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Mondaye Adventures
So, picking up the threads... we travelled from Chang
Mai to Lampang by bus on Saturday 28th which took a LONG
time and the back seat that we were on was a bit
rickety and was seriously bouncing us about all over
the place and left us both with very sore headaches
when we arrived! The bus station is nowhere near
anything of note as the town is a bit fragmented but
got ourselves into a beautiful guesthouse by the river
which was an old teak mansion built up all
higgledypiggledy and had been very tastefully
furnished. Was a bit of an unexpected luxury really
given the cost of the room was only 300 baht (4 pounds
something)!
Lampang is a funny old place but very likeable. That
first night on Saturday was great for strolling around
and we came accross a bit of a music festival in a big
park and had singing and classical Thai dances and
random groups of Thai people classified as VIP hogging
the front tables but had a great market next door full
of food and the usual tat. Most refreshing was that we
only saw maybe one or two farrangs (foreigners) the
entire time - in stark contrast to places like Chang
Mai which was irritatingly so. it really
felt as though we were peeling back one or two of the
layers of Thainess that we have been removed from at
times. Same with the next day with the Sunday market
which stretched for miles and we cruised around
constructing a delicious meal from all the food
stalls, having a bit of this and that and trying a few
new things - mixing in with the Thai family groups and
some of the locals living in the outlying villages and
talking to random stallholders that had constructed
guitars out of biscuit tins and it is just too mad
really to even explain how strange it is.
ANYWAY. The main reason for stopping at Lampang (and
the justification for that bloody awful bus journey!)
was to use it as a base for going to the National
Elephant Centre, which has the worlds first and most
important elephant hospital and is home to the Royal
Stable of elephants, including a fabulously rare white
elephant (although, when you read further a "white"
elephant can be varying shades of grey, brown, pink,
yellow, maroon...). They also offer one, three, ten
and thirty day mahout courses to learn how to command
and train a real elephant. It ain't cheap but the
tempation was too much. Although we would have loved
to have done the three day course they were already
booked up for the foreseeable future but we were able
to join another couple the next day for a one-day
course.
Could hardly sleep with the excitement and arrived
early the next day (Monday) having been given a lift
by one of the employees at the centre to pick up the
staff minibus (don't even ASK how we managed to blag a
lift like that to a destination an hour away!!!). We
changed into the uniform of a mahout - somewhat
cleaner and newer than the real ones I suppose! - and
started our instruction with a few words to a shrine
image of Ganesh. Didn't really stop to ask why a Hindu
god would be worshipped in this way but this IS
Thailand... Then we were told about the commands and
some general dos and don'ts. We then drew lots for the
elephants and I got the naughty one and Chez got the
fat one. The other delightful couple (fellow Brit and
Ozzie girl, both thoroughly nice) got the tallest and
the gentlest. We then had to mount the beasts and by
Christ they are massive but you shout the command and
they lift their leg and you grab on to the ear and a
healthy fistful of blubber and clamber on to the neck
(there are other, more gymnastic ways too!). The
pictures we've got are amazing, but cannot begin to
impart how amazing it was to be the person at the helm
of an elephant, nudging it left and right with well
placed rubs with the foot behind the ear and some encouraging words
of "Ben, Ben, Ben". It was a seriously memorable day,
ended with taking him into the middle of the jungle to
be chained up to a tree at a suitable spot with lots
of foliage around him and 30 metres of chain and leave
him to be picked up at 5.30 the next morning...Magical!The next day we travelled to Phitsanulock by train, more of which in the next postcard...Dan & Chez x
Mai to Lampang by bus on Saturday 28th which took a LONG
time and the back seat that we were on was a bit
rickety and was seriously bouncing us about all over
the place and left us both with very sore headaches
when we arrived! The bus station is nowhere near
anything of note as the town is a bit fragmented but
got ourselves into a beautiful guesthouse by the river
which was an old teak mansion built up all
higgledypiggledy and had been very tastefully
furnished. Was a bit of an unexpected luxury really
given the cost of the room was only 300 baht (4 pounds
something)!
Lampang is a funny old place but very likeable. That
first night on Saturday was great for strolling around
and we came accross a bit of a music festival in a big
park and had singing and classical Thai dances and
random groups of Thai people classified as VIP hogging
the front tables but had a great market next door full
of food and the usual tat. Most refreshing was that we
only saw maybe one or two farrangs (foreigners) the
entire time - in stark contrast to places like Chang
Mai which was irritatingly so. it really
felt as though we were peeling back one or two of the
layers of Thainess that we have been removed from at
times. Same with the next day with the Sunday market
which stretched for miles and we cruised around
constructing a delicious meal from all the food
stalls, having a bit of this and that and trying a few
new things - mixing in with the Thai family groups and
some of the locals living in the outlying villages and
talking to random stallholders that had constructed
guitars out of biscuit tins and it is just too mad
really to even explain how strange it is.
ANYWAY. The main reason for stopping at Lampang (and
the justification for that bloody awful bus journey!)
was to use it as a base for going to the National
Elephant Centre, which has the worlds first and most
important elephant hospital and is home to the Royal
Stable of elephants, including a fabulously rare white
elephant (although, when you read further a "white"
elephant can be varying shades of grey, brown, pink,
yellow, maroon...). They also offer one, three, ten
and thirty day mahout courses to learn how to command
and train a real elephant. It ain't cheap but the
tempation was too much. Although we would have loved
to have done the three day course they were already
booked up for the foreseeable future but we were able
to join another couple the next day for a one-day
course.
Could hardly sleep with the excitement and arrived
early the next day (Monday) having been given a lift
by one of the employees at the centre to pick up the
staff minibus (don't even ASK how we managed to blag a
lift like that to a destination an hour away!!!). We
changed into the uniform of a mahout - somewhat
cleaner and newer than the real ones I suppose! - and
started our instruction with a few words to a shrine
image of Ganesh. Didn't really stop to ask why a Hindu
god would be worshipped in this way but this IS
Thailand... Then we were told about the commands and
some general dos and don'ts. We then drew lots for the
elephants and I got the naughty one and Chez got the
fat one. The other delightful couple (fellow Brit and
Ozzie girl, both thoroughly nice) got the tallest and
the gentlest. We then had to mount the beasts and by
Christ they are massive but you shout the command and
they lift their leg and you grab on to the ear and a
healthy fistful of blubber and clamber on to the neck
(there are other, more gymnastic ways too!). The
pictures we've got are amazing, but cannot begin to
impart how amazing it was to be the person at the helm
of an elephant, nudging it left and right with well
placed rubs with the foot behind the ear and some encouraging words
of "Ben, Ben, Ben". It was a seriously memorable day,
ended with taking him into the middle of the jungle to
be chained up to a tree at a suitable spot with lots
of foliage around him and 30 metres of chain and leave
him to be picked up at 5.30 the next morning...Magical!The next day we travelled to Phitsanulock by train, more of which in the next postcard...Dan & Chez x
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