by Evan Antin
Sounded great to me.
The park relies on a volunteer workforce, and each week brings a new group of people who want to help. The first morning of our stay, my group gathered for a short orientation session. I knew we’d learn about the history of the park and what kinds of jobs we’d be doing, but I was unprepared for the other component of the program: a video about the dark circumstances that had led many of the park’s elephants to their old lives. Yes, I knew that the elephants came from abusive backgrounds, and that over half of the estimated three thousand elephants in the country had been domesticated for industry, but that day I learned that in many cases, “domestication” is achieved by a practice called phajaan. That term means “mentally break,” and the sole purpose of the process is to crush the spirit and independent will of an animal through intimidation and corporal punishment.
Elephants are by nature strong, intelligent, emotionally complex creatures. Because of all those things, they also tend to be resilient. They can reason. They can put things in perspective. It takes an almost unthinkable level of abuse to break them. As I sat through the volunteer orientation watching secretly filmed footage of phajaan, the word unthinkable rolled around in my head, and I realized how barbaric this process is. A baby elephant was taken from its family, confined to a cage so small it was unable to turn around or lie down, then forced to watch its mother’s murder. After that trauma, the captors turned their focus to ensuring that the baby would become a fearful and compliant adult. This infant was starved, denied water, screamed at, beaten with bull hooks, and whipped with ropes and chains.
Look, I was not a naïve traveler. I’d been enough places to know that people do what they have to do to survive, especially in places that are overwhelmingly poor. It doesn’t make it right, but a poacher, for example, may just be trying to feed his family. Even so, as I sat there watching that movie, swiping at tears and trying to tamp down a growing, seething rage at what I was seeing, I understood that this was something else. Beating a baby. Murdering a mother. Trying to kill the soul but not the body of a creature as majestic and intelligent and powerful as a five- or six-ton Asian elephant through a depraved process that works only because elephants have such good memories and are such thoughtful animals. Unthinkable. I lost a lot of innocence that day about how far a member of my own species might go to make a profit.
After the orientation, I walked out into the park and met the elephants with my eyes wide open to what they’d endured before finally finding refuge, and I started seeing things I’d missed on my first impression. Scars, limps, torn ears, battered and mutilated trunks. At every turn I thought, What the hell? How is this even possible?
I got to see the park’s founder, Lek Chailert, interact with the elephants that day. Lek is five feet tall and bustling with energy, and it is obvious that the elephants adore her. They like to be near her, huddling close when they can and gently nuzzling up to her. I don’t know how they can tell that she is the person who found them, who rescued them—often by purchasing them from their captors.
Under Lek’s guidance, rescued elephants are brought to the park and gradually become reacquainted with nature and freedom. They have fields and mountains to roam, streams to drink from, and ample grazing land. One mahout, or caretaker, is assigned to each elephant, and that person is charged with making sure his or her elephant is rehabilitated and can resume something of a normal life. With a little luck and a lot of patience, the elephants learn to find free will again, and they may even build relationships with other elephants.
During my stay I helped with feedings, bathing, and cleanup—there is a lot of cleanup with so many elephants roaming around. I also got to work with a veterinarian, treating one elephant with a large abscess on his foot and another who had a nasty eye infection. As we worked, he showed me the scars of some of the injuries his patients had arrived with—including lacerations and the sites of poorly mended broken bones. Can you imagine the force it takes to break an elephant’s bones? Either by beating it or by giving it a task so monumental one of its limbs breaks from the strain? The idea is mind-boggling.
Watching the elephants interact with one another was one of the most moving parts of the experience. One afternoon I sat watching a pair of elephants who seemed to keep close together. They were both females—both obviously old, one slow-moving and tentative, the other more confident. When they came near enough for me to see them more clearly, I realized that what was happening between them was more than friendship. Another volunteer came over to tell me their story. The elder elephant, Jokia, was born in 1960 and lived the first decades of her life as a slave to the logging industry. She had suffered a miscarriage while working on a logging road and had not been allowed to stop or to check on her baby. After that she wouldn’t eat—and she wouldn’t work. In response, the loggers beat her so badly she was blinded in both eyes.
I looked at this elephant, with her wrinkled and sagging skin, her graying lashes, and her eyes white and blank where her pupils should be. Another in a long line of soul-shattering moments.
When Jokia arrived at the park, in 1999, nobody knew how well she might—or might not—be able to adapt to her new life. It didn’t take long for the staff to see that she would be fine. Another elephant rescued from logging, Mae Perm, came and stood beside the newcomer when she arrived. Within days Mae Perm was gently leading her new friend to her meals and her baths. They slept side by side at night. When I visited the park, their partnership had been going on for more than a decade. I heard Jokia moan and saw Mae Perm touch her trunk to the inside of her friend’s ear, letting her know she wasn’t alone. I watched them eat together, walk together, and splash side by side in the river, trumpeting away as if they didn’t have a care in the world. I’ve been present for some amazing moments of kindness between animals, but to this day I’ve never seen anything as touching as the relationship between these two elephants.
I shot a lot of video at the nature park, hoping to help bring attention to the elephants’ abuse and the devotion this organization dedicates to their care. Even now, whenever I have the chance, I make sure to tell anyone traveling to Asia that every dollar given to any organization that lets you ride an elephant or watch an elephant do tricks (like painting or pulling a carriage) contributes to another generation of juveniles being subjected to phajaan and living tortured lives.
On my last day at the park, I hiked up to a high point on the grounds to look out over the mountains. There, taking in the same view, was a slowly lumbering elephant. I’d noticed her before because her gait was so distinctive. As a logging elephant she’d suffered a broken ankle, a dislocated hip, and a fractured femur. Her hips are crooked, and her gait is awkward. Even without a veterinary degree, I could tell from a glance at her lopsidedly angular stance that walking must cause her pain. I paused and waited for her to pass, not wanting to crowd her, but that’s not what happened. Instead she came and stood beside me, so that we were side by side gazing out over the park. She leaned a little toward me, and I instinctively put my hand up, waiting to see if she wanted to be touched. She pressed against it, and I stroked her side.
I left Elephant Nature Park feeling a little wiser and more world-weary than I’d been when I arrived, but also deeply grateful to have played a tiny part in helping such an amazing place fulfill its mission.
A Bite and a Climb
My next Thai adventure took me to Khao Sok National Park, where I was—surprise!—looking for snakes. I wanted to see primates and monitors and whatever else fate had in store, too, but most of all I wanted to see snakes. The park is home to the oldest evergreen rain forest in the world, and it has the most gorgeous wild rivers, with steep, jagged limestone formations jutting out of the water. The landscape wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in Kansas or Colorado or even in South America. I hired a guide to show me this region, and the first day he took me floating down the beautiful Khao Sok River. I was drifting along in my tube, minding my own business, blissed o
ut by the landscape, when a fish bit a chunk of flesh out of my ass. I never even saw the little prick coming (I guess maybe he thought I was the prick, since it was his river). He bit right through my shorts and startled me so much I jumped out of my tube, looking around to see what the hell was going on behind me. The fish swam away, but I still have the scar today.
The next day the guide and I took a hike along the river, scanning the shoreline and the trees, looking for lizards, crocodiles, and, of course, snakes. This was my first time in Thailand, and there were plenty of species out there that I’d never yet seen in the wild. Cobras, kraits, and reticulated pythons—not to mention civets, sun bears, and clouded leopards. I was looking for any of them (or, more accurately, all of them) when I spotted a big mangrove snake. These snakes are in the Colubridae family, the largest family, but their genus separates them from many of the others in that category. While most of the colubrids—including garter snakes, king snakes, and pine snakes—are nonvenomous, these guys are an exception. The mangrove snake I was looking at was jet black with thin, horizontal yellow bands going all the way down her body—beautiful, dramatic coloring. She was at least six feet long, coiled on a branch about twenty feet over the water. She had big bulgy eyes that were out of proportion to her narrow head. And, of course, big eyes almost always equals cute. This mangrove was no exception—a pretty, adorable snake. She was not as dangerous as even a copperhead, and I was fascinated with her rear-fanged venom-delivery system and wanted to get closer.
No question as to what should happen next. I started climbing, hoisting myself up the tree until I was level with the snake. I straddled the same branch where she was lazing above the river and started ever so slowly scooting forward, snake hook clutched in one hand. To be honest, I didn’t have the capture quite figured out, even as I got close. The logistics of how I’d cling to the branch, hook the venomous snake, and position both of us to make an educational video would have to work themselves out. I was winging it, with a capital W.
As it turned out, a tree-based capture was not in the cards. When I got about eight feet from the snake, she looked up at me with those big, pretty eyes and just poured herself off the branch and down into the water below. Sayonara.
She probably thought she was done with me, but I can be pretty persistent when I want to make a new friend. I lurched back toward the tree’s trunk and scrambled down as fast as I could without breaking my neck. The time for stealth was over.
The water was clear and slow-moving, and the mangrove snake was far too big to be inconspicuous, so I could see her hiding beside a ledge. Locking onto her location, I jumped into the chest-deep river. A distance of about thirty feet separated me from her, and I half-swam, half-waded as fast as I could to close the gap. When I finally reached her, I got a grip on her tail and used the hook to steady her. The languid, lounging creature from the tree was not amused. As soon as she hit the air, she lunged for me. I blocked with the hook. She lunged again, and I blocked again. It takes a special kind of hook–eye coordination to hold a six-foot snake’s tail over your head while simultaneously blocking her lunges for your face. My hook game was exceptionally good that day as I redirected every shot, careful not to hit or hurt the snake in any way. And all the while, I was wading back toward my camcorder and my guide, who was filming.
By the time I reached the shore, the snake, true to form for a reptile, had settled down, and a few tourists had gathered on the bank, taking in the show. They hung around to watch while we filmed a video, the snake calmly tolerating my handling. The pictures we got that day are among my favorites from my time in Thailand. When we were done filming, I put the mangrove snake back at the base of the tree where I’d spotted her, and she casually made her way back down the bank to the water.
Come to Cambodia
Heading across the Thai border and into Cambodia, I had two major destinations in mind: the ancient Buddhist temples at Angkor Wat and the unspoiled rain forests in the Cardamom Mountains.
Besides being in the same country, the two attractions have almost nothing in common; each offers its own totally unique adventure.
I’d seen pictures of Angkor Wat and its temples that made the place look too exotic to be real. My mission was very straightforward: get there; have an Indiana Jones moment of being one with ancient archaeological history; and experience one of the great bucket-list man-made sights of the Old World.
My first realization when I arrived on the back of a motorbike with the guide I’d hired for the day was that calling the temples man-made is really not fair. There are very few monuments that can hold my attention for long, but the Ta Prohm temple—straight out of Tomb Raider—casts an indelible impression. Not only is this temple a seven-hundred-year-old marvel of artistry and architecture, but for much of that time it has been in the process of slowly, gradually, and almost completely being overtaken by the jungle around it. Massive, eerily white tree roots snake their way down from roof to ground, creating cave-like entrances into the once-formal galleries of the temple. Nature is slowly, gracefully winning a battle of longevity here, reclaiming these sacred structures for her own jungle.
Now, I can appreciate a great temple, but in almost any outdoor environment, snakes are always in the back of my mind … or maybe at the forefront. As I walked among the ruins, I pushed farther into the shadows and peered harder into the corners and crevices than most tourists, looking for the kind of creature that would belong—a hooded cobra or a viper, maybe. But the only animals I “found” at Angkor Wat were the macaques—and to be fair, it was more a case of them finding me than the other way around.
The temple monkeys are so habituated to people, they think nothing of climbing on you or even poking inside your pockets to look for food. True to my history of meeting primates who seem to like me, the monkeys made quick work of getting to know me, even though I didn’t invite them or feed them. A trio of juveniles spotted me in the crowd, scrabbled up my legs, and started jumping on my shoulders and picking through my hair. I don’t know if they chose me because I was the tallest, because I was wearing a backpack that might contain food, or for some other reason, but I walked around for a long time with those monkeys on my back, feeling a little like Curious George’s beloved man in the yellow hat.
A Beautiful, Brutal Jungle Week
The Cardamom Mountains, in southwestern Cambodia (and eastern Thailand), are the site of one of the largest rain forests in Southeast Asia. They are as remote as they are rugged—so much so that even now, large swaths of them remain unexplored. Such an untamed environment makes the mountains an ideal habitat for tons of rare and alluring species, among them tigers, bears, leopards, elephants, wild dogs, gibbons, and a huge wild cattle species called the gaur. They were all on my must-see list, right up there with the region’s reptiles, its unique varieties of turtles and monitors, Siamese crocodiles, and so many snakes—vine snakes, pythons, kraits, pit vipers, and one of the species I’d been dying to see in the wild since childhood: the king cobra.
I had a week to spend in the mountains, and I wanted to get out and experience the real, unspoiled environment. This, though, more than most places on earth, is not a destination to go it alone. One of the reasons so much of the region is left untrekked is that it was once heavily laced with anti-personnel land mines left over from when the Khmer Rouge retreated there in the late 1970s. That kind of thing tends to cut way down on tourist interest.
After scouring a bunch of websites, I found an ecotourism company that could provide a guide and a cook to take small groups out into a protected area of marshes, rivers, and mountains.
I tried to set things up by e-mail, but between limited Internet access on both ends of the arrangements and the language barrier, I didn’t get very far. I was hoping to get word to a park ranger who only checked e-mail sporadically, and after a long wait he finally got back to me and explained that even though they had never hosted a tourist into the region I wanted to explore, they were willing to make it happ
en.
I started in Thailand and took a bus across the border into Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. Lots of times when I tell people about my travels, they presume that the sorts of foreign capitals I move through are small cities, but this one, at the juncture of three major rivers, is huge and home to more than two million people. From there I took a smaller bus to a smaller town, then a van to a tiny village. After that, I hitched a ride on the back of a motorbike to a dock and boarded a boat that took me to a hut on the riverbank—the tour company’s headquarters.
When I arrived, I again explained where I wanted to go. I couldn’t believe it when the young man in the hut told me that another American tourist was on his way to visit the same area. They asked if I could wait two days to see if he showed up, because they’d prefer to take us together. I figured it would be safer and maybe easier to go with another person who spoke my language, so I agreed. There was plenty I could do during day trips until the guy got there.
Two days later, that guy still hadn’t shown, and I was done waiting. The guides and I agreed to set out first thing in the morning. I was a little bummed that I wouldn’t get to meet the other tourist; I rarely run into people who are as crazy as I am about wildlife—especially wildlife it takes a flight, three buses, a bike, and a boat to reach.
It’s a good thing we didn’t spend any more time waiting around for that guy, because when I finally got a look at one of the e-mails from the other traveler, I realized that the man we were waiting for who was as crazy as me was … me. The communication between me and my hosts was so rudimentary that they hadn’t realized that both Americans were named Evan Antin.