Saw An Elephant And I Wasn't Drunk

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

Steven Seagal fights cruelty to elephants (Seagal picture from the PETA website, elephants from thaielephant.com). Kick Elephant Cruelty Ass!!

I was dining at a pretty decent Italian restaurant last night, Pomodoro's on Sukhumvit right next to Nana Station. The food was fine, and I was impressed by the Thai waiter who knew the Italian names for everything on his menu and could suggest a good sauce for the gnocchi. I noted his approval when I chose a wine that matched the food and that pretty much sold me on the place.

The only down-side was the atmosphere. I usually like restaurants that have a good view of the street, but with no screening vegetation or even draperies, I felt a little like a fish in a bowl. Or, given the copious amounts I was consuming, a performing whale. I wonder if whales are embarrassed to eat fish off a pole in front of thousands of cheering hairless monkeys. I bet they are. I'd be embarrassed to eat a fish off a pole period. Though fish-on-a-pole is readily available at a stand on any street in Bangkok.

Around halfway through the meal a large movement that wasn't traffic or a German tourist drew my attention out the window. Cruising by among the veering taxis and tuk-tuks was a young elephant lead by his keeper. He was draped in colorful cloth and wearing an ornate saddle, though no one was riding. I have never seen an elephant without bars separating us so my first reaction was one of childhood excitement. Though not a large animal, he was yet majestic striding on long legs with an air of unfathomable patience and forbearance in huge contrast to everything around him.

After he had passed and I had begun to think about what I had seen, I realized that it was not something wonderful so much as something tragic. The roaring traffic on one of the busiest streets in Bangkok is no place for anyone, let alone a peaceful giant herbivore. He must have been terrified. The center of Bangkok is hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest trail through the jungle and the poor animal did not take a taxi.

Elephants are greatly respected in Thailand and they are a national symbol. If you find a golden Buddha sitting around with animals, 9 times out of 10 those animals will be elephants. The other time it will be a coiled snake, which he is actually sitting on, apparently to teach a lesson about not sitting on a snake when you have a perfectly good lotus flower.

Unfortunately this respect translates into money for an elephant keeper. So sometimes one will guide his elephant into the city in search of employment from money-slinging Europeans and Japanese. As you can imagine, the cost of feeding and keeping an elephant is quite a bit more than for the family chihuahua, and if a driver doesn't get an income out in the country, his elephant can starve. So every so often someone gets the bright idea of riding into Bangkok to make a buck off tourists who have never seen an elephant on this side of the bars. And a few days later the papers run a 3rd-page story of an elephant that had to be shot because it was injured by a speeding taxi.

The elephant does eventually get a taxi ride out of the city. At some point the police will take the trouble to fine the owner and ship him and his elephant back to where they came from. The owner of the elephant probably figures this fine into his expenses and is happy he doesn't have to walk back home.

In the restaurant, I felt pretty angry thinking about all this, but I wasn't sure who to feel angry at. Eventually I decided that I could be angry at the guy who was so irresponsible for his elephant and more angry at any tourist who would actually ride an elephant in Bangkok and thus give the man a reason to come here. I'm glad that I had a few moments of child-like enjoyment of the weird spectacle before I had to be an outraged adult.

I designed and printed 100 business cards, got the phone number wrong, and printed 100 more.

Holes

I broke my little toe a couple days ago. I probably walk 50 or 80 kilometers a week on the awful sidewalks of Bangkok. Honestly, it would really be better if they didn't bother to pave them. Just lay down some sandbags to keep your feet out of the floods in the rainy season. If you're not expecting a nice flat sidewalk, you won't be surprised by the rough spots. The whole thing would be a rough spot and you wouldn't be lulled into a false sense of flatness by the presence of concrete.

What happens is that someone lays down a sidewalk. It gets demolished soon after in some mysterious way I have never seen. Perhaps the army comes at night and goes four-wheelin' in tanks and APCs, or maybe dinosaurs still tromp around in Thailand. There are gaping holes everywhere. Not just indentations, but holes that lead to a dark primeval world underneath the pavement with lost civilizations of pale sightless sub-humans who lunch on the occasional tourist who falls through.

If you're lucky, local people will have piled stones around the holes (stones which they got by tearing up other parts of the sidewalk) to warn foolish strollers. Much much later, after the government goes through several changes in administration, someone comes along and repairs the hole, ignoring several others in the area, apparently because the Morloks haven't come up through them yet. There's a hole near my house that I'm actually quite fond of because it looks like a face that is laughing hysterically. I'll be a little sad when it gets repaired, but I probably don't have to worry about that anytime soon.

What's really dumbfounding is that every so often I'll find a sidewalk with special textured tiles running down it to aid the visually impaired. But far from going in a nice, safe straight line, these paths weave around oddly placed telephone poles, shrubbery, bollards and under electrical wires hanging at neck height. These paths frequently disappear into rubble and more than a few times I have seen them end in a hole that could swallow a visually impaired elephant.

Walking in Bangkok, you have to keep your eyes open for danger at every level. Rushing taxis and tuk-tuks, dangling wires, barking touts and sleeping dogs are bad enough, but you can't even trust the very ground under your feet. After several months living here I realized that it was a miracle that I hadn't injured my feet before and ended up as Morlock lunch meat.

However I broke my little toe coming out of my bathroom. I knew I was going to change my clothes when I left the bathroom, so I thought, "Hey, why bother pulling my shorts up?"

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.