Our inflatable canoe slid into a river of oily army green, beneath a multi-tiered fog that hung in the air like a crude afterimage of the jungle canopy, superimposed on the sky. We were in the heart of Khoa Sok National Park—thick jungle grown out over karst topography covering an area larger than Toronto. But that frigid metropolis was far from our minds twenty minutes into our trip down a tropical river, through forest older than the Amazon. In fact, the jungles of Khoa Sok are so old that they once shared the planet with the dinosaurs. And now, floating down this river between soaring, twisted cliffs of rust-streaked grey rock, under dozing pythons and mammoth moths, it wasn't difficult to believe that prehistoric beasts once hunted and ate each other here. Back at the lodge, we had a buffet-style lunch with an overly-talkative Australian woman, (inexplicably in white), and a couple from Indonesia, who communicated almost exclusively through a series of knowing looks. “Have you eva' seen anything like this? Just look at this place...oh you're not Japanese, you look Japanese, has anyone eva' told you that before?...we don't have elephants in Australia, you know, not enough wata'...it's hot, sure is hot...” A young elephant trumpeted its return back to camp, mercifully cutting off the Aussie, and causing a cacophony of birds to erupt from the nearby treetops. Our rides were here.
Our guide informed us that there were 17 elephants in the park, (13 females and 4 males, who were kept separate) they weighed about 3000 kg each, ate 250kg of fruit a day, drank 200L of water, and lived up to 70 years. With all this in mind, we met our elephant driver, or manhout, whose ancestors rode these animals down from the lowlands of Nepal, below the foothills of the Himalayas, through the dense jungles of Burma, into Northern Thailand and on to Khoa Sok—a journey of over 4000 kilometers. Our trek that afternoon would be considerably less ambitious, but exciting nonetheless, as neither myself nor Mia had ever been so close to an elephant, much less ridden one through a tropical rainforest.
After climbing a wooden structure to board the beast, and some nudging from the manhout, we plodded off into the jungle, riding the slow swells of the animals giant steps. Behind us, the elephants footprints filled with water from the saturated soil, leaving a trail of muddy puddles the size of dinner plates. It couldn't get much more Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than this. I had an elephant, a little Asian (who had recently been to Shanghai), a jungle, and someone who was deathly afraid of snakes. Not to mention the fact that I was carrying an authentic 1930's canvas book bag embroidered with the words: “MARSHALL COLLEGE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPT” (A gift from a sister forced to endure repeated viewings of said film on Beta growing up.)
Our elephant stopped mid-stride at one point, took a few steps off the path, and pissed. Was it toilet trained? The awe of our elephants fine manners was matched only by the sheer volume of urine it expelled. It was like a faucet on full blast. Once our elephant had relieved itself sufficiently, we continued on, overtaking the Aussie, whose animal had decided to deviate from the trail, tear down some vines, and eat them. (Later, we'd see elephants munching thick bamboo canes like stalks of celery.) Eventually, we came to a clearing—a sort of Lost World jungle valley—took pictures, and turned around.
After a short jeep ride, we were dropped at our riverside jungle house, which, to our surprise, turned out to be just that. With a group of monkeys whooping next door and a banana tree growing outside our bathroom, an interesting stay was virtually guaranteed.
That night, we dined by candlelight on the upper level of the main tree house. The food was good, the setting ideal, but the atmosphere seriously compromised by the owners decision to play top 40 hip hop. It reminded me of my first days in Korea, when, browsing through a corner grocery store, I noticed they were playing hardcore gangster rap—rife with foul language, sexist expletives, and racial slurs—and everyone, from old ladies to toddlers hand-in-hand with their mothers, was completely oblivious. There is a time and a place for rap, but grocery stores and candlelit tree houses are definitely not it.
