Chang

Chang is the word for elephant. I was excited to find out that my orientation group would be traveling to Kanchanaburi for an overnight trip to the Kwai river for dinner, rafting, and elephant riding!

 Kanchanaburi is most well known for a bridge built over the River Kwai (it was even made into an Academy Award winning movie called The Bridge Over the River Kwai). During WWII the Japanese had a POW camp in Thailand. Japan wanted to build a railway into Burma to increase communication to its many troops there. Over 100,000 POWs and civilians died in the building of this Death Railway that began in 1942 and completed in 1943.

 Friday morning we set out early for the elephant camp for some rafting and riding. Exciting! The bamboo rafting was fun. We loaded up on the raft and headed down the river. The perfect remedy for the hot sun was jumping in. Floating down the river ended all too soon, but it was on to elephant riding.  I understand some people’s feelings about the exploitation and treatment of animals and their refusal to participate in such activities.  I’d read the book Water for Elephants which opened my eyes to the accepted methods of controlling elephants, but I didn’t think much about it.  I wasn’t looking, but I didn’t see any such devices around the camp…until.  My partner and I loaded onto the bench strapped across our elephant’s back.  I quickly discovered our mahout, riding along on the elephant’s neck, had a hook in his hand.  I immediately became uncomfortable, trying hard to enjoy the ride but too distracted by what the mahout had in his hand.  And for good reason.  I don’t know what the elephant did, but in a flash, the mahout took the back side of the hook and cracked it between the eyes.  It’s a sound I can’t get out of my mind.  I thought I wanted to jump off the elephant’s back at that moment until minutes later I watched the elephant in front of me get hooked in the ear.  Never again.  This picture is for the elephant: