Riding in Tremendous Discomfort: Buses, Bikes, & Elephant Butts

After our experience with the hill tribe organization, Dan and I decided to take our chances and head west toward the Burmese border. There are a series of refugee camps from the Northwest all the way down to the Southwest of the country, with a few dusty little border towns in between. Having chosen a career path focusing on violence and health, and Dan (possibly) in human rights law, we felt this the best decision. And of course, where there are refugees, there are NGO’s.
On our journey west we stopped in Pie, the white hippy Mecca of northern Thailand. When Dan and I bought our tickets from the main bus terminal in the Northern capital, we went ahead and asked for the cheapest bus, which also happened to be the only bus heading toward Pie within the next four hours. I don’t know what the “expensive” option would have been like, but when Dan and I saw our bus pull up we began to wish that we had inquired. The “bus” was a glorified mini-van with such legroom as to make discount airlines look altruistic; boarding it was like joining a giant unamusing game of musical chairs. Thankfully, being among the first in line, Dan and I managed to stuff ourselves into two of the little sub-seats, then watched in amazement as the eager throng, at twice the capacity of the allotted seats, found places for themselves among the luggage, between the seats, and on top of the engine. By the time we left, Dan had one leg bent up into the seat in front of us, one arm on me, and another arm and leg on top of a local woman who had squeezed herself in between a person and a bag of rice in the aisle next to us. Dan looked at me with bitter desperation as the bus’s engine roared to life, but there was nothing we could do. We were committed.
Six hours of windy roads later we pulled into our destination. Pie is, in a way, like Pleasantville. The town’s one main street, about a mile long, is filled with hippies of different shapes and colors; Western European hippies with Aladdin pants and thickly manicured dreads, Eastern European hippies with mohawks and tight-fitting t-shirts, American hippies with tattered skirts and tattoos advocating peace (or whatever Thai word that the sly tattoo artist had decided to give them). Both sides of the road are lined with stands selling everything from rasta-colored pot leaf paraphernalia to sleeve tattoos to the Thai take on burritos (yes, we had to try one of these). In short, while Pie may be a great place to take a time-out from Southeast Asia for a few weeks, Dan and I found it to be a little too “pleasant” for our tastes, and hightailed it out of there after a day or two.
One adventure we did manage to fit into our schedule was an “elephant ride.” Having traveled a bit over the years, I have heard people talk about the famous Southeast Asian elephant rides. When you fly into the Bangkok airport there is a huge billboard of a charming Asian Elephant making its way through the jungle with two giggly tourists in a wooden seat atop its back, a logo reading “EXPERIENCE THAILAND” written underneath. We must have chosen the “rustic adventure version” because our elephant riding experience was nothing like the experience promised in billboards. When Dan and I arrived at the elephant camp, at small sadistic looking man told us to climb up onto an big wooden platform and jump onto the back of the animal. There was no fancy little wooden seat, no beautifully decorated blanket… At this camp it was just you and the elephant.
I don’t know if you have ever ridden a horse bareback, but just imagine bare-backing an animal about three times as wide and twice as tall without so much as a loose rope collar to prevent you from falling 15 feet to the ground. Our little sadistic guide was very amused by our obvious uneasiness with the situation and found it hilarious to take us down the steepest terrain he could find, several hills with a 60-degree slope. After about 15 minutes of groinal agony, we tried to tell the guide with a mix of Thai, hand signals, and English that one hour, rather than the two hours we had planned, would be more than enough time to experience the elephant. The guide laughed, and steered the elephant a different direction toward the river. When we arrived at the beach, the guide climbed down the elephant’s trunk with our bag and camera. He then gave the elephant a command somewhere along the lines of “shake.” The elephant stumbled into the water and moved his huge body back and forth with great force, tossing us easily into the water. The guide laughed and laughed. Dan and I, though very wet, were also amused, excited about the opportunity to play with the elephant in the river. We spent the next half hour climbing on the elephants back, being flailed into the water, and trying in the meantime to avoid being sat on by it’s massive leathery body.