Thailand: a road trip with creature comforts from Chiang Mai to Myanmar

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The wide, wrinkly rear end is careering towards me at an alarming pace.

“The elephants are cute but they are so very naughty,” cautions Tong, steering me quickly out of its path.

At Elephant Nature Park, a lush 300-acre palm-fringed sanctuary near Chiang Mai, northernThailand, nothing gets between an elephant and its bath.

After hand-feeding them watermelon and riceball snacks, we use plastic buckets to fling muddy river water over them. The trunk of 36-year-old Medo curls in delight. Good dirty fun for all.

More than 100 visitors a day come to feed, bathe and hang with these 71 gentle pachyderms, aged from just a few months up to 92 years.

Founded in 1996, the Nature Park employs 350 staff, vets and volunteers to tend animals rescued from overwork or injury incurred through circus performing, logging, landmines or carrying sightseeing tourists atop 50kg iron harnesses.

Each has had its freedom bought for sums from $2,000 to $30,000.

Today is World Elephant Day, which is held annually on August 12 to draw attention to the plight of Asian and African elephants.

The day, explains Krista Jackson, who works in guest relations at the park, “is about raising awareness”, particularly of “phajaan”, the crushing of the spirit required for an elephant to be rendered trainable: a state achieved using hooks, slingshots, fire, ropes and beatings.

My day with the elephants is one part of a nine-day northern Thailand adventure with Rickshaw Travel, which has stopped offering elephant rides on any of its trips.

My tour also includes a remote homestay, an exotic slice of the opium-storied Golden Triangle, and a quick dip into Myanmar.

Trains, private air-conditioned cars, tuk-tuks, long-tail boats and local songthaew taxis incorporate the journey into the adventure.

Holding tight on the back of a scooter, it’s 4pm school-run time, Thai-style. I’m riding with homestay hostess Bua Leeuwinga, who’s fetching her eight-year-old son Tymo from the local Buddhist primary.

In the village of Song, dodging potholes under searing 35C sun, we’re three on a bike as agrarian life unfurls.

Emerald rice shoots peep from muddy quadrangles. Water buffalo, goats and feral dogs lope across our path.

Pausing to step into the cool of a gold-and-yellow wat (temple), we see saffron-robed monks pray over a young couple. In a low-ceilinged bedroom an elderly woman, according to local Buddhist custom, whispers a Sanskrit blessing over a sacred string and ties it to my wrist. 

We visit an indigo dye workshop, a charming museum, a classroom of youngsters hesitantly practicing English and, after I confess to an interest in silk, a weaver’s atelier.

Anchalee, whose ornate works cost up to 280,000 baht (£6,200), has just received a warrant from the Thai Royal family. 

Local flavours flow fast at a 5am food market that’s way off the tourist trail. Women sitting cross-legged atop tables proffer heaps of spices, bags of silkworms, oozing fish heads and bags of takeaway curry, indolently batting at flies in 70 per cent humidity.

Collecting ingredients for a deliciously picante green curry I’ll help chop and pestle at home later, Bua introduces me to a variety of tastes and smells I’ve never come across before —there’s way more to the cuisine here than pad thai and Singha beer.

The distinctive South-East Asian sweet, sour, salt and spice combo has conquered the global palate, and markets are ground zero for surprising taste explosions.

Like the fragrant curry broth and noodles of kow soy; the tasty chilli, tomato and minced pork dip of nam prik ong; or the delicious gummy sweetness of mango sticky rice roasted in banana leaf. 

Of course the pendulum can swing at any moment; a few days later in a Myanmar market I hold a pale pink egg, fermented for a month, and enquire of its taste.

My guide, Ning, responds without missing a beat: “Just like hell.”

To get to Myanmar we drive three hours from Chiang Mai, winding north along the jungle-edged Ping River and ending in the louche atmosphere of a steamy Golden Triangle night.

The second largest opium-producing region in the world after Afghanistan, this three-cornered waterway has Thailand at my feet, Laos across the murky Mekong and, to my left, Myanmar’s jigsaw puzzle of glaucous green.

After surrendering my passport to a Myanmar border officer to be picked up on exit — a curious procedure made less stressful by having a guide — Ning and I walk across the frontier into Tachileik’s labyrinthine street market.

Betel-sellers flavour wraps with coconut and tobacco, while bolts of fabric and cheap Chinese knock-offs teeter in giant piles.

As we make our way slowly in the heat towards glittering Shwedagon Pagoda, a smaller copy of the famous gilded temple in the capital Yangon, two women perform a frantic mesmeric dance in honour of Vassa (Buddhist Lent). Saronged men and women, rickshaws, and blasts of sitar and cymbal music produce a flavour of India, the country’s neighbour along a 1,000-mile border to the north.

Back in Thailand, on one of my final evenings, as I savour the abating late-night heat and steel myself for another tendon-taxing yet strangely enjoyable Thai massage, I recall the Buddha quote tacked to a tree at Wat Phra That Jom Kitti, 383 steps up a hill in Chiang Saen. “Pain is certain, suffering is optional”.

Details: Thailand

Rickshaw Travel (01273 934 823; rickshawtravel.co.uk) offers ready-made itineraries or the opportunity to build your own from three or more “bite-size” trips. Leslie Woit’s customised nine-day itinerary came to £628pp including B&B, some meals and ground transport, but not flights.

Airlines offering flights from London to Chiang Mai via Bangkok include Thai Airways andBritish Airways.

tourismthailand.org