Music: I’m not sure what my expectations for hotel lobby music were when we arrived in Thailand three weeks ago before Thanksgiving,  but I do know they did not include Christmas music,  nor did they include Calypso music from the 50s. Imagine my surprise when I heard Jingle Bells, in Thai!  coming over the speakers at Pantip Suite in Bangkok.  This was followed by a collection of some of the worst old songs from the 50s and 60s repeated on a loop of maybe 6 numbers.  It was enough to send me out of the lobby where the only good wifi connection was available. Later we were in a dinner place and I started listening to the “background” and realized the song was “Day O” as sung by Harry Bellefonte when we were in high school. I assumed this a freak occurrence and someone had made a mistake in setting up the mix,  but numbers from the era continued for the duration of dinner.  There was nothing in the least Caribbean in the setting in Bangkok.  Okay, it was an anomaly,  wrong! At dinner in Golden Pines (!) In Chang Rei in the far north of Thailand the live performers during dinner moved into a set of the same Calypso standards.  However we have had very little Christmas music in the north.  I haven’t tried to track down the reason for the apparent love of Calypso in northern Thailand.

Elephants: these wonderful animals are prime movers in this part of the world,  or were until the development of heavy machinery that could cope with the environment.  They are still capable of heavy work,  but we are more likely to see them as tourist attractions. How many of us have seen them in a circus or at a zoo and wanted to get just a little closer? Today we had the opportunity to get as close as we wanted to many elephants.  In Tanzania we stared at them from our safari cars often from just a few feet,  but the rules were clear,  hands in the car,  no touching!  As we entered the MaeTang Elephant Camp this morning,  we walked across a path under a canopy and realized that elephants with tourists in the houdas were coming toward us from the boarding area and there was the mahout sitting on the elephants neck just like in the movies or at the circus.  We walked over to the show area where a show had just completed and found elephants and mahouts lined up with the elephants lifting people on their trunks. Before I knew I was straddling an elephant trunk rising into the air.  After dismounting I offered the elephant 20 Baht (about $. 65) which it accepted gracefully and handed to the mahout. This was repeated with Carol and many others in our group.

After watching them bathe in the river and perform the usual elephant tricks including painting on paper made from their dung, we went to the boarding area and Carol and I soon found ourselves on a padded seat atop an elephant behind the mahout heading out for a ride over the river and through the woods.  Along the way there were places to buy bananas and sugar cane to feed the elephant as he walked without even dismounting. The mahout dismounted twice taking my camera to take pictures of us which I will post some day. We also had the chance to feed bananas and sugar cane to them, well actually hold it up in their presence and be prepared to let go a whole bunch at a time.  One noticed some bananas that were sitting between Carol and me on the bench and reached out to help himself.

Oh, music,  one number had the elephants playing harmonicas with their trunks while dancing to the beat they created.  No recognizable music here,  it must have been local.

We went on from the elephants and lunch to a ride on bamboo rafts down the river, MaeTang, adjacent to the elephant camp.  We saw several other elephant camps along the way and our boatmen had to alter course slightly several times to avoid them as they crossed the river with riders aboard. At one point a baby elephant broke from its herd and ran down to the water edge where it stopped briefly as we floated by.  Behind us it charged on into the water followed by its mother, several other elephants and some excited mahouts.  Our group behind us had quite a show.

We bought some “elephant paper” note pads for gifts.  This paper which is also used for the elephants to paint on is made from elephant dung.  They eat a lot of very coarse fibrous material and their digestive system is relatively inefficient so their dung contains a lot of crushed undigested fiber and with cleaning and other treatment a reasonable quality of paper can be made from it.