the random oracle

I’m not usually a big fan of riding large, hulking beasts.  (OK stop giggling.)  Seriously, the thought of sitting bareback on top of a big wild animal while it bounces you up and down does not appeal to me at all.  (Seriously, stop giggling!)  But somehow LB convinced me that an elephant ride would be a good idea and since I was in the middle-of-nowhere Thailand I figured it was as good a plan as any, so we hopped on our rented motorbike and rode out to the elephant camps south of Pai.

There are a whole string of camps one after the other about 7 or 8 km south of Pai, so we did a little window shopping along the rode.  Right at the first camp LB started clapping like a little kid and ran up the elephant and started petting and feeding it, so I knew that there was no way that I could get out of this elephant ride.  In the end we decided on a place that was recommended in the Lonely Planet guide (Thom’s Pai Elephant Camp or something like that).

As we approached the camp the manager greeted us with a fabulous “Heeelllooooo!” and as he sashayed over I knew that we could probably sweet-talk him into a family discount.  After a little bargaining we agreed to go for a 2-hour, 1 hour in the mountains and 1 hour in the river.  It seemed bit long to me but I figured it’d be scenic at least.

The mountain part was scenic indeed; we meandered up and down through some small paths in the mountains and got a good view of the Pai countryside.  Our elephant’s name was Ot and overall she was well-behaved.  She’d wander off to the side a couple of times to grab a bushel of grass to eat, but she’d get back on the path after a few shouts from our guide.  Our guide was pretty calm and treated Ot pretty well overall.  The guides use this wooden stick with a metal hook at the end, and so I was always afraid that he’d hit Ot with the hook, but the only time he ever used it was to hook Ot over the ear once when she wasn’t listening.

After our 1 hour in the mountains we headed down to the river.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but as Ot waded into the water I could tell I wasn’t going to get out of this with dry clothes… the guide yelled something and Ot suddently laid down her side, dunking LB and me into the river without any warning.  Then the guide told us to climb back on her back, only to have her dunk us again.  Then we climbed on her head and she threw us off into the water with one small swing of her head… it’s pretty amazing how effortlessly she could toss us around.  It was kind of like being a 3-year-old again and being thrown around by your Dad, and I actually kinda loved it even though I’m not sure I’d do it everyday.

On our way back to the camp it started raining hard, as if we hadn’t gotten soaked enough in the river.  Luckily the camp had hot tubs set up to warm us back up, and we soaked in the experience for a bit before heading back into town.