"Pai Lo" is the command a mahout uses to direct his elephant to go forward ("his" because I have yet to see a female mahout --- besides tourist mahouts like us). This was one of a few commands we learned at Mahout Camp at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (TECC). And probably the only command our elephants seemed to understand as we uttered it after they were already moving forward (a-la Bart Simpson and Santa's Little Helper... "Good boy, sniff that dog's butt."). My theory is that Thai elephants do not understand Thai pronounced with a Greek accent (Thai is a tonal language, and as humans cannot deduce what I try to say, I don't expect elephants to fare any better). Although the real explanation is probably that the bond between mahout and elephant takes a long time to forge --- mahout camp is much more about appreciating that bond than about preparing for elephant rodeo or a circus career. Despite what commands I bark, if his mahout is walking on the ground, the elephant will follow him; it's quite a wonderful bond to observe, no matter how helpless you feel on top of an animal that treats you like a non-entity (elephants could be excellent civil servants, come to think of it).
We arrived at the TECC around 9a on a night bus from Bangkok. Getting on that bus was a nightmare. We left our hostel at 7:30p, and spent 1.5 hours on a local bus moving through the snail-paced Bangkok traffic to get to the end of the line, which was the bus terminal. We arrived at 9p, and a bit panicky since we had no tickets yet for the 9:30p bus to Chiang Mai (the TECC is on that route, but way before Chiang Mai). We got lost in the chaotic, gigantic terminal, because it turns out to be two terminals combined (for the north and north-eastern bus lines out of the city). Sigh! We find the ticket booth at 9:15p, and buy our tickets, at which point we breathe a sigh of relief as we are told that the bus will depart at 10p --- a delay was no problem as we had to be at TECC by noon and 10p departure would get us in around 7a. So we buy some donuts at the Dunkin' Donuts (yes, they are fairly popular in Thailand, but each donut costs a whopping $0.50) and relax, keeping an eye out for our bus... 10p... 10:15p... 10:30p... Where the heck is it? ... 10:45p... 11p... Are we waiting at the right place?... 11:30p. Ah, here it is finally! Ah, Thais may drive on the left side of the road like the Brits, but their timeliness is not very British. Worse, the bus driver seemed to have forgotten his brain: at our refueling stop, he left behind two passengers, and we wasted another 30 minutes driving back to pick them up. To top it off, Thai bus drivers (like Greeks) consider themselves exempt from the No Smoking rule enforced for all passengers on public bus lines --- as if smoke knows to stay at the front of the bus.
In the end, though, this delay was all for the better: Christine chatted up an older Thai who lives in New York, and who was waiting for the same bus. Thanks to him, we knew we were at the right terminal platform; moreover, he got the bus to drop us off at the TECC entrance, instead of having to get off at a proper stop in a nearby town and take a local line. And we got to see Tomb Raider 2, albeit in Thai (though it's the kind of movie where missing out on the dialogue probably improves it). Which reminds me... media piracy is absolutely rampant in South East Asia. It's completely ridiculous for the RIAA to go after p2p sharing in the US when even government buses play pirated, low-quality VCD copies of movies (hilariously, those VCDs start off with the regular copyright & public broadcast warning)... you can buy those VCDs for pennies everywhere and all long-distance transport we used played movies (private/public buses, boats, etc.).
Once we got off at the TECC, we headed for the guard's hut. Nice chap, but didn't speak a lot of English. We showed him a printout of the directions to the TECC we had printed off the Internet, and to our surprise he started copying it down --- we just let him keep our copy to save him some time. Anyway, he arranged for a staff person to come pick us up on a pickup truck and we were on our way --- his parting words were "I provide high-quality service". What a strange thing to say, but quite true after all!
The first thing I noticed at the TECC was the small stuff --- not the elephants, but the bugs. We arrived smack in the midst of ant migration, when aspiring queens fly off to start new nests. Many queens. Many, MANY queens, especially at night when they cluster around every lamp. I took a photo during our home stay dinner of a fluorescent lamp, and using some basic statistical sampling, I estimate the number of bugs manically hovering around that lamp to be around 7,000 (no joke, and --- trust me --- I know basic stats). The nearby lizards were having a giant buffet dinner party. But since my wonderful wife brought along a mosquito net, they were not that bothersome at night.
But let's move on to the big stuff: the elephants! Talk about big! The Asian elephant is smaller than the African one, but they are enormous creatures nevertheless. And lovely too. The strange thing about the TECC is that one gets to see many elephants in the same place (unlike a circus or a zoo), and without cages. There is an elephant show, but it's not circus-y either: it demonstrates what tasks the elephants used to carry out when they were an integral part of the logging industry; they also have a short segment where the elephants play music or paint, which demonstrates one of the ways they raise funds (selling the artists' works). The TECC also contains a (real) mahout school, as well as an elephant hospital where we experienced the most wonderful surprise... a baby elephant!
Baby means baby-baby. Just a day old -- the (partially severed) umbilical cord is still visible on the baby's underside! In fact, if we had not gone diving and had stayed with our original schedule, we would have seen her mother give birth. But, on the good side, we get to see mother and daughter after they have recovered a bit... for example, the mother's mahout can go up to her and pet the baby without either elephant getting upset. The baby nurses every 10 minutes or so, has a hard time walking straight on her wobbly legs, takes naps standing up quite often, it's only about waist-high, and has bright red eyes. We went to see her for a quick peek, and I stayed there mesmerized for over an hour. As this was the second birth ever at the TECC, we were amazingly lucky to get here when we did. I am already plotting how I'll fit her in my luggage on the way back to Austin.
If we hadn't seen the baby, the highlight of our day would have been our first mahout training day. The world looks very different when you are on an elephant: it looks blurry because you are constantly moving. First off, there is no comfy seat (like typical elephant rides or horse saddles) --- you get to sit on the elephant's neck, right behind its head, with your knees right behind the ears. Second, the ride ain't a breeze --- sure, it's not Texas rodeo, but I can assure you that it took a while for me to ride without holding on to dear life onto the elephant's ears or the hair on her head (I am riding a girl elephant, Pat Chuop, while Christine is riding a boy, Cho Cho, who is a foot taller than Pat Chuop). This is a gigantic beast but it can move swifty, which means lots of up and down movement and also plenty of right-left movement as its shoulder blades move your buttocks up and down in an alternating fashion while she walks; the taller the elephant, the more it bobs, and so Christine is having a harder time than I am. Depending on your elephant, this right-left movement can get worse when she flaps her ears: some elephants flap both ears at the same time, while others move the right ear forward and the left ear back, and then switch. Since your legs are right behind those monstrous flaps, this motion affects your balance: Christine's elephant is synchronized, but mine is not (damn my cowboy hat, I gave the impression I know more about riding animals than I do... heck, I've only sat on top of my cat more than once, and that was only to keep her steady while administering medication).
Complications do not stop there... Getting up and down is an ordeal by itself --- I can do it because I'm tall enough, but Christine has trouble going up (and she has a taller elephant). Then there are the verbal commands, which are supposed to be accompanied by tapping the elephant gently: e.g. you say "back up" and also tap his behind to get her to move backwards. Well, "gently" for such a pachyderm means wacking her pretty hard, so if you have trouble maintaining your balance in the first place, just imaging trying to add whacking. And then, you add the terrain: slippery mud, crossing streams, low tree branches... heck, the elephant has enough trouble keeping herself steady, just imagine yourself on top of her wobbling mass, far from its center of gravity and having to dodge branches! And we have more yet... the elephant may be walking straight and then stop suddenly as a juicy bush catches her attention, bending her head so that her trunk wraps around the branch and, when she pulls back, cuts off all the leaves, which she neatly then moves from her trunk to her mouth. Now, remember that you are on top of that head that suddenly stopped moving forward, bent down, bent up, and started chewing... madly you cry "Pai Lo" and she ignores you. Eventually you shut up because you don't want her to laugh too hard while she is eating, listening to your ridiculous accent.
Despite all this, or maybe because of all this, it is an exilirating experience. The day ended when we went to the jungle (with the real mahout, of course) to leave the elephant to graze and sleep (tied onto a tree with a 50 meter chain). We walked, and on the way back we stopped at the elephant cemetary. This is not an elephant cemetary of legends, as in Disney's Lion King (where all old elephants go to die and where giant skeletons make it look like a Natural History museum). Instead, each elephant is buried inside a mound surrounded by a small bamboo fence. There is a tree planted on top of the mound, and a plaque with the elephant's name, birth, and death date (no catchy epigram). The older the date of the death, the bigger the tree. One small grave was for a yearling... Even after a single day with those magnificent animals, that place stirred the same emotions as if I had visited a human cemetary. I didn't realize it until I was on my way out, but soon after going in I had taken off my hat out of respect for the dead.
Back to the TECC, we noticed a good number of other smaller animals roaming around: chickens, dogs, cats... the usual pets. One dog was special though: her face is crooked, meaning that her nuzzle is not perpendicular to the line joining her ears, her tongue comes out on the side, and she can't open her mouth much or chew properly (took her a long time to gulp down a tiny piece of pork). She's a sweetie, though, so we gave her lots of petting... and a name (Funny Face). Trouble is she is also quite a stinker so we smelled worse than elephant dung after petting her. Of course, needless to say that we also found a friendly, pettable, lap cat to worship during our stay.
The first day ended with dinner at a mahout's home. We helped in the
preparation a little, the food was quite good, and there was a fairly
fluent English speaker (Supat, the local who runs the homestay
program) at the table to help us communicate... but we didn't have the
chance as the TV was on and as soon as night fell, we were swarmed by
the ants. In a way, I was glad that our presence did not interrupt
their routine one bit, even though it felt like somewhat of a lost
opportunity.
Posted by Toli at May 15, 2004 06:34 AM