I arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos, and back into the sun and heat on Thursday afternoon. My hotel had overbooked, so they put me in their resort across the river. You can take their little boat across the river or you can walk across the bamboo bridge.
Both hotels had completely overbooked for last night, so I looked for a two day excursion to some of the local sights. I found a kayaking trip to a cave with an overnight at an elephant camp, and I signed up. My companions were two very nice young men - Fullbright scholars who are in Korea for the year, one of whom is from El Dorado Hills. First we had a very pleasant day kayaking eighteen kilometers down the Nam Ou River. The river and rolling hills reminded me of when Bob and I used to go to western Virginia and canoe on the Shenandoah River. The water was mostly calm with a few spots that were barely Class I rapids. Nonetheless, the Fullbright scholars managed to fall out. They had taken off their life jackets and when they tried to paddle upstream to retrieve them, they fell out again. Well, they are not rocket scientists. The Fullbright scholars also came on this overnight trip with the clothes on their backs - no change of clothes, no jacket for the evening and morning, and no sunscreen. They would come to regret the lack of sunscreen the most as they both burned badly, and needless to say, I don't carry any.
We finally arrived at our destination, two caves that are filled with Buddha statuettes. Yawn. But I enjoyed the kayaking, so I didn't mind. After the caves, we kayaked back across the river to the elephant camp and were given our rooms. Our guide was not great in English and did not explain what we were doing very well. So with no explanation, they told us we were going to ride the elephants into the jungle. Okay. Do you know how hard it is just to get on an elephant? Then it turns out you straddle her neck in front of her shoulder blades, put your hands on the top of her head, and press down for dear life. No saddle and nothing to hang onto. You just have to trust that the elephant is surefooted. That trust is immediately tested as the elephants walk down giant steps to the beach. All of your weight is forward as the elephant steps down and you know that if you fall, you are landing on your head and then getting trampled. I have driven a motorbike for nearly a thousand kilometers and I have crossed streets in Saigon, but nothing scared me more than sitting on an elephant.
We rode for a kilometer or so, going up and down as we crossed little streams and part of the river. Then the elephant handlers told us to get off. We did, and the handlers walked off without a word, so we followed them. These guides were not great communicators. We walked back the way we came and crossed the river on a canoe they had left there. It turns out that we had just taken the elephants to their pasture for the night and in the morning we were going to bring them back to the camp.
The Fullbrights were in agony from their sunburn and I thought I had had all the excitement I could handle, so we all slept late, thinking the guides would go without us to get the elephants in the morning. No such luck - they waited for us. We rowed back across the river section, hiked through the sand and remounted our elephants. It wasn't nearly as scary this time since we knew what to expect, and going up stairs is a lot less nerve-wracking than stepping down. The biggest surprise was how hairy the elephants are. More like bristles. The top of their heads that we are leaning on are covered with one inch long stiff bristles.
Back at camp, they fed us breakfast and by then, the day trippers had arrived, so they put the howdahs on the elephants and led everyone around for rides. By now we were so experienced at bareback riding that this was pretty dull.
We were ready to head back, but we were scheduled to take the elephants to the river to bathe, and some girls we talked to yesterday said it was a lot of fun. The guides told us that the elephants play bucking bronco in the water and no one can stay on for more than five seconds. One of the Fullbrights didn't want to spend another minute in the sun, so he passed, but El Dorado Hills and I got back on. That was when I began to doubt my sanity. Why was I leaning on the bristly head of an elephant going down steep stairs again? Didn't I just do this yesterday so I knew how scary it was? And how many bones was I going to break when the elephant started tossing me around?
But there I am, riding down to the river.
And there I am swimming back to shore after the elephant threw me. We thought the guides had the most boring job in the world, walking a one hour circuit several times a day with tourists on the howdahs on the elephants, and we wondered what they did for fun. We found out at the river. Every time an elephant threw one of us, they would say, go on, get back on. So we would get on and the elephant would just toss us off again, and they would say, go on, get back on. At least it is a lot easier to climb onto an elephant in the water. The guides were doing back flips off the elephants.
So it turned out that riding and playing with elephants really was a lot of fun, and I guess I am still moderately sane. Then we drove back to Luang Prabang where the Fullbrights were finally able to buy some aloe vera. I strolled around for a while, and then had ceviche for dinner in a French restaurant. It makes as much sense as anything here.
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