There she sat, holding out her offering. The Cute One then took Katrina’s bouquet in her trunk, consummating a friendship. Katrina continued by having a long conversation with her new friend.January 9–January 18
Thailand, Again
I once rode an elephant at a zoo, paying an enormous sum to take Katrina, then age one, in a large circle for a five-minute ride. The elephant was well behaved and even tempered. I was egregiously misled by that experience into thinking that I should take my family on an “elephant trek” in northern Thailand.
The night before our trek we had a pep talk by our guide, Toto. I’m not sure of the spelling, but I could easily remember his name because I just imagined his wife was Dorothy. We met seven others who would be on our trek with us; Jordan and I, along with a Dutch man who was there with his girlfriend, were outnumbered three to one by young, single European women. There’s a message to the single guys out there. There are a lot of unattached single women backpacking the world.
Some of the girls—and yes, at nineteen they can still be referred to as girls—clearly looked disappointed that there were no guys to flirt with over the next few days. A couple of them took an immediate liking to Jordan, but he wouldn’t give them the time of day; I noted the clueless gene does not skip generations.
“Each day will have some difficult hiking sections,” Toto explained, “but there will be a hot meal and shower at the end of each day.” The promise of a shower after a long day of hiking in the sun was welcome news—it was one of the things we had sorely missed on our safari in the Serengeti. For three days we would hike and raft our way through the mountainous region of northern Thailand. The touchstone was the promise of an elephant trek on the morning of the second day.
Jordan’s Journal, January 11
Today we went on our trek. There were lots of other people on the trek, too. First we drove to a waterfall from a hot spring that we could climb. It was really warm! I took my shoes off with the goal to not get my socks wet. I actually managed to get my whole body wet. For lunch we had fried rice. I used to really like rice but in Asia there’s too much of it.
At the end of our first day hiking we were the guests of a hill tribe near the Burmese border. There had been a lot of elevation gain and I was proud that Jordan kept up and didn’t complain. Little did I know to what extent Jordan would go so he could keep up with the adults—I wouldn’t find that out until we hiked the Inca trail in Peru.
The twelve of us were given the use of a large one-room hut for the night and each clique claimed a corner of the spartan room. It was clear that we would all get to know one another quite well—perhaps better than some would want.
“Where’s that shower?” I asked Toto. It had been a long day of hiking in the hot Thai sun.
“There is a bucket near the river.”
“Oh.” You would think that by now I would have realized hot running water in the developing world is pretty much unavailable outside of a Marriott. Unfortunately, this river was not fed by a hot spring. Since it is unlikely any melting glaciers were in the region, I concluded the village was having the water cryogenically cooled for our enjoyment.
The bucket-cum-shower was out in the open with no provision for privacy of any kind. September threw on her swimming suit and, making the best of the situation, took a “shower” and I did the same. Katrina and Jordan resolutely refused. They would jump in any old body of muddy water, but as soon as it was labeled a “shower” they treated it as though it were lethal.
All of the European sorority babes took showers as well, in swim-suits, or failing that, their underwear. I wouldn’t really know for sure. I am merely reporting what I assume to be the case.
Two of the girls worked for the Danish postal service as letter carriers. “We are each a mailman,” Annika said. Due to their buxom appearance, September and I began to refer to them as the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls. I’d failed to appreciate what a fine country Denmark was when we were there.
• • •
Night comes early and quickly near the equator. With no electricity, after darkness fell there really wasn’t much to do, so we headed to our hut for the night.
During our travels we all occasionally expressed some of the things we missed about home. This particular night, Jordan started it off by stating emphatically that if he never saw a bowl of rice again it would be too soon. “What I want are garlic fries at AT&T Park while watching the Giants thump the Dodgers.”
“I would be happy with a bowl of cereal with real milk from a real refrigerator, not that boxed UHT stuff that’s always warm,” Katrina said. September was pining for the banana chocolate chip muffins that her friend Heidi makes. For me, only Fiery Hot Flautas from Chevy’s with extra jalapeño jelly could make life complete.
Before we had left for our trip, all of us, but especially the kids, counted down to the moment we would leave on the World-the-Round Trip. This started many months before we left. As I lay in a spartan hut near the Burmese border pining for Fiery Hot Flautas, I realized for the first time that we weren’t counting down our return to California. Except for the occasional food cravings, there was little thought of home being any place except where our stuff was at the moment.
• • •
It was elephant time. Katrina was so excited I was worried that when the elephants started to show up she would rush up to one and give it a giant hug on the ankle. In my mind I was rereading a Tanzanian newspaper article about a little boy whose last act in this life was agitating an elephant by throwing a rock at it. Voices in my head started arguing.
“Yes, yes, yes, but that was a wild animal. These elephants are trained.”
Another voice said, “Soooo. I am quite certain that the elephants have not had personality screening prior to applying for the job of hauling tourists around.” While the voices in my head were busy arguing, I told Katrina to stay away from the elephants.
She didn’t. I was to learn a lot about elephants that day, but even more about Katrina.
When the elephants started to arrive at the village, Katrina decided that she was going to make friends with “The Cute One.” When I wasn’t looking she picked an armful of grasses and flowers as an offering to The Cute One, and then climbed up the tower that was used for getting on the beasts’ backs so that she was at its eye level. There she sat, holding out her offering. The Cute One then took Katrina’s bouquet in her trunk, consummating a friendship. Katrina continued by having a long conversation with her new friend.
I am not sure how all this occurred right under my nose after she was told to stay away from the elephants, but Katrina was now friends with The Cute One and had to ride her and only her.
Elephants are massive beasts. I never fully appreciated this until perched atop one. Katrina, Jordan, and Granny climbed aboard a bench-seat that was strapped to The Cute One’s back and lumbered off into the jungle. September and I rode another elephant we nicknamed The Big Guy. Soon after we got underway, The Big Guy’s handler offered me the “privilege” of trading places—I could sit on the neck and the handler could sit on the bench, next to September.
“COOL!” I enthusiastically traded places. No sooner had I maneuvered into place than I realized that an elephant’s head is not equipped with a handle to grab onto. I also failed to appreciate that an elephant doesn’t really have much of a neck to sit on, so I was sitting on top of his shoulders, which swayed back and forth a tremendous amount as he walked. I seemed to be sitting on top of a three-story house that was rocking back and forth in a 10.0 earthquake. “This elephant is not OSHA-approved!” I yelled.
The elephant’s handler asked, “Do you want to sit on the bench where it is safe?” There was something in the way he framed the question that suggested weakness if I were to retreat. It’s a guy thing, but after making a big deal out of sitting on The Big Guy’s shoulders, I couldn’t give up so easily, and remained on The Big Guy’s shoulders for the next couple of hours.
We approached a river. The Big Guy stood at the edge of the river-bank, giving me a bird’s-eye view of what it was about to do—step off what seemed to me a cliff and into the river. As he contemplated his best path, I quickly reviewed my options, which were limited to jumping off. I considered that, then consoled myself that my will was in order.
When The Big Guy stepped off the bank and into the river, I was thrown forward. I once again searched the elephant’s smooth and broad head for anything to grab onto. No handle materialized and I stayed on purely by divine intervention.
Once we were in the river, the elephant directly in front of us decided it was time to relieve itself and we were given a demonstration of the sheer volume of material of which an elephant needs to be relieved. A small mountain was laid there and as the water began backing up behind it, I recalled that I had “showered” in this very river the previous night. I was overcome by the urge to drive to the nearest Wal-Mart, buy a case of Evian, and bathe in it.
Unfazed by the fact that his buddy had just pooped in the river, our elephant paused to get a drink. After four or five long drinks The Big Guy’s trunk came up to my eye level and I braced for an instant fire hose.
The Big Guy wasn’t done toying with me. For the next hour or so, it seemed all The Big Guy wanted to do was remind me that he was bigger than me and that I was highly annoying. As we trundled along he kept pausing to uproot some small tree and then chew it, when suddenly a large branch thick with foliage came directly at me.
“Your elephant is trying to kill me!” I asserted to his handler, who was sitting comfortably on a bench next to September.
“His head itches, that is all,” the handler assured. “He uses the branch to scratch.”
The Big Guy also liked to sneeze on me. I could feel him gather a tremendous breath of air, then his trunk would come up to my eye level and I would be hit with a hot jet of air mixed with dust and droplets of goo.
Meanwhile, Katrina, Jordan, and Granny were hundreds of yards ahead of us on The Cute One and I couldn’t see them any longer. When September and I finally caught up with them, I was relieved to see that Katrina and Jordan had not been reduced to the thickness of a sheet of paper and had already dismounted. Had I known what to expect, I don’t think I would have agreed to the elephant trek, and I certainly wouldn’t have subjected my kids to it.
As we dismounted, Katrina came rushing up to September and me. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “can we do that again?!”
“How’s that? I am so glad it’s over. Did your elephant try to knock off the trainer who was riding on its shoulders?”
“Oh, he didn’t ride there most of the time,” Katrina replied. “Jordan and I took turns riding on her shoulders. It was really fun!”
I was dumbfounded. I would never have allowed them to ride up there if I could have seen what was going on.
“Didn’t you nearly get thrown off every time your elephant stepped off the bank to cross the river?”
“Oh no,” Katrina said. “The Cute One held onto me really tight by pressing her ears to my thighs. It would have been scary otherwise.”
What was this all about? The Big Guy seemed determined to dislodge me one way or another. The Cute One was holding on to Katrina.
“Didn’t your elephant keep sneezing on you, or uproot a tree and try to knock you off with it?”
“No,” Katrina confessed. “I made friends with her back in the village before we started. I gave her something to eat and a bouquet of flowers.”
“How’s that? I thought I told you to stay away from the elephants.”
“Gee Dad. I didn’t want to get on a big animal like an elephant without knowing it was my friend first.”
John’s Journal, January 15
We found ourselves traveling for a few days with two young women from Denmark. They had been working their first job out of high school as letter carriers for the Danish postal service for a whole four months. Four months of work can be so demanding mentally, it is little wonder they were taking a one-month leave of absence to travel around Southeast Asia. They had a week remaining and wondered where to go next. I suggested Cambodia.
“Where is that? What is there to do there?”
Though the girls were in a neighboring country, they weren’t sure where Cambodia was, had never heard of the genocide there, and were only vaguely aware that there was once a war in a place called Vietnam.
On the one hand these were still just kids, but they were also recent products of a rich country’s educational system. They were up on current world events and certainly knew much more about U.S. politics than I do about European politics. I have little doubt that the average recent U.S. high school graduate would also know very little about Cambodia.
Speaking of Cambodia, we went to church in Chiang Mai and met a local family who showed us around town. The father was an ice cream vendor. We learned that one thousand baht (US$25) bought all of his capital needs for a day. He considered it to be a lot of money.
I couldn’t help but to compare my situation relative to my new ice cream vendor friend, and then to Prak whom I had met in Phnom Penh. To me, $25 per day was trivial, and while it was a significant sum in Thailand, it would have been an unthinkably large sum to Prak.
We reached a village, very much like the one we stayed at the night before. As the sun was setting, we were greeted by a toddler who acted like he owned the place. He quickly won the hearts of the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls, who showered him with all the affection they had tried to give to Jordan.
The chief of the village had many wives and they were going to dance for us later that night. At the appointed time we sat around a fire that took the chill out of the night air. The same toddler came out to greet us and was instantly drawn to the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls.
Little kids can get away with anything, because they’re so cute. This little guy went right up to his new Danish girlfriends, pulled down his pants, and started to pee. Smiling at the dumbfounded Pin-Up Girls, he maintained eye contact the entire time he drained his bladder.
I couldn’t help but think that he was marking his territory now that others were nearby. The chief had his gaggle of girls, darn it, and these particular ones now belonged to a two-year-old. While most of the village was chanting and dancing around us, they were oblivious that their youngest was making the statement that he was the alpha male.
Jordan was aghast. “Look what that little boy is doing! Don’t his parents know any better? Why don’t they teach him better?”
I wanted to tell Jordan that his parents had probably taught him exactly what they should have, and he was now doing it. But Jordan just wouldn’t be able to grasp it, so I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders.