture, I make a mental note to put a contribution in the present-but-never-pointed-to donation box.
And then, we meet our elephants. There's one for each of us, although everybody immediately wants the too-cute-for-words, attention- and play-loving five-year-old baby.
These are Asian elephants, naturally. They're all smaller than African elephants, but the three bulls are still impressively massive. They're all in their late thirties. The female, who is nine months into a two-year pregnancy, takes a shine to me - she's going to be mine (although it is tacitly understood that we are not exclusive. I sing 'Billy Jean' to her. I don't think she understands, my English, but she doesn't seem to mind, either.
Each elephant has a dedicated mahout, a caretaker/companion who quite literally dedicates himself (I'm not sure there are female mahouts - there weren't any present today), and they love their charges, a good thing, since they spend all their time - eighteen hours a day, I'm told, together. I am not overstating the relationship - you can feel the love between them when they play together, and respond to each other. The communication and rapport is clearly present.
The mahouts speak no English, but communicate through example and gesture, at each step of the way, not only demonstrating the task (we're substitute mahouts for the tour), but also the attitude - pure playfulness.
Our first stop is a ,feeding station for corn and cane. We're up close, petting the elephant, talking to the elephant. This I believe, is entirely meant to get us used to the elephants - they, from what I could tell, are pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.
Next, we're going to feed them. We are taught a few Lanna-elephant words. The ones I remember are bone and howt (my English-equivalent spelling), which mean, respectively, 'trunk up, open wide' and 'Stop!'. At my age, I have to be frugal with my memory cells, so those important ones are all I retained. Two out of three ain't bad.
Next, the elephants and us are getting a mud bath. Which means, that I'm going to get in a mud hole up to my butt. With elephants. And the elephants have expectations. mainly, they expect you're there to play. Their rules. Immediately, it's elephant vs. tourist, and mahouts against everybody. Mud is slung. For my part, mud is rubbed all over my elephant.
It is not lost on me that the mud I am covered in is a certain unknown percentage elephant shit. They're big babies, they eat, shit, and play with tourists, often all at the same time. So I know. I don't care. I'm having fun like a nin-year-old, which is probably the last time I had anything fun and voluntary to do with mud.
We're all getting along well, elephants, tourists, mahouts, and then we all go into the not-mud-hole hole - I guess you might call it the swimming hole, to clean up and have more fun. This time we're armed with buckets and brushes, and our job is to get all mud off, and don't mind that both elephants and mahouts are continually splashing you.
I can't really pretend to be cool about this. It's fun. That's what this is about. Whatever else I thought when I booked this time, It isn't that. It's just simple, childish fun. I can roll with that.
Next is skin-conditioning. We're given buckets full of sweet-herb-smelling water, with some of the ingredients still floating in it, and rags, and the elephants gallop out of their bath water and allow us to paint them with this. Maybe I'm just a sucker for Tom Sawyer painting the fence type stuff, but I'm fully bought in, and now it's all fun.
Last stop of the day: Make and deliver elephant treats. This consists of combining tar-like tamarind paste with chopped up sugar cane and bananas. I use the pestle as a hammer on the knife to chop the cane, which is very tough,but provides important fiber and digestive enzymes, as does the tamarind paste. After turning the ingredients to a sticky mush, you get dirty all over again hand-shaping the treat into softball-sized snacks.
The elephants know the drill, and come galloping in. Junior comes straight up to me, playfully kisses my beard with his trunk, so he gets my snack stright in the back of his mouth (this is how we were told to feed this to them, so it doesn't fall apart on the ground when they try to chew it).
Then, its time to hit the showers and get back into dry, clean clothes. And photo review.
It is a major disappointment that, for reasons I will never know, none of the pictures taken by the guide for me with my phone are on my phone. I saw him take them, but when I go to review, there's nothing.
Well, it's done, and nothing to do about it, I take a few selfies with my elephant, and, on the drive back, try to retell the story to myself, to imprint the memory, because that's all I have.
And that's all right. It's enough. Things happen, even without a photo.
Later, on a tip from a friend who'd been here forty years ago, I go to a highly rated Indian restaurant, and have the best Indian food of my life, and possibly the best meal since I hit Thailand. It wasn't as inexpensive as the Thai food I've been eating (or anything else - it was the most expensive meal of the trip - around $18). I couldn't stop eating it. I thought about taking some home, that I should take it home, but couldn't stop eating. Ambiance, service. food - all first rate. Sorry, Tikky Cafe, I love you, but you just became my second favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai, at least while the memory is still fresh.
I ended the night at the Marlboro, and after a few beers was totally beat. In hindsight, the elephant trip is the single most tourist thing I've done, and seems, now, to be an outlying, atypical experience, a stand-alone event. I'm glad I did it, whatever the relevance.
I can barely get out of my clothes with tiredness, and fall asleep thinking about the joy of reclaiming a child-like joy, of the so-temporary connection I had with a remarkable animal. Nothing but gratitude for my life.
On the dot, my guide, Alex (he seemed to really like that I told him my son was also named Alex) showed up, put my backpack in the back of the SUV, and drove to two very swanky hotels to pick up two couples, one from Switzerland, one from San Diego.
Alex speaks good English, tells us he's never been out of Thailand. He is a good driver, Thai style: He tailgates, like everybody else, and, like everybody else, seems inured to the possible consequences. Riding shotgun, I reflect again on how this Thai attitude would be beneficial for me to get used to... while I'm in Thailand.
It's nearly a two-hour drive into the mountains to the North of Chiang Mai. Once we clear the downtown area, we hit suburbs, then countryside. there's pretty agricultural views, with the always hazy mountains in the background.
Just before we hit the mountains, the terrain turns to jungle, and that is what we'll see, more or less, the entire rest of the ride, until we get to the sanctuary. By jungle, I mean old Hollywood movie jungle back-lot jungle.
It looks familiar!
We get to the public part of the Sanctuary. It, too, looks like a clearing in the jungle, although with tourist amenities. We are led to the shower-changing area, are given traditional Lanna pants and shirts to change into.Lanna is the North Thailand regional identity - the Lanna were the rulers of the united North and South Siam, for about four hundred years, and the capital was Chiang Mai. We are also given traditional Lanna straw hats, which just look like sombreros to me.
We've been forewarned we're going to get wet and dirty and both.
A short lecture on the work of the Sanctuary association of which this is part during which, the cost of elephant care is explained. It is crazy expensive. At the end of the lecture, I make a mental note to put a contribution in the present-but-never-pointed-to donation box.
And then, we meet our elephants. There's one for each of us, although everybody immediately wants the too-cute-for-words, attention- and play-loving five-year-old baby.
These are Asian elephants, naturally. They're all smaller than African elephants, but the three bulls are still impressively massive. They're all in their late thirties. The female, who is nine months into a two-year pregnancy, takes a shine to me - she's going to be mine (although it is tacitly understood that we are not exclusive. I sing 'Billy Jean' to her. I don't think she understands, my English, but she doesn't seem to mind, either.
Each elephant has a dedicated mahout, a caretaker/companion who quite literally dedicates himself (I'm not sure there are female mahouts - there weren't any present today), and they love their charges, a good thing, since they spend all their time - eighteen hours a day, I'm told, together. I am not overstating the relationship - you can feel the love between them when they play together, and respond to each other. The communication and rapport is clearly present.
The mahouts speak no English, but communicate through example and gesture, at each step of the way, not only demonstrating the task (we're substitute mahouts for the tour), but also the attitude - pure playfulness.
Our first stop is a ,feeding station for corn and cane. We're up close, petting the elephant, talking to the elephant. This I believe, is entirely meant to get us used to the elephants - they, from what I could tell, are pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.
Next, we're going to feed them. We are taught a few Lanna-elephant words. The ones I remember are bone and howt (my English-equivalent spelling), which mean, respectively, 'trunk up, open wide' and 'Stop!'. At my age, I have to be frugal with my memory cells, so those important ones are all I retained. Two out of three ain't bad.
Next, the elephants and us are getting a mud bath. Which means, that I'm going to get in a mud hole up to my butt. With elephants. And the elephants have expectations. mainly, they expect you're there to play. Their rules. Immediately, it's elephant vs. tourist, and mahouts against everybody. Mud is slung. For my part, mud is rubbed all over my elephant.
It is not lost on me that the mud I am covered in is a certain unknown percentage elephant shit. They're big babies, they eat, shit, and play with tourists, often all at the same time. So I know. I don't care. I'm having fun like a nin-year-old, which is probably the last time I had anything fun and voluntary to do with mud.
We're all getting along well, elephants, tourists, mahouts, and then we all go into the not-mud-hole hole - I guess you might call it the swimming hole, to clean up and have more fun. This time we're armed with buckets and brushes, and our job is to get all mud off, and don't mind that both elephants and mahouts are continually splashing you.
I can't really pretend to be cool about this. It's fun. That's what this is about. Whatever else I thought when I booked this time, It isn't that. It's just simple, childish fun. I can roll with that.
Next is skin-conditioning. We're given buckets full of sweet-herb-smelling water, with some of the ingredients still floating in it, and rags, and the elephants gallop out of their bath water and allow us to paint them with this. Maybe I'm just a sucker for Tom Sawyer painting the fence type stuff, but I'm fully bought in, and now it's all fun.
Last stop of the day: Make and deliver elephant treats. This consists of combining tar-like tamarind paste with chopped up sugar cane and bananas. I use the pestle as a hammer on the knife to chop the cane, which is very tough,but provides important fiber and digestive enzymes, as does the tamarind paste. After turning the ingredients to a sticky mush, you get dirty all over again hand-shaping the treat into softball-sized snacks.
The elephants know the drill, and come galloping in. Junior comes straight up to me, playfully kisses my beard with his trunk, so he gets my snack stright in the back of his mouth (this is how we were told to feed this to them, so it doesn't fall apart on the ground when they try to chew it).
Then, its time to hit the showers and get back into dry, clean clothes. And photo review.
It is a major disappointment that, for reasons I will never know, none of the pictures taken by the guide for me with my phone are on my phone. I saw him take them, but when I go to review, there's nothing.
Well, it's done, and nothing to do about it, I take a few selfies with my elephant, and, on the drive back, try to retell the story to myself, to imprint the memory, because that's all I have.
And that's all right. It's enough. Things happen, even without a photo.
Later, on a tip from a friend who'd been here forty years ago, I go to a highly rated Indian restaurant, and have the best Indian food of my life, and possibly the best meal since I hit Thailand. It wasn't as inexpensive as the Thai food I've been eating (or anything else - it was the most expensive meal of the trip - around $18). I couldn't stop eating it. I thought about taking some home, that I should take it home, but couldn't stop eating. Ambiance, service. food - all first rate. Sorry, Tikky Cafe, I love you, but you just became my second favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai, at least while the memory is still fresh.
I ended the night at the Marlboro, and after a few beers was totally beat. In hindsight, the elephant trip is the single most tourist thing I've done, and seems, now, to be an outlying, atypical experience, a stand-alone event. I'm glad I did it, whatever the relevance.
I can barely get out of my clothes with tiredness, and fall asleep thinking about the joy of reclaiming a child-like joy, of the so-temporary connection I had with a remarkable animal. Nothing but gratitude for my life.
aPlease leave a comment when you visit my blog. Thank you!
That sounds like so much fun
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