After being bedridden for a couple of days, I woke up feeling a bit better today, but not really tough enough to do a full-day tour to numerous places around Chiang Mai. So we decided to grab a rough red metal ‘taxi’ to take us out to just a few places that interested us. Our driver seemed a bit disappointed that we didn’t also want to go to the zoo, the tiger park, the alligator farm, a tour of the city, or a cobra show, but he agreed to take us north to an orchid farm and then further on to the Maesa Elephant Camp. The camp was set up in 1976 with just five elephants, with the intention of improving the health of elephants and setting up a breeding programme, which seems to have worked because they now have more than seventy. We managed to have a close encounter with two of them – a frisky elephant and a thief of an elephant….
Rodney purchased some sugar cane sticks and a bunch of bananas to feed them and when he briefly took his eye off one, the elephant reached out and grabbed the whole lot from him. Hilariously, Rodney tried to hang on to them and thus embarked on a very funny tussle with a creature far bigger and more powerful than him. I knew which one of them was going to win that tug of war! Unfortunately, I was laughing so much that I didn’t turn the video on, I really wish I had.
We then wandered around the camp a bit, watching the mahouts attentively washing their elephants and then with assistance from our friendly tin taxi-driver, we queued to ride an elephant. Not feeling the best, I really wasn’t keen, but the double seat on the top of the elephant’s back looked like a pretty safe way to travel and I would have Rodney beside me to cling to. We ‘boarded’ our elephant from a wooden platform set high enough to step onto the seat in a fairly refined fashion.
Now I don’t know why this had to happen to us, we managed to be allocated the frisky elephant. It set off uphill placidly following behind some of his mates, but then decided that a muddy bank looked far more interesting than walking the path with his trunk up another elephant’s bottom. He turned sideways, leaned forward and started to dig into the mud with his trunk, making quite a noise as he rummaged about. Our mahout tried to stop this activity, while we were hanging on and trying not to slide forward, discovering in the process that those seats wobble quite dramatically. Other elephants in the line overtook us and another mahout tried to push our grey transporter back into line, but it took a while for our elephant to decide that the mud wasn’t so interesting and that he might as well re-join the queue; much to my relief. But then he decided to take a bit of a side-swing to the left and, although we probably weren’t, I felt like we were now precariously leaning to the left and seriously wondering if the seat straps were securely tied. It was only a short walk round the hill behind the camp, but I have to say, I won’t be choosing to ride an elephant again for quite a while.
Our taxi driver, now turned tourist guide, pushed us round to a small stadium and told us to ‘watch the show’. Now I’m not that keen on watching animals turning tricks or performing for us humans, but I have to say those elephants just seemed to do everything with a smile and seemingly few instructions from their mahouts. They played football, popped balloons by throwing darts, built walls with piles of tree trunks, placed hats back on human heads and even held paintbrushes, loaded them with paint and then created some very pretty pictures. We were quite amazed at their intelligence and really did enjoy the show.
Our third stop was in the village of Bo Sang to watch women making beautiful paper umbrellas. It was fascinating to watch and seemed to take quite a bit of patience and skill. On the way back into Chiang Mai I was really needing my bed again, despite having spent most of the previous two days in it. Our tin taxi driver begged us to let him stop at the ‘World’s Largest Jewellery Store’, because he would get a tip from them, even if we tourists didn’t make a purchase. He had been very helpful all day and never scared us with his driving, so we reluctantly agreed.
It was a massive store, quite a sight to be seen, but awful to think there were so many millions and millions of dollars in precious metals and jewels in such a poor area of the world. It was nice to be in the air-conditioning and all the staff were smiling and trying to be helpful, until I looked like, and felt like, I was about to faint on them. Rodney thought it was a brilliant way to get us out of there quickly, but I genuinely, desperately needed to get back to my bed and some drugs. Mr Taxi rushed us back to the Vieng Mantra Hotel and I crashed out at 5pm to sleep away the whole evening and night. Nurse Rodney brought me some sticky rice, which remained mostly untouched, and plied me with lots of water and fortunately I recovered enough to manage the almost four-hour bus journey to Chiang Rai the next morning. I did sleep most of the way and thankfully, the bus ride was a little less eventful than the elephant ride…..
