11.
The next day, we don’t end up going ziplining with monkeys. Fate redirects the course of events as it so often does—by leaving a big pile of shit in our path.
“Whoa!” Thalia says, rubbernecking to get a look at something by the side of the road. “Was that poo?”
We’re zipping down Millionaire’s Mile heading for the main road that cuts straight through the middle of Kamala. I know without looking back what she’s talking about. I rode past that particular paddy when I went to the beach on my morning run.
“Yep,” I say. “That’s elephant dung.”
“There was an elephant walking on the road?!” Thalia exclaims.
“Sure,” I say, slowing down so she can hear what I’m saying. “There’s a troupe of four of them that walk this path. The mahouts, the guys who ride them, sit on top of their heads and lead them up to graze in the hills. The locals feed them whole pineapples sometimes.”
“Oh my god, let’s go see elephants!” Thalia says. “Can we? Please?”
“Sure,” I say. “I know where the sanctuary is. I pass by there all the time.”
“Yes!” she says. “I bloody love Thailand!”
It is a pretty cool feature of living here that you get to see elephants crossing, or at least get to see their leavings by the side of the road.
The nice part about the elephant sanctuary is that it’s fifteen minutes away instead of forty for the zipline.
It’s on the hillside between Kamala and Patong, up a narrow road that the signage makes it easy to miss if you’re going fast. We turn in, park the bike on the gravel lot and walk up to the visitor’s center, which is open on three sides and has ceiling fans running and an overview map on one wall showing the pasture and the mud pit and the river route.
“They don’t allow rides,” Thalia says, reading from a pamphlet. “It’s not ethical. But we can feed the elephants and take a mud bath with them.”
“A mud bath?” I say. “Probably should have worn different shorts.”
“I’ve got my bikini stuff on underneath,” she says, tugging down the waistband of her elephant print pants to reveal the black bikini thong underneath. She gives me a look. “Before you say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I say. “Let’s get to feeding.”
After we’ve paid the fee, we’re given ziplock bags for our valuables and led under a shady canopy tall enough for the elephants to walk around inside.
We wait with a group of six others—a family of Russians and a couple from India who are already taking photos of each other in front of the pasture fence.
The elephants graze about thirty meters out, not especially interested in us.
A large male tears a branch off a low tree and beats it against his leg methodically, which nobody explains.
Our guide introduces himself as Mongkut and starts talking about the elephants and their significance.
Elephants are very special to Thai people, he explains.
White elephants were especially prized by the Thai nobility for centuries.
There was one on the old Siamese flag before the country was renamed.
Ordinary people raised elephants to clear forests, move timber and do agricultural work.
In some parts of the country it’s still common, though it’s frowned upon now because the animals are rarely treated well when they’re working.
Mongkut says this last part carefully, the way you say something when you have an opinion you’re keeping professional.
He doesn’t mention it, but the elephant is also the mascot of my personal favorite Thai beer brand, Chang, which means elephant.
The name comes from the sound they make moving through the forest—chang, chang, chang, chang—the heavy footfall amplified by the density of the trees.
Like the way they call cats meaow. Both names just describe the noise the animal makes. Makes sense, right?
Having finished his presentation, Mongkut pulls a canvas tarp off a wooden crate of pineapples and makes a sound that I can only describe as a Thai elephant-summoning sound—a short, rising call—and the elephants begin to move.
They cover ground faster than you’d think.
Everyone takes a turn feeding them pineapples and petting their trunks, which are warm and bristled and surprisingly strong even when they’re being gentle.
I get a video of Thalia feeding one, then posing with it, then reacting to it trumpeting directly at her face from about two feet away.
She staggers backwards laughing. She snaps a few of me too.
It’s fun. The same satisfaction I get feeding the cats at the wat.
Just knowing that something’s eating because of me is nice.
When the crate is empty the elephants lose interest, and so does most of the group.
The Russian family takes off. While we’re waiting for the mud bath, we go under the canopy and sip coconuts.
Mongkut pulls them from an ice chest and cuts them open with a butcher’s knife—whack, turn, whack, turn, whack—bringing the blade down until he’s cut a five-sided panel from the top and drops a straw in. Ice-cold and clean-tasting.
Thalia asks Mongkut if the elephants are endangered.
He admits that they are, but says there’s some good news too.
There are estimated to be around 4,000 wild elephants in Thailand now.
Not a lot, but considerably better than it was, and the number is growing.
Poachers are caught more often, and the public cares about deforestation in a way they didn’t a generation ago.
He also mentions the thing I hadn’t known: that the bigger threat now isn’t poaching but habitat loss, elephants raiding farmland at the edges of protected forests, farmers retaliating.
It’s a harder problem than a poacher because there’s no villain.
The elephants trumpet while we’re talking. They also growl—a low, resonant sound, more dinosaur-like than I expected. If I was in the forest and couldn’t see them, I’d think something from the Cretaceous period was behind me.
Mongkut asks if we’re ready for the mud bath.
We go over to the pit, which is a wide shallow wallow about the size of a small swimming pool, brown-grey and cool-looking in the shade.
We’re told to get in and cover ourselves in mud.
The elephants will join us if they feel like it, but it can also stress them out.
I ask Mongkut in Thai if they like bathing with people and he tilts his palm side to side.
About fifty-fifty. They like the mud. They do it naturally to cool down and protect their skin from the sun.
Most of them are used to humans. But honestly they’d probably prefer it if we weren’t here.
“I don’t want to stress them out,” Thalia says. “Let’s wait and see if they come over.”
The Indian couple is already in up to their knees.
We strip down, I take a few photos of Thalia before putting my phone in the ziplock bag, and then I get in too.
The mud is relatively clean, by which I mean it isn’t rank.
Cool and dense, like standing in wet concrete.
As sun protection goes I’ve had better, but it settles over the skin in a way that does feel like it’s doing something.
Thalia applies it to her shoulders with the focus of someone who has thought about sun damage before.
Mongkut holds back a couple of pineapples and now uses them to coax a big female over toward the wallow.
She has flecks of pink around her trunk and a slow, certain way of moving, like she’s already decided she’s getting in the mud and is just taking her time about it.
She eats the pineapple in one bite, considers us briefly, then wades in.
The mud displacement is significant. We scramble toward the edges as she settles herself, then begins to suck up the murky water in her trunk and spray it across her back and sides in long arcs.
One arc lands squarely on Thalia. She squeals and her teeth flash perfectly white against all that grey-brown mud, which is about the only clean thing left on her.
I get a photo before she can object. The image of her like that, mud-covered and laughing, burns into my brain.
I’m going to hold onto that one for a long time. Maybe longer than I want to.
Thalia wades over and presses her palm against the elephant’s side, gentle and deliberate, to show she’s friendly.
The elephant growls low in her chest, but it’s a friendly growl, I think.
Thalia tilts her head until it rests against the elephant’s flank, her mud-covered hair pressed flat, and just stays there for a moment with her eyes closed.
Completely peaceful, deeply satisfied. Seeing her like this makes the trip worth it to me.
And it all started with a pile of poop. Who could have guessed?
When we’re done with the mud bath, we’re shown the outdoor showers where we can rinse off.
My shorts don’t get 100% clean, still a little silty, and the mud has worked into the stitching in a way that tells me these are probably laundry-night shorts now.
But we dry off fast in the heat, which is one thing this climate is always good for.
Thalia towels her hair and then goes through the photos on my phone.
There are some good ones, but for the ones with the elephant I was all muddy myself.
She still looks pleased, running a couple of the better shots through some filter on her phone that makes her skin look like she hasn’t just been sitting in an elephant bathtub.
I come over and sit next to her on the cut log she’s using as a chair.
“How are you feeling?” I ask. “Hungry?”
“Not yet,” she says. “I probably should be, but I think I could use some coffee first.”
“Still up for zipline?” I ask.
She shrugs, not ready to commit.