Mango Season for Yai

Throughout the first decade of this century I lived in Pattaya in a lovely house off Soi Bong Koch. The neighborhood had once been a mango farm. The last tree rose survived my front yard. Nothing grew beneath the tree. The sap killed grass and any flowers, yet during the hot season February to April hundreds of mangos sprouted from the branches. My neighbors admired the small green fruit, as they grew into maturity. My wife and daughter harvested the early ones. Tart and hard perfect sliced and smeared with chili sauce. Perfect for Sum Tam salad, the famed spicy green mango salad belover by Thai women.

Every evening an older elephant or chang from the nearby elephant tourist park lumbered down the soi to enjoy the night air. , His mahout sold sugar cane to feed the neighborhood. My wife and daughter stood in the yard behind the fence. They were rightfully scared of changs. In the late 1950s I had ridden atop an elephant at Simpson’s Animal Park in York, Maine. I had been probably the same age was my daughter, Angie, and just as small. I still recalled the smell; dusty. I later learned that the elephants have no sweat glands and cover their cracked skin with dirt or mud to protect their flesh from the heat and sun.

The massive male chang was over sixty years old. Yai eyed the mangos. The mahout gently restrained his snout from snagging at the fruit. He surrendered without resistance, as if there was a reason he hadn’t ravage the fruit. I lifted a bag of mangos for Yai as reward. He stared in my eyes, squinted, then allowed me to feed him by hand the mangoes one by one. When done he extended his trunk as a friendly gesture and I held it with both hands, feeling the strength and his gratitude. He smiled his thanks and the mahout tugged on his ear. Yai silently shambled down to Soi Bong Koch. I realized elephants for all their size were extremely quiet as long as they had a clear path. I smiled, thinking I had a new friend.

The next morning I went to the tree, intending to pick off mangos from the higher branches for Yai.

Climbing trees isn’t advisable for men in their fifties, but I easily scaled the tree. My wife came out and shouted something about red ants. I looked around and saw there were thousands of them living off the sap. Hundreds were on my skin. The second I saw them they bit in unison. I dropped from the tree and wheeled crazily in the driveway, swiping off the ants and realized why Yai hadn’t attempted to seize the mangos off the branches.

“Mot daeng,” my wife laughed. Thais love seeing farangs or westerners do something stupid.

Red ants indeed. I never climbed the tree again.

Throughout that hot season and those to come Yai turned up every year and every day along with my neighbors to feast on the sweet ripened fruits. The tree produced mangos much sweeter than offered at the ta-lat or market on Pattaya Klang. Yai always wore a smile for me and scared the shit out of Angie every time he embraced me with his trunk.

Sadly I moved away from that house off Soi Bongkot in 2008. My business selling bootleg F1.shopping.net clothing has been closed by the Thai Cyber-Police. I returned to New York to earn money. Enough to take care of both my expanding family. Three to four times a year I returned to Thailand to spend time with my clan who lived in Chai-Nat and Sri Racha.

During these visits I traveled to Pattaya for a night or two at the Last Babylon on Earth. Drinking with friends at the Buffalo Bar and wandering Walking Street drinking more. One night I walked along Beach Road with Sam Royalle, my friend from London days and a refugee from a Rasta Brixton yardie gang. He loved go-go bars. I loved drinking. He was English and loved drinking too.

We weaved though Walking Street packed with farangs, Thais, Chinese, Indians, every nationalities on Earth, then the crowd parted and everyone looked over my head. Sam and I turned expecting the Brixton Yardies. Yai stood behind us. A smile on his face. I shone one too. I hugged his trunk and he hugged me. I laughed with joy. The mahout too. Released I bought two watermelons from a fruit stand. They weren’t mangos, but Yai happily popped them in his mouth. We strolled down the street together to the Tuna Bar. Yai and I bid farewell. I handed the mahout five hundred baht.

“Chai yo.” I shouted and Yai bellowed his answer.

Loudly.

I haven’t seen him again, but maybe this hot season in 2026.

After all elephants live a long time and so do I.

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Much more to come.

Yai Chang - Pattaya

Outside my house on Moo 9 in Pattaya I had a mango tree which bore fruit every year. The mahouts of the tourist traps wandered the night with their elephants, selling sugar cane to people to feed their friends. One older pachyderm Yai eyed my mango tree when the flowers burst from the limbs. I knew what time of year it was, but we had an understanding and that understanding gave us a friendship.

To hear the finish of this tale, please go to this url

https://youtu.be/Gmht6sgSqSE

Yai Chang In Pattaya

Back in the day elephants nightly wandered the streets of Pattaya to cool off and cadge sugar cane donations to enrich their under-paid mahouts from Isaan. Yai walked down Moo 9 a few nights a week. The scrawny mahout said Yai's age was about 40.

A little younger than me.

I always had something for Yai, sometimes a quart of Chang beer, but he only had eyes for my two mango trees, especially as they flowered and bore fruit. When the mangoes reached harvest, I pointed to the top of the tree. "Those are yours."

The top of the trees were covered with red ants supping on the running sap and red ants are no one's friends.

Yai regarded Nok the mahout holding the ear hook and then me. We nodded 'go for it'.

Yai and I became closer friends year after year.

At the Buffalo Bar I bought Yai Chang.

Once a drunken Brit gave him a whiskey coke. Yai spit it out along with a snout of snort, covering the lager lout in pachyderm phlegm. Yai, the mahout and I laughed along with the girls of the Buffalo Bar.

In 2008 I moved away from Pattaya to the rice fields of Bannok, but occasionally visited the city of the Gulf of Siam to see old friends and speak my native tongues.

One night in 2011 I strolled down 2nd Road and everyone coming in the opposite direction looked over my head and I turned around to face Yai and Nok.

Elephants walk with a quiet unbeknownst to humans.

They both smiled at me and Yai slipped his trunk around my chest. I got scared, but Yai hugged me with the gentleness of a friend. We drank three beers at a near-by beer bar and he trumpeted his good-bye with an echoing bleat.

I'm 67 now. Yai is probably still around the Last Babylon. One day I'll go back and find out. It's what old friends do. See each other.

Circus Life in Thailand

Last evening driving down my soi my son Fenway spotted an elephant. The mahouts take out the beasts for a stroll in the cooler evening air and maybe earn another 100 baht from farangs feeding the changs bag of sugar cane. My son refused to go near the elephant, but knew this one by name.

"Pi-Bo, Pi-bo."

Elephants were a wonder to children and adults alike and whenever a married couple or single mother with kid visited me in Pattaya, I took them on a tour of the various tourist points of interest; the Khao Keo outdoor zoo, the Temple of Truth ( the biggest wooden structure in the world, and Nong Nooch Gardens, while steering well clear of my usual haunts i.e. the Buffalo Bar, the Welkom Inn, and Heaven Above a Go-Go.

None of these family fare attractions were far away from Pattaya and don’t give a clue to why a western man came here, which was to partake life in the Last Babylon ie Sin sin sin.

While my nephew Fast Eddie and I were at Nong Nooch we attended the elephant show.

Before the pachyderms entered the arena, I bought 50 baht of bananas from a vendor.

We sat in the front row under the shade. The music announced the first elephant, a giant tusker chained at his back feet. He took one look at the bananas and charged the stands. The minders had no chance of controlling him. I chucked the bananas at him and grabbed my godson’s hand before we were trampled beneath those flat feet.

The crowd both Thai and farang laughed at our timidity, but a elephant was like a 1200 pound gorilla. It gets to sit or shit wherever it wants.

When I mentioned this story at my local, my French friend Bruno said, “You are lucky. Two years ago an English woman tried to hide the bananas and was stomped by the elephant. She was killed and the elephant fled the scene to Isaan.”

“That’s nothing," an oldtimer said with a whiskey voice. “Back in the last century a circus dwarf was swallowed by a hippopotamus in a freak accident. He was a trapeze artist and dismounted onto the trampoline. The angle was bad and his disappeared into the mouth of a hippo. Hippos will eat anything and the beast swallowed the dwarf. Fucking audience applauded thinking it was part of the act. The handlers were unable to free the dwarf, but said the hippo was a vegetarian.”

No one laughed at the punchline, but Bruno muttered under his breath. “I heard that story before only the dwarf landed headfirst in the hippo’s asshole.’

“No.” This was starting to sound like an urban legend.

“Quais, and the dwarf survived, but quit because the circus owner wanted him to repeat the act every night.”

Which goes to show there’s no business like show business.

Peter Beard in Paradise

In 2008 Peter Beard defied the death.

Not only had the famed photographer survived a goring by the tusk of an African elephant, but even the ravages of his own excess.

Bravo for a new life in St. Tropez.

Here's an elephant attack joke:

This tourist returns from Africa and calls his doctor.

"I was raped by an elephant."

"Raped by an elephant?" The doctor is alarmed having once seen an aroused bull elephant at the circus. "I want you to come in right away."

An hour later the man walks into the clinic. Each step misery. Once inside his office the doctor tells the patient to pull down his pants and is astounded by the size of the man's distended anus.

"I know elephants have big penises, but this is huge."

"Well," The tourist lowers his head. "The elephant first fingered me."

photo by randy koral 2010

Elephant Magic Trick for Thai Love

Elephants have long memories.

Mostly because they have long lives.

I have met 100 year-old elephants in Thailand.

Not in Africa since poachers killed the pachyderms for their tusks. You would have thought somewhere along the line these ivory hunters would have invested in an elephant dentist, although I doubt elephants are very tractable for tusk extractions.

Thai elephants are different from Africans.

They are trained to perform certain tasks and are considered good luck.

Even as a fertility blessing.

Any woman passing five times under an elephant's belly is destined to give birth within the year, that is if she survives the ritual, because while elephants do have long memories, they aren't the most patient of animals, but it's definitely cheaper than a visit to a fertility clinic.

Not Man Enough

Once I mentioned transplanting a donkey penis and my doctor scoffed saying, "Your body doesn't possess enough blood to engorge such a monster. You'd probably pass out before you had a half a Woodie."

Nick and I go back to university and he hasn't killed me yet, so I heeded his advice against such an operation, despite knowing that the greatest lie in the world is not 'the check's in the mail', but 'size doesn't matter' as the Thomas Cook Travel Agency discovered when a honeymooner on an African safari complained about feeling inadequate after witnessing a bull elephant frolicking with a female pachyderm.

I understand his pain, for according to National Geographic average length of an African elephant penis is about 2 meters and most of it is not visible. It weighs about 25 kg or 55 lbs.

It's a good thing he didn't go on a whale-watching trip.

Humpback whales are endowed with 10 foot cocks.

Worst than inadequate is 'insignificant'.

Elephants on Acid

What happens if you give an elephant LSD?

On Friday August 3, 1962, a group of Oklahoma City researchers decided to find out the whys and hows.

Warren Thomas, Director of the City Zoo, fired a cartridge-syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD into Tusko the Elephant's rump. With Thomas were two scientific colleagues from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce.

297 milligrams is a lot of LSD — about 3000 times the level of a typical human dose. In fact, it remains the largest dose of LSD ever given to a living creature. The researchers figured that, if they were going to give an elephant LSD, they better not give him too little.

Thomas, West, and Pierce later explained that the experiment was designed to find out if LSD would induce musth in an elephant — musth being a kind of temporary madness male elephants sometimes experience during which they become highly aggressive and secrete a sticky fluid from their temporal glands. But one suspects a small element of ghoulish curiosity might also have been involved.

Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost immediately went awry. Tusko reacted to the shot as if a bee had stung him. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD."

In the years that followed controversy lingered over whether it was the LSD that killed Tusko, or the drugs used to revive him. So twenty years later, Ronald Siegel of UCLA decided to settle the debate by giving two elephants a dose similar to what Tusko received. Reportedly he had to sign an agreement promising to replace the animals in the event of their deaths.

Instead of injecting the elephants with LSD, Siegel mixed the drug into their water, and when it was administered in this way, the elephants not only survived but didn't seem too upset at all. They acted sluggish, rocked back and forth, and made some strange vocalizations such as chirping and squeaking, but within a few hours they were back to normal. However, Siegel noted that the dosage Tusko received may have exceeded some threshold of toxicity, so he couldn't rule out that LSD was the cause of his death. The controversy continues.