Mathew Biadun | Column Writer
The most famous animal in Thailand is the elephant. They are everywhere here. Most tourist products have elephants on them in some form or another, whether they be pants or shirts or mugs. Several historic and present flags depict elephants. They are valued by the people as the national animal, protected by the law. Any tourist who comes to Thailand will undoubtedly try to see the iconic elephants.
Our study abroad company, CISAbroad, knew this desire and organized a trip for us. It was planned for Chiang Mai, a major city and tourist destination in its own right, partially due to housing dozens of elephants in sanctuaries, along with several famous temples. This couldn’t happen. The north of the country was prone to flooding, and this happened to the city when we planned to go. Several elephants drowned in the water, with over a hundred evacuated. It was too dangerous for us.
Luckily, we could go somewhere else. Instead of going north, we headed west, taking a two-hour bus ride to the city of Kanchanaburi. That city is found in a heavily forested area along the River Kwai, and attracts a lot of tourists in its own right.
‘Elephants World’ is an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, one of many in the country. While elephants are treated honorably today (for example, the ivory trade was banned in 2014), it was not always this way. Historically, elephants were used for labor, particularly in the logging industry. Before mechanization, elephants were used to carry heavy materials, and even for war. King Rama IV, for example, even offered to send war elephants to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln politely rejected the offer. Sanctuaries today right the wrongs of this past, taking in elephants that are too old or injured, and caring for them so that they can live good, long lives.
The path took us down a long dirt road. It was a rough path, winding through heavy foliage. The overgrowth on either side of the road was so thick that it was practically jungle, with grass as tall as you or I. When we turned a corner, elephants already greeted us right by the sanctuary gates. Their size is hard to give due awe. One was as wide and tall as a garden shed, another the size of a jeep. Everything appeared small next to them, whether it be our van or the giant open gate to the sanctuary that looked straight out of Jurassic Park.
We were guided through into a parking lot, and from there into a wide pavilion on a raised, wooden platform bordered by railings. The elephants walked around it, poking their trunks through the bars of the railings. Their presence was magnetic. Everyone was drawn to them at once, reaching to pet and touch them, as if to make sure this remarkable creature was real. Elephant skins are tough; rough and thick against your hand. They look leathery, and feel very coarse, almost like an old leather-bound book.
The tour guides could hardly get us away from them, and as soon as instructions were over, we headed right back. This time we were provided with fruit; whole little watermelons the size of a softball and cut up cantaloupe. The way their trunks moved was remarkable. They slithered through the air towards you like a tentacle,curling in around the fruit until their trunks formed a tight ring around it. Then their mouths opened like a triangular slit, bright pink tongues sticking out to grab at the fruit. A whole watermelon was crunched within moments. I was surprised to see stray dogs down amongst the elephants. They stood behind them nervously, waiting for a good opportunity. When the elephants opened their legs wide, or stepped aside, the dogs ran forward, grabbing a piece of fruit and darting off with it. The sanctuary worked for more than just elephants, apparently.
Our first activity was really more like labor. Everyone, you see, wanted a photo with the elephants. The problem is that elephants don’t want a photo with us. Like an excitable dog, the animals move around far too much to stand still for a good picture. The solution?
Bribery.
Our tour guides took us into the forest, where the massive grass grew like a cornfield. They handed out machetes there. Long, curved, and coated with rust, probably as old as the guides themselves. Each looked like a ripe source of tetanus. Indeed, I did get a tiny cut on my finger. But, as I haven’t spasmed in the week since, I suppose I’m well enough. We waded through and took turns cutting through the grass like children with fake swords. For us it was fun. For the workers it was work they got to skip, sitting in the shade and watching the silly farang (foreigners) toil away for them. We returned to the truck soon after, filling the flatbed with the long grass, and set out back to our elephantine friends.
They were waiting in the shade of a few trees, in the center of a large open field bordering jungles and a small river. The grass was dumped onto the ground, allowing the elephants to eat, which in turn allowed us to take as many pictures as we wanted. A tour guide told me their names, two of which I remember (there were some four or five in total, but around a dozen in the sanctuary as a whole). Mochi and Cherry were great friends, and for elephants of sixty years, had a youthful playfulness as they whacked some of my friends with their ears.
Indeed, elephants live remarkably long lives. Our tour guides explained that they, in fact, had a longer lifespan in captivity (when cared for properly) than in the wild. The problem in the wild isn’t their bodies, but rather than teeth. At around sixty or seventy, an elephant’s teeth are all gone, and as a result they will starve. In the sanctuary, meanwhile, they can hand feed each of them special soft food. The oldest elephants in this sanctuary were eighty, but they can live up to a hundred!
Our next task was making some of that wet food, mixing together rotting bananas, grass and something like kibble. The subsequent mixture was rolled into balls, and we got to feed the elephants directly, right into their mouths! The mess on our hands was minor, but nothing compared to the next activity.
Elephants are giant, lumbering creatures, and in the sweltering heats of the Thai jungles, they can get hot. We went with them to a small, artificial bond, with a large pipe shooting in water like a shower. The elephants waded into it, happily submerging themselves in the cool liquid. All of a sudden one began tipping, tipping, tipping, and with a great SPLOOSH! it fell right into the water! It laid comfortably on its side, allowing us to come in after it. We reached in, grabbing mud and smearing it all around the elephant, as its good for their skin. The elephants got a good mud bath from us, after which we walked with them to the river, using thick brushes as big as my skull to scrub the mud off. The guides gave the elephants commands, and when they did, the trunks came out and sprayed us all with water. Why, never in my whole life did I think it was exciting to be sneezed on! But for the elephants I made an exception, laughing as they hosed us down.
A large truck waited to bring us back, with a small stray dog laying behind it. The dog looked to the truck pitifully, almost wishingly. I patted the truck bed, cooing at it like my dog at home. “C'mere boy! C’mere!” To my surprise, it listened, jumping up with us! I thought for sure it would jump back off. But to my surprise, it sat politely on the ground as we rode back. When we arrived in the parking lot it simply ran off, meeting up with some other friends and playing chase. The dogs must’ve learned something from the wise old elephants; they understood taxis!
Apart from some souvenir shopping, that was the end of our elephant experiences. The afternoon was spent exploring the town, visiting a giant market brimming with food that I ate all too much of. Diets are hard to maintain in Thailand, mark my words. The next morning we went to a cooking class in a vegetarian restaurant, which was fun, although dishes all composed of the same fried vegetables get a little samey by the tenth dish, and there were fifteen. We were all a little tired after that, but there was one place we had to go first.
Siam, as Thailand was once known, found itself entering 1940 in a tough spot. It had narrowly avoided colonialism, playing France and England against each other to make sure neither seized the country for themselves. In 1940, a similar threat in a new way was revealed. To the west was Britain, controller of India and Burma. To the east was Japan, the newest-conquerors of what was the ‘French Indochina’. Both wanted Siam on their side. In the end, Siam relented to the Japanese, allowing them to cross their borders. The Japanese wanted to trek across Siam to reach British Burma (today’s Myanmar), but found thick jungles everywhere. Terrain impassable for modern mechanized warfare.
So, they built a railroad, or more accurately, they organized the building of a railroad. The Japanese themselves did not slave away in those hot, malaria-infested jungles. No. Instead their prisoners of past battles did. POWs from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, The Netherlands and others, forced to work from dawn to dusk, building bridges and rails through the jungle. The River Kwai is the namesake of a now famous movie, 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, depicting this event. We visited a war cemetery in the town, maintained by the British Commonwealth, and established with respect to all who died on the Kwai. It was a sobering experience. But we cannot always avoid the sad or uncomfortable. Doing so is a disservice to all those men, who in their own time died like cattle, so that we today can live like kings. It was a worthy experience, and capped off our Kachanaburi trip.
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