At the end of this trip, I will add “soreness from elephant driving” to my growing list of sports and age-related ailments. Riding on the neck of Lana – a 23-year-old female, Asian elephant – for the past two days has been a thrill, and worth every sore muscle. Especially, when you get to follow the mahout trainings with a Thai massage… in Thailand.

When our flight from Bangkok touched down in northern Thailand’s city of Chiang Rai, it was pouring rain. Although it’s rainy season here, the continuous downpour was particularly unusual and due to a passing storm making its way from Vietnam.

Upon our arrival to the Anantara Golden Triangle resort, which sits on a hillside overlooking the Mekong River and the country of Myanmar (still referred to as Burma here), we learned that the Golden Triangle refers to the point where three countries – Thailand, Myanmar and Laos – meet.

On our first morning, we were met by Seng, the intrepid Elephant Camp supervisor. Seng, who was born in a local hill tribe, speaks English and is a great photographer. While we thought we’d be making our way on foot to the elephant camp or catching a ride on a hotel buggy, we were instead picked up by five gigantic elephants and their respective mahouts, or trainers. We each mounted an elephant and were instructed to sit high on its neck and not on its shoulders for lack of balance – fairly ironic as I was sure I was about to fall off and hit the pavement no matter where I sat. I held on for dear life, resting my knees on top of Lana’s ears and squeezing tight with my legs (hence the soreness).

By the end of two hours, I wasn’t only comfortable atop Lana’s neck, but happily singing to her and effectively giving her commands in Thai to go forward (bai), turn (ben), stop (how) and reverse (toy). We learned three different methods and commands to get on and off our elephant, each one as fun as riding a roller coaster (I realize that is not fun for everyone). Periodically, we commanded our elephants to lift their trunk, after which we rewarded them with whole, unpeeled bananas and pieces of sugar cane, one at a time. They flap their ears when they are happy, and do the same when they are hot – their ears acting as a self-cooling system.

Many of these elephants – a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures – have been rescued by the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (TECC), and about 30 of them currently reside at the Anantara which shares them with the nearby Four Seasons Tented Camp. Seng explained that the TECC rescues them from both the city, where they may be used to make money as attractions, as well as from the wild.

One of the highlights of being a student mahout was taking our elephants to thepond to bathe. Lana loved the water so much that she kept on dousing her self and then giving me a shower too – over and over and over. At one point, she submerged so deeply that I fell off of her and had to climb back on. We were hysterically laughing as our elephants dunked and sprayed and cooled off after all their effort.

Emerging from the pond, we walked along a jungle path and passed through the baby elephant camp. The youngest elephant, Phillip, is 14 months old and stays at the main camp with his mother, but all of the others elephants under 10 years old live in this separate area. As we walked by, each young elephant touched his trunk to ours as if to say hello. On the way back to the hotel, we walked along the manicured paths and Lana – despite her mahout’s rebuke – ripped out a perfectly manicured plant by its root for a little snack.

We bid these gentle giants adieu, ate lunch by the pool and then made our next move. Rich, Nicole and I walked to the Hall of Opium, situated just across the road from our hotel’s entrance. We kept on hearing from other guests that it was “much better than they’d expected”, and we found the same to be true.

A project of the Royal Family to highlight the transformation from this once opium-growing region, the museum seems to be in the middle of nowhere yet boasts some highly sophisticated multimedia exhibitions. Three floors take you through the history of opium, the Opium Wars, a Hall of Reflection and some modern case studies. We exited the museum into the pouring rain and made our way back to the hotel.

The next morning, we (minus Rich who’d had enough of riding elephants) trekked with our elephants to the top of the hill where they sleep every night. At the top, we had a beautiful view of the Mekong, Burma to the right and Laos to the left. We dismounted our elephants to take in the vista, cool off with some water and take a few photos.

Descending the hill was a bit harder than going up, but we were pros by now. Once back at the camp, we said goodbye to our elephants, and made a donation towards their care.

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