Our Elephant Ride

Charlie and I took a trip on the outskirts of Luang Prabang. First, we biked from the city center into the neighboring countryside. Our destination was an elephant sanctuary. All of the elephants there have been liberated from the logging industry, where they were greatly mistreated. While at the sanctuary, Charlie and I rode an elephant named Mae Khan.

I must admit that I feel conflicted about our elephant ride. On the one hand, it was a fun, once in a lifetime thing to do and I think the elephants are enjoying much better living conditions at the sanctuary than they were when they were logging. On the other hand, I once saw a documentary about elephants that led me to believe that they have a richer emotional life than humans generally attribute to them, and the thought of Mae Khan walking in circles with tourists on her back made me more than a little sad. It also was scary in an If-this-elephant-gets-spooked-I-will-die kind of way.

The rest of the tour involved a nice boat ride to a waterfall, where Charlie swam and I waded (and tried not to freeze). But, the best thing about our trip was our guide Bounkian, who spent 11 years (probably close to half his life, from 11 to 22) as a Buddhist monk/novice. Bounkian is the posterchild for the merits of sending your child to a monastery at the age of 11. Bounkian was as close to a living incarnation of the Laughing Buddha as I have ever seen. And his laughter was infectious. If you have ever seen one of those "laughing babies" YouTube videos, then you have had a glimpse of what it was like to see Bounkian and Charlie cracking each other up for no particular reason other than the joy of laughing. Yep, it was a good day.