electro-web

My laptop has a fantastic search function. You just type what you’re looking for into the box and it instantly brings up any matching programs, emails, documents or anything else that’s lurking on your hard drive.

That includes every email I’ve ever sent and received, plus all their attachments.

I was looking for the program that controls my printer, so I searched for ‘HP’. This image was the top hit. I have no recollection of ever seeing it before, but I suppose I must have done. It must be lurking somewhere in my email account, but whether I sent it or received it I don’t know. It struck me as very odd indeed.

This beautiful lake is in Wat Umong, in Chiang Mai. It’s not a traditional temple but a peaceful, tranquil bit of forest for buddhists and monks to reflect and meditate.

But the lake holds a terrifying secret. Enormous, ugly catfish that, apparently, bring you luck when you feed them. This is what happens with popcorn, imagine them cleaning the flesh from your bones if you happened to fall in…

1. On flights longer than 6 hours, tickets for children under 5 years of age cost double the adult fare.

2. On day flights, the cabin lights will never be dimmed. Anyone wishing to wake at their home/hotel, go to the airport, sleep through the flight, get to their destination then go to bed because it’s night again should bring an eye mask and sedatives.

3. On night flights, the lights must be dimmed for not less than 90% of the flight duration.

4. When seats are reclined, the personal entertainment system switches off. If you want to sleep, fine. If you want to piss off the person behind you while enjoying a film, tough. Seats automatically return to upright for all meals.

5. Meal trays must be collected within 20 minutes of any passenger finishing their meal. Longer than this and you risk turning forks into offensive weapons.

6. If lights are dimmed, overhead or bulkhead screens turn off. Else it’s like sitting under a strobe light.

7. All armrests are shared on a strict timeshare basis, with mild electric shocks for outstaying your slot.

8. Dreadlocks are banned, you filthy, stinking, hippy bastards.

Chiang Mai has gone panda crazy. Kids wear panda hats, shops sell panda souvenirs and the panda has displaced the elephant on the city’s souvenir t-shirts.

It’s all because of two pandas that arrived at Chiang Mai Zoo earlier this year, and a few months ago had a baby.

It seemed like our ‘last chance to see’ moment: there just isn’t much of an opportunity to see a panda back home, and frankly they’re unlikely to last in the wild for our children to enjoy.

Chiang Mai zoo have built a special temperature-controlled Snow Dome to house them, complete with antispectic precautions on entry and no snow whatsoever. The baby is locked away and only observable by video link, so you don’t give it swine flu. Or panda flu. The enclosure is split into two halves, separating the male and female pandas. But there they both are: two members of one of the most endangered species on the planet, poster children from the conservation movement.

And they’re wonderful. Cuddly-looking, about the size of a man in a panda suit. And if you’d told me they WERE men in panda suits, I would believe you. They have strange human air in the way they sit and how they eat.

The female was lounging back like a bug fluffy teddy bear, munching constantly, splitting wood with her teeth but holding the sticks like a child biting through a stick of rock. She stayed like that for the 40 minutes or so that we were transfixed.

The male was much more active, pacing around his half of the enclosure, playing with his tyre swing and rope ladder. His mannerisms were captivating, like a playful bear-sized kitten.

They’re strange and fascinating creatures, not quite what I expected yet as cute and lovable as you’d hope. And I never really thought I would ever see one. The heartbreaking thought while we were watching was that we probably never will again.

The rest of Chiang Mai zoo is rather sad. On the way in, we saw ostriches depressed enough to have each plucked their feathers out. There were skinny looking white tigers, and worst of all a large bull elephant and young calf both on the road for people to gawp at. Neither had access to water or food, and both were nodding and rocking in distress. It was the sort of zoo that had us a little depressed that we’d given them our money.

Weirdly, cars are allowed in and so people drive around the enclosures, ruining the natural savannah experience you’d otherwise get from poorly looked after animals in small, dusty enclosures.

The zoo also has an aquarium, with the world’s longest underwater tunnel. It cost an extra 450 Baht each to enter, which we decided against. This was instantly reduced to 380 each, then 500 for two when we still decided against going in.

The aquarium starts off ok, with some nicely laid out tanks. But the main attraction is entertainlingly disappointing: moving through the world’s longest tunnel is the world’s slowest and most juddery conveyor, which you ride to observe some seriously disappointing fish. It’s split into fresh and salt water, and while everyone knows freshwater fish are a bit dull, you’d expect some life and colour in the salt tank. But nope, the coral is all fake cast concrete and the most colourful thing in there were the two divers feeding the fish while dressed in full fur Santa outfits, complete with beard. All the while, you are serenaded by what must be a cheap porn soundtrack.

Back outside and we saw the highlight: synchronised underwater dance with three western girls dressed in lurid mermaid outfits, performing badly timed moves to Thai pop. Magnificent and it had the biggest crowd of the whole place.

Some kind of pachyderm experience is on every travellers itinerary in Thailand. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to find somewhere where elephants are happy and healthy, are not abused and are not treated simply as commodities to make their owners huge wads of cash. We looked long and hard to find a place where the elephants are cared for, at first assuming that we wouldn’t visit an elephant centre since we couldn’t guarantee their welfare, but the Elephant Nature Park is perfect.

Situated on the mountains an hour out of Chiang Mai, the park houses 34 elephants all rescued from miserable lives in other places. Some are work elephants, such as the one blinded in both eyes by her owner after she refused to work when her baby was killed. Others are rescued from a life begging in city streets, or from performing in shows such as the resident whose back was broken in an accident when she was being forced to stand on two legs. Tyhe centre doesn’t make a profit, all the money earned and donated is spent on the elephant they have or in rescuing new ones.

At the Elephant Nature Park, there are no shows, no amusing painting elephants, no tricks, no rides. Just elephants expressing natural elephant behaviour in a natural setting. Surely this is what tourists would want to see?

Our first encounter up close was morning feeding time. The visitors and volunteers centre is a raised wooden building on the edge of the park, with the elephants roaming around outside. At feeding time they come up to the barrier around the building, just far enough away for their trunks to reach in for bunches of bananas, chunks of pumpkin or bucketfuls of corn cobs. In the wild, of course, elephants would eat sticky currant buns.

I was quite apprehensive at first, as tonnes of elephant reached in for its breakfast, curling the end of its trunk around whatever I was offering to lift it into it’s mouth. Elephant trunks, looked at up close, are really quite strange things. Endlessly agile, they can juggle chunks of food to exactly the right place for tossing into their mouths and had no trouble balancing and keeping hold of two or three corn cobs.

My initial wariness wore off on the next part of the day: bath time. The park has a long bend of river for the elephants to bathe and we were able to get into the river with them and throw buckets of water over them while they wallowed or rolled around. Elephants really like bath time! Of course, the keepers dont force the elephants to do anything (nor is it easy to) and sadly our particular pair didn’t want to stay in the river for long. They were happy to stand on the bank and let us stroke and touch them, though. Elephants feel quite odd too: their skin is rough but not leathery and they have thick bristly hair all over.

As well as getting close to them, the joy of the day was just watching. There are two playful babies, 5 and 7 months old, that had a brilliant time trotting and sliding in the mud hole. By afternoon feeding time, I was totally awed and in love with the elephants, and Penny and I spent a happy half hour feeding our elephant and patting her trunk as she scooped huge amounts of pumpkin out of our hands.

Sadly, the depressing reality of domestic elephants in Thailand was brought home in a documentary we were shown. The unseen truth is that to domesticate an elephant, it is broken in a horrific ritual. The elephant is immobilised in a wooden frame for up to seven days, while it is repeatedly beaten with sticks that have iron nails sticking out. It’s legs are hauled up so it learns to accept commands. As well as the beating, it is not given food or allowed to sleep. Once released, the torture continues as it is forced to learn to obey.

Forget the tourist sales pitch. ALL domestic elephants in Thailand have gone through this.

The Elephant Nature Park’s owner is a sparky local woman called Lex, who believes that elephants should be free and those who are domesticated can be trained in non-cruel ways. She set up the centre to show how it should be done and has trained elephants using positive reenforcement instead of torture.

If you’re on holiday in Thailand, or anywhere else:
DON’T ride an elephant
DON’T go to an elephant show
DON’T give money to street elephants in the city

These elephants have been and continue to be abused.

And if you’re in Chiang Mai, do visit Elephant Nature Park to get close to these fascinating, beautiful, gentle and powerful creatures who deserve our respect and protection. It was a privilege to see these magnificent creatures in a way that doesn’t exploit them.