Becoming a Mahout

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Trip Start May 29, 2008 Previous
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  Chiang Saen, Thailand
Saturday, September 6, 2008

Next stop, the Golden Triangle in the north of Thailand - that is, the most northern tip of Thailand and borders Myanmar and Laos. We drove up this route with a rented car which was so much more comfortable then having to catch multiple buses, getting on and off, and having to haggle with a cab driver when we finally got to our destination.
On the drive up, we stopped at Wat Rong Khun that glistened in the sun, since it had tiny mirrors blended into its architecture. It was almost as impressive as Taj Mahal. It was really a spectacle and was actually being re-whitened throughout when we were there so it was pretty glowing. They also had interesting accents throughout, as there were weird looking gargoyles and other beasts and the white bridge leading up to the temple had a white concrete pool underneath it with white arms protruding out and toward the bridge as to indicate that they would take you down with them if you fell off. It was really cool art blended with architecture.
Finally, we arrived at our resort Anantara in the northern most area of Thailand

Takin a bath

. The resort was absolutely beautiful with an African/Asian theme to it which was a different concept. The service was fantastic and the pool was one of the better ones we had ever seen with a Jacuzzi in the middle of the pool section leading out to the infinity pool and it was surrounded by torches. At night, the pool was a spectacle.
This resort was huge too. It would have to be since it was home to 36 elephants. Many of these elephants were rescued or "street" elephants wandering around Thailand cities without proper nutrition and exercise. The whole reason we even came to this resort was the elephants and not only to see them or even to pet them, but to be trained on how to feed them, bathe them, and ride them over 3 days. They have a training program with certification and everything. An elephant trainer is called a "mahout" so we were determined to get that status.
Day 1 it was raining and we were able to drive up to the top of the hill and wake the elephants up at 7AM to get some good face time with them and pick our elephants. It was muddy and we had to get dirty getting on top of the elephant - our type of activity. It was interesting getting on top of the elephant for the first time because the procedure is that you hang on by the ears to get up and then use their ears to hold your legs and keep your hands on the top of their head. That was the best way to gain stability

Aww...baby Raimon

. Mind you, even from the first day there weren't chairs or special saddles on the elephant - it was just you and the elephant. Really cool. At first, getting up was pretty scary as it would jet up and you had to watch your head or you'd hit branches and other things hanging at that level and then you had to balance yourself as each step is so gargantuan that it moves the elephant's whole body and you must move with the elephant to not fall off. We rode them all the way down to their feeding station where the babies were being taken care of as well. We were given basic commands for the elephants while we rode for it to go straight. When at the feeding station, we were able to feed the elephants bunches of bananas and long stalks of sugar cane. They like their sugar. Rachel got really close and personal to the baby elephants. The youngest was 1.5 months old and a real crowd pleaser, as it absolutely loved people and cozied up to Rachel pretty well.
After we got to play with the babies we started our formal training. We started to learn commands to have the elephant go straight, left, right, and stop. It was soon our turn to have our hand on the elephant racetrack where we had to use all of these commands to navigate through different steel garbage containers and weave left and right through them at the whopping speed of 2 miles per hour. These guys like to take their time. There were so many elephants that a couple ran into each other, again, at 2 mph so not quite as bad as a NASCAR pileup

Look, ma, no hands!

. After having a chance to do that we kept on moving. The landscape in their habitat was amazing. Very rainforest-like with many trees with huge leafs, bushes, streams, and flora. We made our way down to their bathtub which was a huge brown-colored pond. Our job was to help clean all of the mud that they trudged through. We were game. The mahouts jumped in back of us on top of the elephants as we went into the water and they were able to scrub them off. We got pretty dirty as they were being cleaned. Rachel's elephant got really excited about bathtime and decided to spray himself with Rachel on his back using his trunk. It was such an awesome site to see the elephant loading up his trunk to drench Rachel. She was the only the one that was lucky enough to get that type of shower. We finally took them back up the hill at the end of the day to tuck them in and read a bedtime story for them, as this was their quarters for the night. Walking down the hill was crazy as everything was extremely muddy and people were slipping everywhere. It was pretty funny. Everyone got dirty in the muddy slip and slide. Getting back to the hotel, which is a 5-star hotel, we all had to walk through the lobby drenched in all of the love the elephants and elements gave us during the day. I'm sure the guests imagined we were apart of the janitorial team at the hotel or maybe garbage men and women picking up the weekly load.
Day 2 was the same wake-up call for our elephants

Ummm...I think you're facing the wrong way

. Rachel and I were the only ones this time as most others only took the 1-day session but we needed to be official "mahouts" so we went all the way to get the full 3-day experience. We took our elephants down again and Rachel couldn't get enough of the babies again. Too much fun. Eventually, we had training. This time it was more advanced. Not only did we have to get them to go straight, left, right, and stop but we actually had to work with them to let us on and off of them. There were a few ways of doing this. The first way was asking for him to lift up his foot to create different ladder-like steps. Second, it was having the elephant completely lay down while you jump on its head and, then, it abruptly stands up while you're on its head. The last way and my personal favorite is using the trunk as a slide to get down. The elephant would bow its head with its trunk making a slide-like form and you simply slide off. Getting up using this move was even neat as you would need to grab onto the back of its head and it would sweep you up in one motion. It was amazing that one phrase could get these huge creatures to make these large movements. These animals were so massive it was amazing how well-mannered and good-hearted they were. Going down the hill, I started giving its massive head a bear hug. I didn't come even close to getting all the way around its neck. Looking down at its head it kind of reminded me of how that kid felt when riding his animal friend in "The Neverending Story." Eventually, we got down to bathtime

Elephant in the jungle

. One of the volunteer trainers that had been there for a couple of months joined us. She was from Scotland and the other Thai "mahout" trainers loved torturing her. She jumped on the back of one of the elephants to help out in the bathing. We were out washing the elephants and were getting dunked by the elephant's heads while they bathed and one of the elephants decided to go #2 in the pond during this. The mahout that was washing my elephant saw this and grabbed a big chunk of it and threw it on the Scottish volunteer. Hilarious. She screamed hysterically but was a good sport and threw whatever didn't get on her back at him. He dodged it but it hit me as I was a sitting duck. She apologized repeatedly and felt bad but I thought the whole thing was hilarious. These elephants got really comfortable with us probably too comfortable especially mine because it kept on farting everywhere it would walk. For this type of an animal, you would definitely need the industrial gallon version of Beano to work things out. Thereafter, we took the elephants back to bed.
Day 3 was our last mahout training day and a reporter from Britain had joined us which was cool. She was asking questions and got our names and everything. She was a skin cancer victim and was on tour reporting on different places to go to have fun and stay out of the sun. After the trip down, feeding, training, and bath we headed back up the hill. The panorama was fantastic as the sun was blaring (ironic that the reporter came on the day when there was no rain and the sun was strongest) and we were able to see the beauty of all of the rivers separating Myanmar and Laos from Thailand

Move out of our way!

. We actually crossed a huge field where the master mahout said they hosted the World Elephant Polo championships. That must be pretty slow games but at least the elephants can't break a leg as easily as a horse can. I wonder if they use cheerleaders for those games - I'm sure that's what the Cowgirls do during the offseason. By this time, Rachel and I had gotten real used to our elephants so we tried just laying on the elephant. It was great and, surprisingly, really relaxing. We would just hug its big head and sprawl out over its back just like the kid from the movie The Jungle Book would always do. It was awesome being that comfortable with the elephant and the elephant that comfortable with us to be able to do that. No trainers, no carriages, no ropes just you and your new buddy.
After all was said and done we were officially mahouts. They gave us mahout clothes embroidered with our names in Thai on them and an official certificate made out of none other than elephant dung. You know our mothers would be proud - trapeze flying, monkey jumping, tiger lounging, and now elephant training - we were destined to join the circus.
Of course, we did other things during these days but I wanted to give you the full-blown experience of the elephant training which was an amazing experience and something you can't get back in the States. During the rest of the trip up in the Golden Triangle, Rachel got to do some Yoga at the resort which was not nearly as challenging as what she's used to - she said she didn't even break a sweat!
We also had a chance to visit the Opium Museum. The Golden Triangle used to be the hotbed of the illegal opium trade and much of its residents were adversely affected by the pervasiveness of not only the extensive use of it but also how detrimental it was to the longevity of the region

Insert bananas here

. The Thai Royal family, which is highly revered in the country, instituted measures to help out the region through alternative farming training and technology and education of the effects of opium abuse. The whole region really transformed into an economically vibrant, healthy, and sustainable area. Because of this, hotels and resorts were able to be built to showcase its beauty. The Opium Museum was extremely interesting in illustrating all of this. It would rival any museum in the states as it was very high-tech and put together very well. It also talked about the history of trade dating back from the days of the British-based East India Trading Company to present day.
We also didn't plan on doing this, but we took advantage of the fact that the area we were in bordered 2 other countries. There was a river that separated all 3 countries and you could only get their by longboat. Are you thinking what we're thinking? Yeah. Why not, cross over and get 2 extra passport stamps add to the list of countries we've visited. Laos really didn't need any type of documentation, visa, or anything. In Laos, we just touched down visited some of the vendors, bought some postcards and sent them from Laos to get the postal stamp and had some Laos snake whiskey, which put some hair on my chest - I wish it had that effect on your head. Burma was a little more difficult to get to. We were simply going to cross to touch down and there was a casino on the other side. So it was easy to ask how to get there by saying we needed to get to the casino. We're Americans so, of course, we're going to spend the big bucks. A casino representative at the Thai side told us to take a photocopy of our passport and to not give our originals to passport control. Maybe they have a tendency to collect foreign visitors passports for fun. So we did and hid our originals when we got to the dock. We were shuttled over to the casino. The casino interior was unimpressive

The elephants wouldn't let us stay dry

. The place was made up of primarily Thai people - no tourists. These Thai people were clamoring to gamble since it's illegal on the other side. When we walked into the room everybody stared at us almost like they had seen a ghost. We were the only Americans in the joint. They had many card games that we just didn't understand like Hong Kong High and other card games with different rules. We came for some intense, high-rollers' games like Go Fish, War, and SlapJack maybe even go so far as Guess the Number like in Lampoon's Vegas Vacation. That's the true sign of a legitimate, big time casino. At any rate, we had to ask them to pull out the BlackJack table for us unsophisticated folks. We obviously had to bring out the big bucks and planned on staying for hours accumulating tons of cash. We started our first hand at about 1:30 cashing in chips equaling US$10. At 1:33, we cut our losses and took $2 in chips to be cashed in. When it's not your day, it's not your day. But as our Thai cardplaying cohorts would say "What Happens in Burma Stays in Burma!"
In the afternoon, we were able to hang out by the pool and relax for a while. Rachel was digging the different fruits we had from our room like fresh lychee, pomegranate, and bananas. Down at the pool we had some cocktails and sunbathed for that tan before heading over to the exotic islands off the coast of Thailand.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures & Videos

Holding on for dear life	Rollover	Going down	Riding in the hillside
Jungle book	Me and Lanna	All clean	Golden Triangle
Yes, that's a cobra in the alcohol...	...and Tony's drinking it	Another day in the life of a Mahout	We passed!
Our hotel pool	Elephant playing	This is not food	A sun soaked day

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