Recently, In The Wild

As one single panda cub keeps on taking the breath away from a whole nation with breaking news such as when she opened her left and when her right eye, the kingdom’s official animal, the elephant, falls into ever deeper oblivion. The panda earns the Chiang Mai zoo millions. Elephants cost millions.

The little panda is so cute. Hence elephants have become a menace. They roam Bangkok’s streets begging for food and recently, while driving to a temple near the Burmese border, a 2 1/2 hours drive away from Bangkok, on the beautiful highway 3219 from Hua Hin to the Pala-U waterfalls, we ran into a wild elephant.

There he was, at around tenish in the morning, breaking out of the jungle thicket and slowly marching along the road. A pick-up driver tried to tell me: slow down. But there he came, the elephant, kind of charging, speeding up in exactly our direction. What to do?

Well, didn’t really feel comfortable escaping an elephant in reverse gear. So I went from P to D and slowly slowly slowly passed the beg fella to the excitement of my wife and son while all I wasn’t really concerned about when to take the best shot. The question was rather how to overtake an elephant in a safe and orderly way.

At driving school I wasn’t told how to overtake an elephant. And a wild one that is. He looked quite peaceful. Except his watery eyes. The long and short of it: we made it.

Maybe overly anxious. As recently I saw this shot in The Nation with the byline:

Kang Krajarn National Park in Prachuab Khiri Khan’s Hua Hin asks visitors not to feed wild elephants as the animals would get familiar and hunt for food from people’s vehicles. The habit would be dangerous for both the animals and people.

Meaning … overly relaxed Thai people are feeding wild elephants from the comfort of their cars? Holy moly. Why is it that our beautiful hosts see no danger where I only see red flags all over.

But if ever our dear wild elephant would kill one of his friendly feeders … maybe all hell would break loose condemning the savagery of the wild … a wild that should have no more place in modern times, demanding to put an end to such savagery.

Or … or a wild Thai elephant would never think of harming a fellow friendly Thai.

And the moral of the story: loosen up, relax, more tolerance please.




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July 12, 2009 | Filed Under Nature, Sports & Fun 

Comments

3 Responses to “Recently, In The Wild”

  1. whoopla on July 13th, 2009 2.14 pm

    Panda Roti Boy – very appropriate article Dan. That THB 60 million for the panda house in CM would go a long way to help the plight of the nation’s symbolic beast, the elephant.

    National chracteristics such as turning ones back on murky unwieldly problems (what to do with elephants) remind us of the current fascination with pandas, which are cute until they become big and smelly, and god forbid, unhealthy, and their fate might follow that of the millions of stray dogs that infest the country. Fads: Anyone remember the block-long lines waiting for the Roti Boy buns? What happened to that franchise? Bored already.

    Surely if something has real value (like a Chinese bear in tropical Thailand) it will sustain itself beyond the initial cuteness factor?

    Of course one wonders who orchestrates these fads that appear to be impeccably timed to obfuscate the real sores that are festering deep within Thai society.

  2. Jaded on July 14th, 2009 12.38 pm

    Same place is on the front page of yesterday’s Bangkok Post? Looked like the people in that car were having a special moment …

  3. geomark on July 14th, 2009 10.12 pm

    You’re lucky. A friend was passing through Khao Yai from Prachinburi to Pak Chong in the evening and happened upon some wild elephants in the road. He stopped the car, shut the engine, and waited a while, then started the car and proceeded slowly. One large adult was unhappy with the approach and leaned against the car, breaking the driver’s side window. No injuries, just one driver scared sh*tless.

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