Thailand: Day 6: The River

Today we wake and have breakfast and then change and head down to the river, just a quarter mile down the road. Paulo has arranged to, or simple on the fly does, hire us a boat for the day. We split the cost with him and all pile in, Lucy and I, Paulo, and a middle aged French couple from our compound, and the driver of course, with our stuff for our picnick later in the day.

We cruise down the river, weaving this way and that as our adept guide dodges unseen obsticles. We pass many interesting sites, villages, farmers, farms of corn and unknown trees, fishermen, children, cows, pigs, and oxen. We weave through the mountains, green, tall, lush, old vegitation rising on both sides of us, all shrouded in smoke.

After several hours, about 3, I see elephants in the river ahead. We have arrived at the elephant compound. Here there are about a dozen elephants with seats strapped to their backs. They take turns being hurded up to a 1 story launch ramp where tourists, almost none of them white, mostly asians of some sort or another, climb on and get ridden up a hill, off somewhere, and then through the shallows of the river a hundered feet back to where they started. This whole thing makes me feel sick... literally.

We get off the boat and cross through the elephants, a humbling and slightly nerve wracking experience, as the elephants expect that anyone within grabbing distance has food to stuff into their trunks. They extend their long noses to us, breathing in deeply, soundling like a quite vaccuum... shooooooooooooooo. It is very odd to me. We move to a covered area with tables, where we can use the bathroom, again a porceline hole in the ground, which has taken me personally quite some time to get used to. We stand around and chat with one another and have a coke.

Everyone gets a bag of bamboo, I think, with some bananas in it, to feed to the elephants. I somehow get handed two, even though neither I nor Lucy actually bought one. I refuse to participate, but Lucy feeds the animals a bag of said food, then must go find a bucket of water to wash the elephant crud off of her. Ha! I eventually stop feeling ill, and decide to take a few photos of the elephants. We wander the stalls briefly, all setup just for the tourists, of course, and then pile back into the boat.

We head back upriver a ways to the national park we passed, and there we disembark and take our things a hundred feet from the river to picnic under the trees. We have nice meal of stick rice, sticky enough to be pulled appart like puddy or something, and dip it in the sauce of some delicious meet stew thing. We also have two kinds of sausage, and a cut meet, all very tasty. We finish with pineapple. We drink beers and chat, and then Lucy takes a brief dip in the river as we get back into the boat. Then several hours more back up the river to Tha Ton.

We all get off the boat, and everyone but Paulo and I wander off. We take the truck back to Paulo's, and I run inside, as I have needed relief since we started the journey. Paulo places a phone call and ten minutes later, only moments after Lucy arrives at the compound, a Thai masseuse (sp?) appears. I get at least an hour massage in my private closed bungalo under the fading light of day in our canopy covered bed. Lucy is currently getting the same treatment and after, we shall run into town and get a meal. A very relaxing day indeed.