Jan. 8, 06

Hello Everybody,

As most of you know, I've been teaching English in Thailand for 10 or 11 weeks now. Yesterday, I went to see the "elephant village" on the coast. I brought along my friend Boat, who is the son of a prominent member of Thailand's Forest Service. I had no clear idea of how many elephants there were in this village. I was cynically but still optimistically expecting about 3.
The cab pulled up and my heart pounded as I walked across the red dirt. My jaw dropped as I saw 10 elephants ranging from a toddler just taller than me to a colossus about fifty feet tall. Most of the animals were fitted with riding carriages waiting for tourists. Meanwhile, they were about the business of eating some sort of leaves off of the ground.
The sales lady wanted me to give her the big money right away and ride an elephant but I insisted on buying some bananas and going to feed the baby elephant. A 20 something man accompanied me. When I saw the elephant I was afraid; He was bucking and swaying back and forth and there was wild discontent in his eyes. As the man instructed me, I pulled banana by banana off of the bunch and handed it to his demanding trunk. This youthful member of the gentle and endangered species of elephant was chained to a post. Well, I fed him three bunches of bananas and Boat took pictures, which I'll send you later.
Next, we took the elephant ride. I don't know what to say about this adventure except that it was not as glamorous as I'd imagined. The road was uneven and splattered with litter; the elephant was fat and old, and the rider was a rogueish old peasant who regularly scratched behind the elephant's ear with his bare foot. You see, all of the elephant riders simply sit on the elephant's neck.
It was a crazy ride. We had only an inadequate seat-belt and the elephant was some twenty feet tall, stumbling up and down hills and crossing a small lake. He rightfully seemed to have a greivance with the whole situation and at one point the long black hairs all over his grey body stood on end for no apparent reason. He stuck his trunk in the air and sang a long, fierce note. I got a look at the elephant rider's eyes and they were wild with fear.
After the elephant ride, I bought a cold one and surveyed the area. A small monkey with a naked black face was chained to a great tree whose low vines he swung around agitatedly. A black parrot with a long orange beak was in a wakeful coma in a rusty old cage. We shared the outdoor restaurant with a Finnish family and a German couple, the latter of whom spoke excellent English, easily picking up on my idioms. Later, I was dissappointed to see them fascinatedly taking pictures of the monkey.
Now that I looked at the elephants more closely, I saw that most of them were quite fat and though not ill, definitely not healthy. Nonetheless, I was very happy to be there. We spent a couple hours feeding bananas to the elephants. They simply range around a few acres and tourists are free to approach the elephants alone. Their beautiful grey skin is loosely covered with tough black hairs, from their white toe-nails to the scruff of their necks. They take the bunches of bananas with their trunks and put them in their mouths, which are full of sharp teeth.
There is something about an elephant's light brown eyes that is very uplifting. There is a nobility there that no chains can subdue, that no logging trucks can crush.
The staff were quite pleased with how much money I spent on bananas and I got to know them a bit. I got the feeling that, despite the mis-managed state of things, they genuinely care about the elephants. They informed me that I was welcome to spend the night right there but I had plans in the nearby city of Wuahin, which has a large population of expatriates from Scandinavia, Australlia, and Britain, in that order.
One of the 3 elephant riders was an athletic young man with kind and romantic eyes. His elephant was a huge and healthy creature with a trunk that could have picked me up almost as easily as my bananas. However, with some encouragement from his rider, he let me stroke his trunk as I fed him 5 bunches of bananas. This was a very special moment for me.
Anyway, I'm having some wild adventures here in the Kingdom of Thailand. I would like to thank all of the recipients of this letter, some of you for much needed help given me at various times in my life, and others for your good will and friendship. In my next letter, I will tell you a bit about the people of Thailand and their poverty. Let's just say that America is indeed a privilleged country.

good vibrations,

Sean L Nelson