Chiang Mai Night Safari
Lek has shown me on the map of Chiang Mai where I will have the most luck finding street elephants. I have to drive down the superhighway to the south of Chiang Mai, near the airport. I have to look closely at the bridges, dark fields and at the piles of garbage at the side of the road. She says that I could ask one of the drivers to show me the area properly sometime next week. But because I’m curious and it is night I get on to my scooter and have a look for myself. In the beginning I try to drive along the superhighway as much possible so I can take a look under all the passways. I search the whole area until I get totally lost. I keep thinking that I see elephants but when I look a bit closer it is always something else. I am looking everywhere to see if I can find some elephant poo, or a truck with elephant food or a hidden pile of garbage with elephants. I even tried to smell them, but that doesn’t really work after being in busy traffic for two hours, all I can smell is the gasses from the cars. It has given me a headache and my back is starting to ache from the scooter. On the superhighway, surrounded by all the cars and trucks I feel stupid. Did I really think that I would find an elephant here? Driving around for two hours on a motorway, what a foolish idea! I start to drive faster and I am getting angry with myself for even trying this. If I hadn’t been so impatient we could have gone with a car. But then all of a sudden, on a road beneath the superhighway I see an elephant in the middle of the busy traffic, or did I? I hit the brakes, forgetting that I am on the motorway. I have to keep driving till the next exit, that turns out to be a one-way street. At first I try to take the scooter through the ditches at the side of the road, but then I leave it behind and run over to the place where I thought I had seen the elephant. All of a sudden I am standing eye to eye with a five year old elephant. He has a plastic bag tied to his tail as a reflector and bags of banana’s on his back. I start to make some photo’s. the mahout and the fruitsalesman are happy that there is finally a tourist. Unfortunately they dont speak any English. With the few words of Thai that I know I ask them what he is called and how old he is. It turns out that the mahout does speak a few words of English: you want elephantride? I am amazed, right here? Do people actually do this? In a fraction of a second he has got his elephant to lay down on the ground and asks me to get on. No! this is awful, because of me that poor elephant has to go through this! I apologise to the elephant and promise him that I will do my best to help him and all of the other street elephants, and that there will come a day that he will be back in the nature, together with all of the other elephants, and he won’t have to work no more! Just hang on a bit longer…On the way back I see all the trafficlights blur because of my tears and I get lost, so I get back in the middle of the night, would this be the really popular Chiang Mai Night Safari?
