A DAY OUT - CHIANG MAI

3rd - 7th Jan 2018

Elephant crossing.

Off today on a day tour in the foothills north of the city. I joined a minibus containing a guide, a jolly driver and nine Chinese girls, student types from Shanghai.

Our first stop was at the charmingly named attraction 'Elephant Poopoopaper Park'. A place where they demonstrate making paper from elephant shit. I've seen it before in Sri Lanka, but any elephant country nowadays likes to show off their eco-friendly use of elephants doings.

There are no elephants here but the pathways were elegantly decorated with piles of raw material.

There was even horse and cow shit on offer for manufacture of, perhaps, 'higher' quality paper.

They offered a 'do it yourself' service in the 'Poo Fibre Shed' where you could mash up your own bleached lump, colour it and spread it on a rack. There were, surprisingly, a few takers.

.......and leave it to dry in the sun (left). The trouble with this sort of paper is that it is crap (if you'll forgive the pun). The finished product is like thin  hairy cardboard and pretty useless to write on. 

A stall stocked lots of (not cheap) notebooks and other tat made from it which, again surprisingly, seemed to attract qute a few customers.

After that excitement we moved on to an orchid garden with, unsurprisingly, many colourful orchids on display.

Then on to a butterfly farm where, inside a netted aviary, there were lots of gaily coloured butterflies flitting about. There was a chart stuck on the entrance itemising different types but, not being a lepidopterist, I found it impossible to identify any because they had an irritating habit of flying away when you went to consult the chart.

Next up was Maetaeng Elephant Park. Our visit here started with an elephant show. All very touristy but quite amusing nevertheless. Before the show several volunteers were hoisted up by a couple of elephants. My new Chinese friends liked this as it was good for photo opportunities. 

Left: The handlers/mahouts demonstrated being given a leg-up, either front or back, by the elephants.

Elephants kicked footballs into a goal with surprising force and accuracy.

A mahout lay on the ground pretending to be asleep, a few times actually, and an elephant gently stood on his stomach to wake him up. I wondered how many fatally squashed mahouts there had been before this act was perfected.

Amongst many other tricks they built walls with heavy logs and even had four elephants advancing in line playing mouth organs (trunk organs perhaps).

Probably the most impressive act was this elephant (right) painting a picture. It was handed a brush for each colour, but apart from that did the whole thing unaided. Fierce concentration  showed in its eyes. Extraordinary. After drawing an outline it very accurately coloured it in.

Left: The finished article was impressive. I have seen many less skilfully produced works done by humans displayed in galleries and worth mega-bucks. (see Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Blog Sept 2015).

I don't know how they train elephants to do these tricks; probably with violent electric shocks and beating them half to death with clubs for all I know. But it must be preferable to pulling logs around the jungle all day which is what their existance consisted of in the old days (before tourists). At least they get well fed and are topped up by numerous bananas and sugar cane fed to them by us tourists (30 Baht a bunch)....and the occasional camera.

We then were taken for a ride. Not too uncomfortable and resulted in lots of happy screams from the Chinese girls especially when going up or down steep slopes or steps. You had to hang on quite tight. There were a couple of pit-stops along the route at which we were strongly encouraged (ie cruel to refuse) to buy bunches of bananas and sugar cane (30 Baht) to refuel our elephant on the move. Their trunks were constantly reaching behind their heads for another banana, or whatever.

The selfie-stick with smart-phone on the end is essential equipment for the Chinese tourists (and others I expect). It is almost a natural extention of their arm. They photo themselves non-stop. This led to a 'nearly' hilarious occurrence when one of the girls was selfie-photoing herself feeding an elephant a banana. The elephant grabbed the smart-phone and she was left holding the banana. How she screamed...it was like having her arm amputated. I suppose the elephant thought it was a lollipop. Anyway, the alert handler managed to rescue the phone just in time. What a pity! Which reminds me of a video clip where this actually happened to a Japanese girl tourist. The elephant did  swallow her phone. There was much screaming and jumping up and down. She was told to wait a few hours. The elephant duly discharged a large shit and the handler rang the girl's phone number. The ring tone sounded from the pile of dung, the phone was pulled out, wiped down and was in perfect working order. A happy Jap!

The next entertainment was an ox-cart ride down some dusty lanes (right) with one of my new Chinese friends. Selfie-stick at the ready. We even had to stop half-way to buy more bananas to feed the oxen. I didn't know they liked bananas, until now.

This led us back to the river on the bank of which was a restaurant where we were treated to a very decent lunch.

Then paddled on by raft down the river (River Taing) for a sedate and seemingly endless trip to be met by our mini-bus. 

Next stop was a village populated (I suspect for the day only) by those Muong tribe 'long-necked' women. They were busy trying to sell us colourful fabrics. I had previously seen similar near Inle Lake, Burma where I was concerned about what would happen if they fell into the lake. Would the metal rings take them straight to the bottom? No water danger here but I was given some of the rings to handle. They are solid brass and very heavy! One of the ladies was wearing 25 of them which, I was told and believe, weighed about 10kg (22lbs?). You would not want to go swimming in those. Free-style deep-diving perhaps, but not swimming!

Encouraged by our lady guide I had my face painted here in Muong traditional style. Good for the complexion I was told, but thankfully I don't have a photo of that. It amused the Chinese girls.




Left: Our guide having her face painted.













The next, and final, port of call was another Wat or, to be more exact, seven separate Wats and I've forgotten what the place is called; somewhere north of the city. Each of these opulently decorated Wats is dedicated to a different Buddhist country, ie Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Wales etc. I'm afraid I've rather lost interest in Wats.

Back on the bus with the selfie-stick wielding Chinese and return to the city. I was thinking that as they have 'stick drill' in the British army we could instigate 'selfie-stick drill' for the Chinese. Maybe they already do it.

More to come from Chiang Mai. I'm off with some friends to a Thai Boxing evening tomorrow which features a friend of theirs, a Scottish lady boxer from Wick. Should be interesting!