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| Mahout suits |
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| Annie practicing tricks |
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| 'Bong bone!' |
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| Reed and JoJo |
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| Bugs at the Sunday night market |
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| Yum |
We last wrote about what it was like exploring Bangkok with Gob at our side. Going into the city two days later without him was much harder. We bought 4 seats in a van leaving from Thammasat University (including 2 for our backpacks) totaling $4 and arrived in Bangkok 45 minutes later on a 90 degree day. We arrived at the hotel dripping with sweat after 90 minutes of walking and had a surprisingly difficult time explaining to the concierge that we wanted to drop off our bags until we could check in later. Many people speak a tiny bit of English, but not enough to have a complete and successful conversation. Our Thai has been limited to 'hello' and 'thank you' which covers a lot, but as you might imagine, not quite everything. We spent 4 hours walking around that day with no particular destinations in mind, stopping into air-conditioned malls or stores when we could.
After spending some time in the pool, I (Reed) decided to get a Thai massage since we had seen hundreds of streetside parlors during our walks. They are on every block. I picked a place near the hotel that was $6 an hour and was led upstairs to an empty room with curtains separating the mats on the floor. The massage was a mixture of relaxation and pain, with much more stretching and harder squeezing than previous massages I've received. The hour session ended with a head and neck massage and I turned down her offer of an alternate ending with a point to my left ring finger... I wasn't sore the next morning and continue to be surprised by the prevalence of the parlors in all the Thai cities we've been through.
The following morning we took the sky train to the airport (clean, modern transportation, 15 minutes to go 30 km from city center). After arriving in Chiang Mai, the 'cultural capital', we took a taxi to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center to begin our training experience. We stayed with a mahout (elephant trainer) family in the mahout village and they cooked our meals and helped clean some of our clothes. The food throughout the 3-day course was delicious, with the cooks making way more than necessary and serving different dishes each day. Meals were typically a large bowl of rice, two dishes of chicken and vegetables in various styles (sweet and sour, curry, etc) and fresh fruit (pineapple, mango, dragon fruit). We were with a 4' 9" woman from Boston (Muffy) who didn't eat much and let me finish off her meals. Our cooks appeared disappointed if we didn't eat everything, so I did my best.
The training facility is in a remote area and is alive with all sorts of life. As we pulled in we noticed the elephants first. Their are 70 Asian elephants at the center of all different ages, with some 1 and 2 year old babies that were born there. African elephants are larger, with bigger ears, but these are still huge. They weigh 4-5.5 tons fully grown, and they drink 100 liters of water and eat 400 lbs of food each day.
In addition to the elephants, the mahout families all seem to have dogs, cats, and chickens, which noisily but peacefully coexist with each other and the elephants. There are also geckos that chirp frequently and scurry around the walls both indoors and out.
The next morning we met our elephants (Jo-Jo and Pang Prajorb) and one of the hosts reviewed the 10 or so voice commands with us. A minute later we were riding high sitting on our elephants' necks. We learned how to climb on a standing elephant (hoist yourself while holding the ear), by jumping on top of the elephant's lowered head, or by climbing up the from leg while the elephant is laying down. We also learned to dismount in several ways and to tell the elephant to sit, pick up something from the ground, and drink water. The elephants actually know many more commands than the just the ones we learned. The mahouts kept a constant dialog with them, but made us feel like we were having some effect on what they were doing too.
Then it was bath time. When it is hot outside the elephants like to submerge themselves as much as possible, so this means we would get dunked up to our necks. The mahouts and the audience enjoy this part of bath time. I almost fell off the first time Jo-Jo lay down then immediately stood up, but got much more comfortable after the first ride. When in the water the 'bong bone' command instructs your elephant to suck a full load of water into its trunk (10 liters) and to spray it. Annie got the worst of Jo-Jo's spraying, but he also liked to spray the audience.
We participated in the elephant show after being on them for 30 minutes, and I was a bit nervous when I learned that one of Jo-Jo's skills was to walk on top of a log and to turn himself around with me riding on top. His other job was to lead the parade to the show grounds waving a flag, to ring the bell to start the show, and to push logs with his trunk and legs. Annie's elephant raised the Thai flag and also painted during the show (elephants, trees, and flowers were the primary subject matter).
We completed 5 elephant shows over 3 days, with probably 200 people at the busiest one. Each show was an hour long and showcased elephant intelligence along with some of the ways elephants have traditionally been used as work animals, pulling or stacking logs. After each show the audience could buy sugarcane or bananas to feed our elephants while we were still on them and we did a lot of waving and smiling for pictures. If someone made the mistake of offering the whole bunch of bananas, the elephants would eat them in a single bite.
At the end of each day we rode our elephants into the forest to put them to bed. We retrieved them at 6:30 each morning and had a morning snack and a bath. This gave us a good idea of the daily routines for both the elephants and the mahouts. They spend a lot of time together, especially since elephants live as long as people.
By the end of the session we'd grown much more comfortable on the elephants and with all the commands, but were starting to feel the effects of leg soreness from the riding position and elephant burn from the long stiff bristles on the thick skin.
The elephant training finished on Sunday morning and we returned to Chiang Mai. We are staying in a nice guesthouse near the walls of the old city for $20 a night. Dorm rooms can be found for $3 and some cheaper double rooms are more like $10, but the extra $10 actually gets you an improved room here, so we're going for it. Amazingly, it has been hotter here than in Bangkok or at the elephant center. It was 99 yesterday and is supposed to be the same today. Not too humid, but still too hot to walk around in the middle of the day for any appreciable amount of time. We've been eating indoors and take advantage of the guesthouse's location for short breaks during the day.
We went to a well known Sunday night market and turned down a lot of the same carved or woven items available on the streets of Bangkok. We did sample a lot of the foods though, including sticky rice and mango, black vegetable jelly, fried dough, and steamed pork buns. We found a fried insect food stand as well, and bought a 60 cent sampler bag that included grasshoppers (good), crickets (good), and silkworm larvae (bad). I liked getting some strange looks as I walked around with half a grasshopper sticking out of my mouth.
Monday we established an itinerary in the morning and stuck to it. Breakfast out, then we found a taxi to take us to the zoo which is only $3 to get in. It was run-down relative to other zoos I've seen but had a good assortment of animals including Pygmy hippos, many koalas, and an area you could walk through that contained free-roaming pheasants, chickens, and peacocks.
Next we tried to find a taxi that would take us to he Monkey School, 25 minutes away. A driver quoted 300 baht ($9) and we walked away. He yelled 200 as we left, and then found us in the crowd 20 seconds later offering a rate of 150 baht that would include the ride from the Monkey Center back to the hotel. We rewarded him for his persistence and took home up on his offer, though it meant that he spent 90 minutes of his time and 45 kms of fuel and vehicle wear getting less than $5 from us.
The Monkey Center was . . . kind of strange and sad. It consisted of probably a 50 yard by 50 yard area, with 30 or so crab-eating macaques all kept in cages and chained to trees or posts. At the time we arrived we were the only visitors, and two other people came through while we were there. There was a 20 minute monkey show where monkeys were brought out one by one on leashes to demonstrate their talents. This part was fun and it was impressive seeing the monkeys walk around on two legs so comfortably and to do things you wouldn't normally imagine. The 'strongman of monkeys' lifted barbells on command, and did pushups and sit-ups. The 'Michael Jordan of monkeys' could jump up and slam dunk a small ball on a hoop that we around 7' high. Other monkeys shot baskets, shook hands, played catch with us (he would hurl a small soccer ball at us much faster than was necessary), and rode a small bike around the presentation area. Hopefully we'll see monkeys in a more natural habitat in southern Thailand later this week.
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