This day began with a visit to an elephant camp, where we went on three separate rides – elephant, bullock cart and raft. It was mainly a trip meant for the kids as they loved elephants (influenced by Horton Hears a Whoo). In my case, it was also an interesting experience as I cannot remember when it was that I went on one, last. While on the elephants, I had to rely a lot on luck to get any good shots off. It was extremely difficult to compose any photographs with such a bumpy ride. No amount of image stabilisation is going to help when an elephant takes a step! However, I still managed to get a large number of good photos in the end, particularly ones with the children in it.
Now, what particularly impressed me about these elephants was their drawing skills. When we first arrived at the camp, I saw lots of ‘artwork’ being sold for about 800 baht each. My first thought was that these things were tourist traps and the art was probably drawn by some person and peddled off as elephant-art for a premium. However, during the ensuing elephant show, a pair of elephants were given a blank sheet of paper and a white t-shirt to draw on and they took about 15 minutes to finish their works of art. So, my initial cynicism was wrong. According to the narrator, Asian elephants are smarter than their Indian cousins because they have a bigger head/brain, which is visible as they’ve got bumps on the forehead. So, they are capable of remembering procedures and steps even if they are colour blind. For that problem, they have a human assistant who hands out brushes to them with the right colour on it.
We went rafting down the river on bamboo rafts. I took this time to explain to my 7 year old nephew, why bamboo was chosen to build the raft (evil me, trying to incite some spark of engineering interest in him) – air pockets, structural strength, light weight. It was a 45 minute raft ride and mid-way, we were greeted by a small sampan floating on the river selling refreshments. How wonderfully entrepreneurial again! I guess that such things probably happen on the Rejang river as well, but it is certainly something strange to us peninsular folk. There were of course other sights to see along the way, but nothing was quite as interesting as this one. At the end of the trip, we were all hustled into our minivan for our journey to ChiangRai.
The journey itself was rather uneventful as I ended up sleeping most of the 4-5 hour drive up. However, our tour guide once more, told us about how different the northern Thai people were to their southern brethren. Seems that northern Thailand was once part of a different kingdom and they were only annexed by Siam from Burma at a much later point, around WWII. He also mentioned to us that because the northern people loved Thaksin so much (incidentally, he is from ChiangMai), they would have no problems seceding from Thailand, forming their own nation and installing Thaksin as their new president. However, they still love their king though. So, I think that if such a thing were to happen, they would still keep the Thai King as their constitutional monarch.
We arrived in ChiangRai in the evening and we requested to be taken to a local night market. It was much smaller than the one in ChiangMai but it was still interesting nonetheless. At one point, I was caught in the packed crowd and felt some hands groping me. I immediately shoved my hands into my pockets to make sure that my valuables were not stolen and then quickly exited the area. At this night market, I decided to buy everyone some ‘rotee’, which is what we call roti canai over here. The best one seems to be the one filled with egg and banana (roti telur pisang). However, the biggest difference is the amount of banana that actually goes in – it was densely packed with bananas and you could taste them in every slice, unlike the kind you get at the local mamak. The price of it was similar to that in Malaysia though, 25 baht each – but it tastes really good!
Sybreon Ones Nought 