Elephants etc
18-20 november
post by scott
18 november
A relatively quiet day. The morning was spent shopping. There is so much beautiful jewellery, clothing and handicrafts available for incredible prices here. A lot of it is made by the hilltribes which inhabit the surrounding areas hence it seems like a better place to shop than in Bangkok. Mal showed us some of his favourite places, including an awesome little coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. Allana and I picked up an incredible painting by a guy named Kom on the street. There is an art gallery over the road which displays their work but a lot of the artists also set up a more comprehensive display on the street opposite. That night we enjoyed a drink on the street from an icecream store which by night transforms into a makeshift wine bar!
19 november - lampang elephant conservation centre
It’s a bit hard to know when you go to one of these elephant places how well they actually treat their animals and whether they’re in it just to make a baht or actually for the elephants’ benefit. We chose to go for this government funded centre in Lampang (70km south of Chiang Mai) which does shows incorporating all the usual elephant tricks but also has a hospital to rehabilitate injured animals and a nursery for youngsters to learn the baby elephant walk.
The show was just starting when we arrived and they started by demonstrating the labouring tasks for which elephants around here were used for in bygone generations – that is piling and dragging timber from the forest to the timber yards. They have remarkable agility and strength in those trunks and you can see why they would have been put to work for this purpose. An adult elephant can easily pick up a small log under its tusks with the trunk securing it on top. The larger logs are pulled with chains and then stacked up using the tusks again. After this they showed off some tricks. Throwing a ball into a basket, putting a hat on the mahouts (elephant handlers) head, and painting. Some of them hadn’t quite mastered the painting yet so the mahouts would push their trunk around the canvas in the desired pattern (I suppose this is how they train the skill, by repetition). However our girl with the bows in her hair was the Leonardo DaVinci of elephants, and did a great self portrait! By the end of the show we had the expected mixed feelings – wouldn’t it be nicer just to let these gentle giants go free and we can watch them from afar in their natural environment? Are the tourist dollars sufficient to make people and the government take conservation and anti-poaching seriously? Does this justify the domestication of wild animals and making them put on a show? It’s a tough one, but the people of northern Thailand have always had a very special relationship with elephants and I feel positive about their ability to preserve that. And it was great to see the elephants so close and especially to be able to feed them and feel their powerful and agile trunks wrapping around the bamboo in your hand!
Next up was the nursery and some of the cutest little baby elephants you will ever see with their “downy” (but still coarse as steel wool) hair still on their back and head.
We checked out the elephant hospital. Out the front was a poor bugger who’d been working somewhere near the Thai/Burma border and had a foot blown off by a landmine. He was hobbling around on 3 legs (which must put incredible strain on his body!) and had to be chained to a post. It was very sad but the volunteer there reckoned that they could make a prosthesis for him. We couldn’t go inside but could see through the window a juvenile on a big plastic mat who apparently had diarrhoea.
After lunch the mahouts and mahout “trainees” – you can pay to go and live there for a week or so and learn some of the mahouting skills! – were taking the elephants down to the creek for the daily bath, which looked like heaps of fun. They were all spraying water everywhere and the farang mahout trainees were all having a great time except for one poor lady who was petrified and clinging on for dear life!
Because the elephant centre was on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere we got to catch this awesomely shitty bus home and then Al and I got to fulfil our lifelong dream of riding on the back of one of the ubiquitous red songthaews (literally "two rows" of seats)!! They usually have spare seats in the back but thankfully this one was full so we got to ride outside!